Webbiegrrl's Writings

Welcome to the Webbiegrrl Blizzard

2012-02-02T19:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Webbiegrrl's Writings. I'm an Indie Author and Publisher writing Romantic Suspense under my real name (Sarah R. Yoffa) and using a pen name to publish Science Fiction Thrillers and Romantic SF. I've previously worked in several business industries spanning aerospace, DoD contracting and IT management. I've run my own web business and I've consulted on marketing and business management. I'm working on translating all of this real-world business experience to my activities in the Indie Publishing industry. If you'd like, you can subscribe to this blog on your Kindle, it's free for the first 14 days and then only 99c a month thereafter (Amazon sets the price, not me). Here's what you'll get.

Each week I'll deliver marketing tips on being an Indie Publisher and on the writing activity in general. I'll use my prior work experiences and (once I have some books out there) my own Indie Publishing knowledge (my first Romantic Suspense novel will be released in 2012).

I did publish a Jewish Inspirational / Romantic Comedy (Dicky's Story) in 2011 and have been using it as a learning vehicle. Dicky's Story was a real learning experience for me from committing to a schedule--and meeting it (edited one chapter a week for 20 weeks)--to promoting the book via Twitter, Goodreads and Facebook. I've learned a lot about which methods work and which don't--not to mention how a giveaway can succeed or fail.

Most of my marketing experience comes from non-book industry businesses, but it's really not all that different to sell books than it was selling widgets. For instance, I've been "translating" the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing from widget-selling to book-selling and will be releasing an edited version of that series as an eBook in February 2012.

In addition to snowing down tips and tricks on marketing for my fellow Indie Authors, I'll try to have some treats for readers in 2012. Last year, I ran a successful and popular Freebie Friday feature where I showcased 3 or more authors a week. The idea was to get new authors some new readers and get voracious readers free reads. That feature was very popular but it took me a significant amount of time and effort so I had to cancel it in order to focus on my own publishing schedule. I'll try to figure out a way to get some free giveaways for readers here again without committing to such a time-intensive promotional activity. If you have a request, let me know!

If you're an Indie Author, and want to be featured or give something of your own away here, please contact me. The #1 best way to reach me is @webbiegrrl on Twitter. You can also leave a comment on the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Fan Page.

The blog publishing schedule is as follows, posts appearing no later than 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time (ET/USA). This post will always be on top. Just scroll down to read the newest entries in reverse order (bottom-up).

Monday Marketing Marketing tips, trends, techniques from my years as a web developer and for the book-selling industry in particular.

Tuesday Tips Tips and tricks for the "how-to" of writing & editing, at least the way I do it, as well as reviews and dicussions of tools (or eToys) I find interesting.

Weekend Could be anything. Tune in for #SciFiSaturday or #SampleSunday to see what's up this weekend.

Become a fan of Webbiegrrl on Facebook to get additional status updates that are not posted on this blog. Click the Webbiegrrl Legs to the right.

Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter for additional statuses not posted here on Blogger or behind the Facebook Wall.

If you wanted to find something specific here, just use the tag cloud in the right-side column to search posts by category or browse the archive to see what posts you might've missed.

Regarding Comments:
I want to hear from you so feel free to leave me comments on any post. Comments are not moderated unless you comment on something a week or more old but you still need to log in using your Google ID or OpenID to speak to me. Comments are spam-filtered so don't bleed your links on me.

MONDAY MARKETING Law 22: Resources U Afford What U Want to Afford #pubtip #marketing #writing #indie

2012-01-30T10:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to my Monday Marketing series on the best little book of marketing strategies ever written, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout. If you haven't read this book already, take 5 minutes to check it out right now. It's short, it's sweet, it's full of tips you'll need from the experts who "wrote the book." This is the book.

Are you just joining us? Catch up on my previous discussions of how the 22 Immutable Laws relate to Indie Authors by clicking here. That link's at the top of the blog, too, and it'll always be there so you can find the complete series anytime. If you'd prefer to download the series to read offline, the complete series will be edited and released in eBook format "soon" (est. end of February, 2012).

Today, we've arrived at the very last entry in this series, Immutable Law 22: Resources. Although Ries and Trout talk about making a financial investment, I'm going to talk about something far more valuable to an Indie Author: investing your time and effort. Click through the jump-break to read more.

Law 22: Resources

When you're trying to sell widgets, you need to invest money into advertising and general marketing materials (collaterals). You then leverage these collaterals to make your new widget "discoverable" by your potential customers. Discoverability is the direct result of marketing activities and its primary purpose. To sell widgets, you also need to spend money on a PR service to spread the word, build the buzz, light up the media with that hype we talked about in Law 20. That makes your widget recognizeable after it's been discovered by a prospective customer. PR hype helps you create and then own a single word in the mind of your prospect.

When you're an Indie Author, the story's a little different. We're not selling widgets, so we could spend money on banner ad space (and it'll probably help) and we could spend money on creating marketing collaterals like business cards with your book cover and a web address on it to hand out to people you meet out on the street. We could hire a PR firm to build hype. You could, but you don't have to and to be honest, at first, when you're just starting out, you probably don't have that kind of money. I know I don't! But you can't sell something online if people don't know it exists.

Discoverability is the direct result of marketing activities.

When just starting out as an Indie Author, your money is probably coming from a day job. Don't quit, not yet ^_^ I know I'm tempted because just finding the time to write can feel like a challenge. Well, guess what? You need to find even more time to do all the marketing, advertising and PR work until your books are generating enough income that you can pay someone else to do all that for you.

The Low Cost of Indie Publishing
Here's where I actually part ways with the advice Ries and Trout offered. For a small business owner selling widgets, I'd encourage you to listen to them and go get a loan from the Small Business Association. Going into debt when you sell widgets is part of the cost of doing business and usually comes back as a tax write-off.

Although an author's taxes can be written so as to deduct all kinds of things, our sales have to be substantially higher than a few hundred items moved to see a benefit. That's why I advise Indie Authors not to go into debt to pay to launch your writing career. It's simply not cost-effective, especially in the 2012 world economy. No matter what country you're in, deliberately going into debt is not the path to business success. And for an Indie Author, it's totally unecessary!

Not only is ePublishing completely DIY (Do-It-Yourself) and free of charge, but you'll gain so much valuable information, insight and confidence in your career path by doing it yourself rather than handing over control of the reins to a total stranger. You simply have to spend the time and effort to learn what needs to be done and how and then do it. That's a lot easier to say than do (grin)

Can You Afford to Hire Out?
The more successful marketers will "front load" their investment--that is, take no profit for the first few years (yes, years)--and instead they'll pour profits back into the business. Once your book is generating income, it can start supporting itself. Until then, you should be performing all of the tasks involved yourself--not just to save money. You should know what's involved and how much it should cost, so you won't get ripped off--or not as easily as you might if you just threw money at the problem from the start.

At the beginning, an Indie Author is better off deciding to afford the time, afford the effort. This is what you're spending instead of money. Your time is money. You're doing this, all by yourself, all for yourself. My mother used to love to cite cliche's at me but one or three of them actually are valid. She used to say, we afford what we want to afford. So true in this case. If you really want to afford an effective marketing and promotion effort for your Indie Published book(s), you'll choose to afford the time to make it happen.

Suddenly, watching TV every night after dinner or going out to a bar on the weekend won't be as important as getting another chapter done or a new distribution channel set up. You'll make the time and find the energy to learn the latest tools on Facebook and Google and Twitter because your Indie Author business career is what's important to you. It's a second job. You'll find you have the time because you'll make the time. If you don't, your second job--your career as an Indie Author--will fail. Guaranteed.

Indie Author Does ~~Not~~ A Business Owner Make
The number one complaint, excuse, rationalization used by Indie Authors who are not selling large numbers of books about why their sales aren't cutting it is that they simply don't have time to do both marketing, advertising and promotional efforts and write the next book. Try again, without those business activities, you'll have no business. If you don't tell yourself that you are in business, running a company--you are the Company--then your company will fail, your career will stall.

You are correct in your belief that doing all of this marketing, advertising, promotional and other behind-the-scenes effort is time-consuming--maybe even taking time from "better" things in your life. If you were not designing marketing materials, coining catch phrases, tweeting promotional links, learning the helpful promotional tools out there for exploiting the full potential of social media, you could be relaxing, unwinding with a drink over the game in your easy chair, out with the buddies at the local pub, dancing with your friends to the hottest band in town--you could be doing a hundred other social activities that are not selling your book.

You could even be writing another book.

Unfortunate as it is to hear, if you want your Indie Author "company" to succeed, you have to do it all--marketing, promotion, and writing the next book--and that means you have to give up the rest of the social life activities to do it. Not forever, just until your writing starts turning enough of a profit to make you financially secure and stable. Then your social life can take on a whole new meaning--you'll have the financial means to enjoy it!

Self-Employed Realities
Here's a little reality check I learned back when I ran my first small business (web design and development and internet consulting from1994-1999). Back then we were selling the intangible, the invisible--no one even knew what a web site was, let alone how much it should be worth. Sound familiar? It should. The ePublishing industry is going through the same initialization and growth now.

A small business will require 18 to 36 months to start seeing a profit and that 1.5 to 3 years are the hardest on the soul. You have to give up so much to make any small business start turning a profit, it feels at times like you've given up everything. It can even feel like you're punishing yourself when you "should" be rewarding yourself for all the hard work. The level of difficulty, the level of personal sacrifice required to get a business started and through the growing pains to stability, is quite frankly, just too much for most people.

Far too many think that by being self-employed, they'll be rolling in the dough and not have to give anything up at all. The sad truth is life doesn't work that way--and not really grasping that is why so many small businesses fail. The commitment to do the hard work wanes after a few months when the large financial rewards fail to materialize overnight.

The average length of staying power is 6-8 months. That's when most small business owners give up. The irony is that around 10-12 months is when you might start to see a profit (non-sustainable yet but the tide will definitely start turning around the one-year mark if it's going to turn at all). It's ironic because most people are giving up just before they would have started to see the tide turn.

Balance is Key
They say that a mediocre idea, with sufficient backing, will find greater success than a great idea with no backing. Same is true of Indie Publishing. If you're rich, you can afford to buy services, to outsource all of the things listed above, but that's not necessarily the smartest move to make. At first, you probably won't have the knowledge required to know what services you need to buy, not unless or until you try to do it yourself. At least try it yourself once before you try to buy any service. Not knowing how your own business works is the #1 way to insure its failure. Ignorance is bliss in some areas of life; business is not one of them.

Whether you do the work yourself or throw large sums of money at the problem to get other people to do the hard work for you, the hard work has to get done by someone--and it will take time. Even if you pay lots of people lots of money to do everything for you (say, like a large, traditional publisher does), it will still take a year or more for a book to start finding a following. The "overnight" successes take 6-12 months to find a footing even when hundreds of thousands of dollars are poured into backing them.

If you've done all the hard work yourself, you'll be better equipped to purchase services wisely later and get your money's worth when you finally give up the DIY path. Stay informed and up-to-date on the industry changes even if you stop taking the DIY path because this hands-on knowledge can make or break you in an industry where technologies change overnight. Just never forget that the Law of Unpredictability (Law 17) still applies :-)

What's Next....
Because this was the last entry in this series, next week I'll have to come up with some new-fangled marketing tip for you (LOL). Don't worry, I have 3 more Ries/Trout books to discuss and a myriad of marketing ideas from other sources as well. They may have written the book but not the only book! ^_^

If you've missed some of the entries in this series and/or would like to download the whole thing to read offline, no problem. I'll be editing the entire series and publishing it as an eBook just as soon as I get my first book out, so probably sometime in February, 2012. Of course, Immutable Laws Series will always be available FREE in its original form, linked at the top of the blog.

If you'd like to get the blog delivered to your Kindle, subscribe free for 14 days and then Amazon will start charging you a 99c a month fee (they set the fee, I don't). If you're on Facebook, you can follow FREE via Networked Blogs and my special Webbiegrrl snowflakes will show up in your newsfeed.

Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip will be a tossup between the new Google Privacy Policies and Facebook's new "forced upgrade" to timeline. Or maybe I'll discuss this Great Divide and how the users are affected. You remember users, right? They're the people for whom we do all this writing and blogging and linking and promo work.

Thanks for joining the blizzard. Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter for more tips (re)tweeted throughout the week as I happen upon them.

Leibster Blog Awards for #FF - Spread the Love! @TC_BookedUp @Cassie629 @triciakristufek @DafeenaJameel @MTMcGuireauthor

2012-01-27T10:39:00.000-05:00

I've received a Leibster Blog Award!

Normally I don't "do" blog awards and I definitely don't like "chain letters" but this chain activity really appealed to me because it's promoting the members of my #1 favorite group on Goodreads, Creative Reviews.

Background
The Liebster Blog Award originated in Germany. Liebster means dearest or beloved, and Liebe is love. In accepting the Liebster Blog Award from Barb, the recipient agrees to:

1) Thank the person who gave them the award and link back to that person’s blog (thank you, Barb ^_^)
2) Copy and paste the award to their blog with these instructions
3) Reveal the 5 blogs they have chosen to award, by posting on their blog to break the news (and/or tweet it!)
4) Hope those people in turn pay it forward by accepting and awarding “The Liebster Blog Award” to others they would like to honor.

My blog winners are:

* Barb at Creative Barbwire
* Tracy at TC Booked Up
* Dafeenah at Indie Designz
* Cassie at Gathering Leaves Reviews
* Tricia at Tricia Kristufek
and a bonus because I feel like it!
* MTM at Hamgee University Press

TUESDAY TIP 3 Startups to Watch

2012-01-24T08:00:00.000-05:00

Oops, forgot to switch this over from "Draft" to "Scheduled." Sorry for the delay in publication this morning! Thanks to Mashable for a review of 6 startups to watch this year. I'm only going to share 3 of them with you but feel free to check out the others at Mashable's site or follow Pete Cashmore (@mashable) on Twitter and get the links first hand (haha) Click through the jump-break to read more.

1. Get Paid for What You Know
Skillshare could be a secondary source of income if you have the time-management skills to make your courses mesh with the rest of your life and "side jobs." Skillshare is a great way to turn the things you're good at doing into a revenue stream you control. It's even easier than writing another book because you prepare a course syllabus and lesson plan and voila, you're done. Yeah, okay, you should be available to actually teach the course and answer questions, but if you teach something you really, really know, how hard is that?

For those who've never taught before--or who have and are nay-saying my simplification of it--I've done this kind of online teaching "canned coursework" 3 or 4 times since 1992 (when I was still in college and just afterwards) and it's super easy. If you're organized and self-disciplined and able to time-manage your life. If you lack one of those skills, I'd be far more concerned than any lack of vast experience in the subject matter you intend to teach. Anyone can teach--not everyone should--but only extremely self-governed people should become self-employed. Being your own boss and your own employee at the same time is burden. In fact, it's one of those things that trips up Indie Authors more than the sales activity!

2. Get Paid 100% of Your Royalties
Dwolla could be the alternative to PayPal that you've been wanting. PayPal charges fees to sellers; in fact, PayPal charges fees to buyers sometimes! PayPal was the first and is one of the most widely-used online payment services but it's not the only one out there. Finally, black market money laundering has come above board in the online world. It's barely even grey anymore!

Why would you care? Because you should be selling your books! Even if you sell books via Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and the iTunes store, you still should have a "Buy!" button on your web site/blog for your customers to buy direct from you. I don't (oops) but then I don't really have a book out yet.

If you sell your books directly, you actually get 100% of the royalties. It's not an either/or thing, it's an in addition to situation. You should sell your books wherever you can. Every last sale counts so get every last one you can catch. Having a "Buy!" link is a passive means of converting visitors into buyers--especially impulse buyers. If you don't want to get into the fulfillment process fine, but at least put a "Buy!" link up with a picture of your book's cover and link it to somewhere that does sell your book.

Some customers won't want to have to create a customer account on a bookseller's site (like Smashwords or Amazon, etc.) You'll lose their sale because of it. They might ask where they can buy the book in paperback--and still not buy it if it's only available online from CreateSpace and/or Lightning Source. Some customers actually don't like giving out their personal data to large, impersonal stores. Imagine that!

You can get around the problem by selling direct. Of course, you have to either offer all of the popular formats or pick one to sell and have links to stores that sell the other(s). If you have ePub and Mobi/Kindle, you've pretty much got it all covered nowadays. Even Sony Reader takes ePub now.

Also, you really should require them to create a customer account with you. In fact, in addition to emailing them a copy of their invoice (and a link to their product download location), you should be sure to have a checkbox where they can opt in or out of being contacted with future offers or news of future releases by you. It's a sales opportunity; use it.

There's a lot of work that goes into fulfillment of orders--you need to self-destruct the link once it's been used, you need to have a secure server on which to store the book, etc.--but if you maintain your own site already anway, just do it. Dwolla acts as a middleman and streamlines the process even better than PayPal. Or offer both! ^_^

3. Get the Skills to Build Your Future eStore
If you don't know how to create a web site or do all of the scripting involved in making those self-destruct links for one-time downloads, there's help out there. CodeAcademy can teach you JavaScript even if you're a technophobe of the worst kind. Armed with a little JavaScript knowledge, you can download and use FREE ready-to-use scripts from places like JavaScript.com or a number of others (try this search for a few good sites).

Not everyone wants to learn JavaScript nor do many authors want to get involved in site design and management, but some do. Today's Tips were intended to empower you to control your business, be in business--become the Company you want to keep.

What's Next....
Next up will be another SciFiSaturday snippet from Friday. Stay tuned to the Phoenician Series Blog for more deets.

MONDAY MARKETING Law 21 Acceleration: Will U Be a Trend, Fad or Fashion? #marketing #pubtip #indie #writing

2012-01-23T06:37:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to my Monday Marketing series on the best little book of marketing strategies ever written, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. If you haven't already read this book, take the 5 minutes right now. It's short, sweet and full of tips you'll need from the experts who "wrote the book." This is the book.

Is this your first time here? Catch up on my previous discussions of how the 22 Immutable Laws (made famous in the 1980s by Ries and Trout) relate to Indie Authors by clicking here. Be sure to look for the complete series, edited and in eBook format, coming soon (est. February, 2012). You can also subscribe to the Webbieggrl Blog and have the next Monday Marketing tip delivered straight to your Kindle.

Today, I'm discussing Immutable Law 21: Acceleration, which boils down to the difference between being a "fad" or a "trend." Sound familiar? It should. It's the same as the "tortoise versus hare" concept I discussed a couple of weeks ago. Read that discussion here then click through the jump-break to learn more about what to do when you start winning the race without trying.

Law 21: Acceleration

Ries and Trout define this Immutable Law as follows: successful marketing programs are built on trends, not fads, not even fads that come back to haunt us. Let's refer to the visual aid I borrowed from The Technium's a classic 1000 True Fans article that I love so much. If you haven't read the article yet, do!

The Terminology
The "fad" is the "overnight success" who burns brightly then fades away just as quickly--the "head" in the chart shown. A "fashion" is a fad that comes back then fades again, like spikes in the head, but spread out over much longer periods of time. Halley's Comet is a fashion because it keeps returning--once every 75 years!

A "trend" is the "long tail," a low level of interest which seems to never quite die out and could slide back to toward the head at any given time. My personal goal is the turning point, the 1000 True Fans, though I'd be happy with a long tail of "Lesser Fans" that hung on and paid me residuals for the next 20 years (grin)

I'm pretty sure most Indie Authors pursue becoming a "fad," a short-term phenomenon that might be profitable in the moment, but doesn't last long enough to support the release of your next book unless your next book is ready before the "head" sinks down into the "long tail" part of the curve. This is where Amanda Hocking's strategy of having several books ready before you publish the first one comes in handy. Hocking deliberately built a "trend" so that she would not become a "fad." She has maintained herself on the high side of the 1000 True Fans curve.

Vampire books are a bit of a "fashion," as in a fad which has repeated its popularity. They were popular when "Dracula" came out, and again in the 80s when Anne Rice took them on and of course, twenty years later when Stephanie Meyer brought them back. There've been little spikes but the sustained interest right now is due to Meyer's new twist (just as the sustained interest 30 years ago was due to Rice's). Meyer made vamps her own unique and special snowflakes and rained her blizzard of characters down on us. She also had some excellent management of the hype as well as knowing how to apply the Laws of Success and Failure expertly. That's the key to becoming a trend when you suddenly flare into a fad.

Meyer is writing "in fashion" as they say, but the fact that a "fashion" will fade for many years is but one of many reasons I urge others not to try to follow her lead. A fashion such as hers will play out and fizzle. Unless you're the next new Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer, bringing something new and different to the vampire mythology, you're going to miss out on creating your own trend by trying to ride the wave of someone else's fad or fashion.

Be a Trend Not a Fad
A trend is or should be your objective. Create a trend. Be a trend ^_^ How? It might surprise you but the trick is to manage your success. It's that tortoise versus hare concept again and you need to choose the path of the tortoise despite how appealing the rush of the hare might be.

Don't allow too much success or hype around the success to burgeon too quickly. Don't allow your fame to run unfettered, out of control. It's yours; control it. The most-successful entertainers--the ones who are trends, not fads--control their public appearances and access to their products. They're not all over the place. You cannot get new products every other month. You have to wait. They set the pace, the schedule, the level of need. They control the timing.

Successful entertainers don't wear out their welcome. As a result, they are welcomed by one generation after another. For decades not days.

What do you do when your success gets away from you, when you start becoming a fad? Hard as it is on your ego, you have to actually dampen the fad. This is not to say stop promoting your work. Rather, never totally satisfy the needs of your customers, always hold something back, or as The Greatest Salesman of All Time P.T. Barnum, once said, "Leave them wanting more."

Note: Sometimes, that quote is attributed to the late, great Walt Disney, whose "trend" also has not yet quite burned out. If you can learn from either of these two masters of entertaining an audience for years and years and across generations, you're way ahead of the game.

The only way to benefit from a "fad" in the long term is to stretch it out and turn it into a trend. That's the only way to make it last. If you'll excuse the lewd reference, it's a lot like sex and forestalling your orgasm. If you've never tried it, do--it's a lot better (more intense, more powerful, more rewarding) when you force yourself to wait. Make it last longer and see how much better off you'll be in the long run. Now am I talking about sex or the success of your writing career? Maybe a little of both ^_^

What's Next....
The next entry in this series is the last: Immutable Law 22, Resources.
Don't worry if you've missed some of the entries in this series. I'll be editing the entire series and publishing it as an eBook just as soon as I get my scifi thriller out later this month, so probably sometime in late February, 2012. Of course, it will always be available FREE in its original form from a link at the top of the blog.

Thanks to @mashable for the tipoffs, in tomorrow's Tuesday Tip I'll look at a few techie start ups to watch in 2012. Thanks to all of you, my dear readers, for joining the blizzard. Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter for more tips tweeted throughout the week.

TUESDAY TIP Google Minus - Google, Minus the Privacy, Minus the Ethics, Minus the Choice? #socmedia #twitter #fb #li #pubtip

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a big risk today because Google is a behemoth of a corporation--multi-national mega-corporation. They're huge, they're powerful and unfortunately, I've come to find over the last several months, they're no longer the community-minded, granola-crunching "campus-style" company they were when they opened. Nope. Google has gone the path of every other Evil Empire--and they are worse than Microsoft ever was with the Anti-Trust lawsuit of days gone by!

So I'm going to blog on Google services in general, spurred on by the extremely negative experience I've had with the new Google Plus network. Click through the jump-break if you're interested in why I so dislike Google.

Memories....The Way We Were
Back in the 90s, I jumped on board the Google train--eagerly. I made it my default search engine like millions of others and was so excited that some "real people" were going to give Microsoft a run for its money luring away all of those Hotmail users into Gmail accounts. I happily created free email accounts, one after another, embedding my life in Google because they were focused on being a search engine and free email service to put Hotmail and Microsoft's invasive, controlling methods out of business. In fact, we all eagerly anticipated seeing the Evil Empire taken down by granola-crunching kids in Mountain View, California.

That was then. This is now.

Flash forward to the future, welcome to the 21st century. Google has successfully expanded into photo-sharing (Picasa), blogging (Blogger) and mapping (Google Earth is still an unparalled application), not to mention the GPS apps on the mobile platform (GoogleNav is the standard, built-in app on the Android market). In fact, Google is the standard, built-in "solution" to everything you could possibly need. Or so Google would have you believe.

No Privacy!
All you have to do for this great "life solution" is to give Google permission to constantly monitor your location, 24/7, and send it out to their servers every few seconds. Oh and allow Google to monitor your online activities--everywhere. Don't you remember how the "fun" the Gmail Lab called Goggles was? It was an optional add-on to your Gmail account where your email message's content was scanned and analyzed by Google to determine if you might possibly be drunk. Goggles is still available through the Mail Settings menu--that is, if you want Google reading your private email messages.

Note, there is another Google app called Goggles for your mobile device which automates the "secure" login process. That is, if you want to trust Google to control your accounts completely, giving it full access to your mobile phone, too (you have to be logged into Google from your phone and leave yourself logged in at all times if you want to use the QR login Goggles instead of typing at a public terminal--it's safer to type and then log yourself out because Google Goggles does not log you out and it does keep monitoring your account while you're logged in).

The invasion of privacy doesn't stop there. Google tricks you into granting permission to data-mine your personal data--that Gmail account of yours isn't as private and protected as you might think even if you don't have use the Goggle Lab Goggle app on your phone.

GoogleAds started becoming targetted to the content of your email messages several years ago and Google AdWords still target the content of the page they're on. If you think Google's not indexing and data-mining the pages it scans for purposes of selling GoogleAds and AdWords, you're kidding yourself. Of course, they are! Who throws away perfectly good data? And the Terms and Conditions of Google services grant Google permission to mine it. If you didn't realize this, then you were just being naive. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but sometimes it's necessary to really slap someone in the face and snap them out of the passiveness into which they've been lulled.

Google Minus
The worst offender on the invasion of privacy front is, of course, Google Plus, the new service intended to give Facebook and Twitter a run for their money. I'm going to start calling Google Plus instead Google Minus because it's Google, minus all the good stuff you thought you had--that is, minus all the security you thought they guaranteed and minus all the options and user customization you thought you had a right to insist upon. It's Google Minus you. Google taking over your online life and "guiding" you to do what they want you to do instead of you telling Google what features you want to see.

Did you know that hashtags--the single-most powerful networking tool on Twitter--were user-created? Did you know that Twitter users developed new methods of using the Twitter service and the service accommodated the users--not the other way around?

So why doesn't Google maintain their community-minded roots? Pretty easy to guess. It's not as profitable to give users what they want when you can get users to do what you want instead. User data and demographics are incredibly valuable. If Google can get that data free and voluntarily, why wouldn't they take it?

Mashable is one of my favorite tech news sources but I'm sad to say they're very pro-Google. I don't know if it's Pete Cashmore, himself, or a general consensus to be docile and bow before the giant but it's pretty clear that on the question of the Great Divide in social media, Mashable has chosen to side with Google. They did a great article describing how Google has made private user data searchable but instead of calling it an invasion of privacy, they're calling it a Plus+ (not!)

For those who read the linked article and don't see it, try this article from LifeHacker, which explains it thusly: Google Plus users will have their profiles scanned and searched--and shared with their "Circles"--whenever they perform a search. Allegedly this makes your search results "more customized" and presumably, "more relevant," as though you're only interested in looking through your own pockets for data you don't have? It doesn't even make sense.

What's really going on is that Google is tracking what searches you conduct, what data you already have and what data you add as "relevant" upon search completion. They're tracking you and your online behaviors. And you're letting them.

No Ethics :-(

In fact, even when you're not granting permission for Google to data-mine your private information, Google is lying, cheating and stealing it from you!

The Mocality bruhaha apparently went on without my hearing about it. Certainly, it never made a blip on Wall Street nor did the negative behavior have any monetary repercussions on Google's stock values--and that's the only real result that would have communicated how wrong this behavior really was. It's a little technical but read the entire article on the Mocality blog, as well as some of the 500+ comments.

The long and short of it is that Mocality bought Google services which gave Google access to Mocality's private business database of customers. Google then proceeded to go through Mocality's customer list and contact them--personally, with human operators--attempting to lure Mocality's customers away from Mocality. Google operators resorted--on tape--to defaming the Mocality business ethics and urged Mocality's customers to leave and buy Google services instead.

Mocality got an apology from a local Google team lead but words are pretty meaningless now that hundreds--or is it thousands--of Mocality's business customers have been lied to with defamatory remarks. It literally blows my mind that Google would resort to such incredibly unethical business practices. This company was a community-centered granola-eating "campus" that reviled the Evil Empire in Redmond (Microsoft).

No Choice?
Google wants you to believe that you have no choice or that their services are so vital, there are no alternatives but to succomb. I'm a customer. This blog you're reading is hosted free of charge on Blogger and my @webbiegrrl Twitter account is tied to a free Gmail account. In fact I have nine different Gmail identities. (let's see if they notice that ;-)) I'm totally embedded in the Google Life. I don't like it and I am definitely considering the alternatives. Here are a few to consider:

Android / Mobile Access to Social Media
I have an Android phone. I want an iPhone just to get away from certain Googleisms. For instance, they claim you must set up your new Android phone with your Google account----or create one--or you'll live to rue the day. I'm not convinced there's no alternative to GoogleNav but I have to admit the Plan B app sure sounds handy. I use the similar app MobileMe for my iPad. I'm still not sure I'd find it "vital" to set up all of my Google accounts on my Android. In fact, I keep location turned OFF and deliberately only have 1 of my 9 Google accounts even identified (with updates and synch turned OFF). I use Hootsuite for accessing Twitter and Facebook on my phone and I use its sharing facility to share pictures via email. I don't have my Gmail accounts set up but can browse to the Gmail site and log in--as though it's a separate service.

The problem is, once I do this from my phone, the next time I log into my Gmail account from home (on the laptop) I'm harrassed with this pre-login screen asking me to enter my mobile phone number so Google can "helpfully" set up my phone. No thank you. If I'd wanted to do that, I'd have done it from my phone! But thanks for the proof that you're data-mining my account and tracking my activities.

Blogging
Blogging alternatives are abundant. My #1 choice after Blogger is Wordpress. I haven't really found the theme I want or mastered all of the nuances of installing and using Wordpress but I like the way it can be customized and made more versatile. There were security issues the first few years but those have actually quieted down as the Wordpress community has developed more and more security plug-ins you can add on. My favorite copywriting bloggers, Copyblogger, did a nice presentation on how to customize your Wordpress blog and they sell a variety of services from migrating to Wordpress through customization and monetizing your blog.

If Wordpress is too daunting, another alternative to Blogger is TypePad. It's as "pretty" as Wordpress and can be customized like Wordpress by adding in plug-ins developed by the TypePad community. The catch is it will cost you money to host a blog with TypePad. You will, however, get awesome tech support for the paid service. TypePad's been around longer than Blogger, by the way, they just are kind of quietly successful.

The most popular alternative-to-Google's-Blogger service out there right now is Tumblr. Similar to Picasa and Flickr, Tumblr is designed for photo-sharing and blogging but the blogging aspect has really picked up lately, probably due to smoother integration with Twitter. Tumblr is the Next Best Thing. For a longer list of alternatives, click here for HoneyTech's list of 10 free blogging services.

Photosharing
As noted, Google has the Picasa service and there's Yahoo!'s alternative, Flickr (which is where I have an account) but you can also use Tumblr and more people are doing that today than ever before. Another alternative for image-sharing is PhotoBucket. Also totally free, PhotoBucket has been around a long time and has a good set of tools. it's also fairly well integrated with Twitter and Facebook though not quite as thoroughly as Tumblr.

I highly recommend the free Flickr account. I've had one for years and have never had any security issues--nor have I ever been hassled to "upgrade" to a paid account. I'd like to see Google resist trying to sell me something -- and resist the urge for almost a decade. I might have my complaints about Yahoo! hosting spammers but at least the host itself doesn't spam me. Okay, not on its attendant sites, just on the news/search/email servers (grin)

If your primary interest is to share photos on Twitter or Facebook, you can use TwitPic free of charge and find it fully-integrated. It's not much of a photo-hosting site, though, and is really intended for the mobile user sharing pix on social media.

Mapping / Nav
There are literally thousands of alternatives to GoogleNav. You just have disable Google and install one of the others. Be sure you disable GoogleNav first though or its bulldog attitude will prevent other apps from working correctly. In true Microsoftian dominance fashion, GoogleNav will actually allow other apps to open but then sabotage their functionality and intervene with a helpful suggestion that you switch to GoogleNav instead. Ugh. I'd rather be lost.

News / RSS Feed Reader
The very idea that GoogleNews or your Google HomePage (iGoogle) is the best place to read news or RSS feeds is offensive to even suggest to me. Google is so late to this game, it's not funny, and their iGoogle solution doesn't actually integrate with anything except GooglePlus. No thanks. Microsoft already has the monopoly on my computer--and I cannot wait to migrate to MacOS!

A great Google alternative is the Thunderbird client if you'd like a standalone news reader. If you want something fully-integrated with your OS and daily life, even Microsoft allows others to play nice on their desktop. I like the News Ticker widget from Yahoo! but you have to allow Yahoo! to install software on your computer. It doesn't seem to track anything private and I've used it for a number of years so I'm fairly confident it's not mining me the way Google does.

Alternatively to the Yahoo! alternative :) you can try Softpedia's TickerTape 2.0.0. Also free and seems to be popular.

There are other Google services for which you might not immediately realize there are alternatives, but chances are, there are not just a few but a lot of alternatives. Google isn't the sole source of Web 2.0 life; they're just the biggest, most-invasive and have the highest visibilty in the news. Google has the most hype. Are you buying into it? I'm not.

What's Next....
This week I've finally gotten back into editing and am actually starting to make progress again, though it's very slow-going. I did manage to write a huge amount of new material on Sunday and Monday, but upon reflection, I believe I'll be culling most of it out again. It's good stuff, definitely, but I need to be deleting not adding material. I lost sight of that, so this weekend, I'll probably snippet some newly-deleted stuff (haha). See? I lose, you win.

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter or follow the blog on Facebook to keep up with the Monday Marketing and Tuesday Tips.

MONDAY MARKETING Law 20 Hype - When Things R Not What They Seem #pubtip #marketing #indiepub #selfpub

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to my Monday Marketing series on the best little book of marketing strategies ever written, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. If you haven't already read it, you need to know these are the experts who "wrote the book." This is the book.

Is this your first time? I've been relating each of the 22 Immutable Laws discussed in the Ries/Trout book to the business of being an Indie Author. Catch up on my previous discussions by clicking here. Be sure to look for the complete series, edited and in eBook format, coming soon (est. February, 2012). You can also subscribe to the Webbieggrl Blog and have the next entry in this series delivered straight to your Kindle.

Today, I'm discussing Immutable Law 20: Hype. When you click through the jump-break, you'll find out how and why it's important to remember things are not always what they seem--nor should they be if you want to sell books!

Law 20: Hype

This Immutable Law can herald a warning--if you listen to your own hype. When you're doing well with sales holding steady or climbing, you probably don't think you need to put out a lot of hype (blastastic promos). When you think you do need to use some hype, you're probably in trouble--and something in you thinks the hype will fix the problem.

Even worse than buying into your own hype is the fact that the media coverage and success might be misleading you. If you get a bazillion RTs on Twitter but no one clicks through to buy your book, what's successful exactly? Is your product succesful or is the hype surrounding it successful? Sadly, the latter, and promo is pointless if it doesn't convert into a sale, right?

Hype is a powerful tool--using press magnets like celebrities of the moment or huge giveaways or "never before" offers can glean interest. Unfortunately, the interest is often fleeting and it only translates into money when you're a banker, not a publisher. Conversion, not interest, should be your goal. History is filled with examples of hype for products where the hype was successful but the products, themselves, ultimately failed--and failed miserably. To paraphrase from the Ries/Trout book:

The essence of hype is not just that the new product will be successful, but also that the existing product will become obsolete.

Polyester was going to make wool obsolete. The personal helicopter would make roads and highways obsolete. These predictions promise too much--more than can ever be delivered. Why? Because the hype violates Law 17 (Unpredictability). The only revolution you can predict is one that has already started--or one you start yourself (Laws 1 and 2: Leadership and Category).

Suggesting that your book is the Next Big Thing sure does sound tempting (and it sure seems like it made a million for Stephanie Meyer and J.K. Rowling) but bear in mind, they did not hype up their own work. They didn't even hype up their own careers. Not even Amanda Hocking ever claimed she was going to replace the #1 best seller, even though she actually did (repeatedly). The media hype around these overnight successes fed on existing success--and it didn't happen overnight. It just seemed that way because you didn't hear about it for the first nine (yes, 9) years Amanda Hocking was "hocking" her books. The hype arrived at the end of the journey and made it seem like Hocking had some magic formula for success.

Case Study: Prehistoric iPhone with Facetime

The Picture Phone was first introduced by AT&T at the 1964 New York World's Fair (yes, sixty-four) and it was reintroduced by AT&T as the Video Phone in the 1980s. It failed to ever take off but never stopped getting attention in the press. That's right. There was huge hype about this new device of the future back in the 1960s--but no one ever bought them. To quote the classic Veg-o-Matic pitch-and-hype guy, Ron Popeil, But wait! There's more!

Personal Video Phone service could be yours in the 1980s (when telephones still had cords tethering them and carphones were less removable than radios) all for the low, low price of only $100/month (and that's in 1980s dollars so multiply by about four). And if you called right away, businesses were being offered real-time video (with intensely choppy connections) for the bargain-basement price of just $2,300/hour. Per hour. Yes, that also is in 1980s dollars. OMG.

Gee, I can't imagine why these never caught on! Ironically, they did catch on for DoD/government site-to-site jobs. I used early video-conferencing in a DoD job in the early 1990s (before the internet had streaming services). Thanks US taxpayers for letting me be a part of the future that never happened. Sorry I wasted your hard-earned money to play 3-second lagtime video chatting on a system that was totally non-secure, but I wasn't in charge of requisitioning office equipment.

Back to the real question. Video phones were a futuristic concept that just never died and yet never caught on in sales. Why not? Easy. The hype wasn't about the product; the hype was about a coming revolution in an industry that still hadn't changed. It took over 50 years for the industry to catch up to the hype. We didn't have computers in our hands in the 1960s, we just wanted to think about it because back then, computers filled an entire room.

It wasn't until Apple introduced the iPhone--and even then, Facetime wasn't added until iPhone 4--that AT&T's 1960s dream finally came true. I find it interesting that AT&T never let this one go. In a way, AT&T bought into their own hype. Eventually, it could be said to have paid off but they had to get Apple involved to do it. Getting the exclusive on the iPhone's introduction, however, was a boon Old Ma Bell really needed to fend off Verizon and other cell phone providers in the US. Generally, however, you're better off not buying into your own hype. Just go with promoting the actual product based on its own merits.

The Caveat
Yeah, you knew if I went to all that trouble to put down an idea there had to be a catch.

There's a place for hype and your so-called "product description" is it. Although you should never outright lie (using bait-and-switch tactics can ruin your good name permanently), you should always bear in mind that the idea of your promotional effort is to sell a book. You're talking to prospective customers in your product description. Apply the Immutable Laws. Be first to capture their attention (their mind) in some unique and special way. Own that one word that will close the sale. Remember, it's a sales pitch, not an awards-acceptance speech.

Far too many authors make their descriptions too involved--plot summaries with intricate side descriptions about the main characters' extra-special attributes. Authors forget to infuse sales hype--or worse, deliberately shy away from it. Your product description (or blurb as we authors often call it) is your #2 top sales tool after your cover art. It should sell.

As a sales tool, the product description should have hype. It's a hook, a build-up and it should close by asking for the sale. Your blurb's not actually describing your book--it's selling it. Can't repeat that enough. If you're going to hype anywhere, do it here.

Use impactful language. Ask questions. Lead the reader into the world of your story--but don't try to indoctrinate them into your fanbase in 50 words or less. Your book can capture them as a fan, assuming it's delivering a "Satisfying Reader Experience." If your book's as good as it can be, your sales tools for it should be, as well.

Use quotes of dialog and descriptions of action that can sell the book. If you have to edit a quote of dialog to make it more "sales-pitchy," do it. Don't worry about accuracy in the blurb. You're selling, not reporting under Oath. Again, don't lie, don't bait-and-switch, but do snippet something exciting from your text. After all, you are pitching a sale with this blurb.

Find ways to hype your own work in 10 words or less. That's what you'll tweet to promo your book--10 words or less. You need room for #hashtags :) Use the hype you get in the media but don't believe the hype, yourself. When you start doing that, you've forgotten Laws 18 and 19.

What's Next....
Next week's entry in the series is the second to last one. Immutable Law 21 (Acceleration) revisits that tortoise versus hare fable covered last week. If you want to get a head start, read up on the1000 True Fans idea for background.

Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip will discuss some of my ongoing GoogleHate. It's the Netscape vs. MSIE battle all over again--this time it's called Google vs. EE. Find out how Google's going after your private data and making it sound like a Plus (not!)

If you've missed an entry of this series. I'll be editing the entire series and publishing it as an eBook just as soon as I get my scifi thriller out later this month, so probably sometime in February, 2012.

Thanks for joining the blizzard. Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter for more tips tweeted throughout the week.

Friday's Snippetting 4 #SciFiSaturday Again Ch4 (Part 1) is #Free!

2012-01-14T07:56:00.000-05:00

Yep, my SciFi self has done it again, snippeted more of the upcoming SciFi Thriller, Conditioned Response. Book 2 of the Phoenician Series.

(Of course, it's only coming as soon as I can get healthy enough in between working the day job to think straight longer than it takes to write a blog entry)

Read Ch 1, Ch 2, Ch 3 or start Ch 4 FREE over on the Phoenician Series Blog. You can also follow @phoenicianbooks on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the book's release.

-Friday

TUESDAY TIP New Facebook App: If I Die - Sends Msgs From Beyond the Grave

2012-01-10T07:52:00.002-05:00

Yeah, I'm being a little morbid here. I came home from working the day job Saturday and, unbeknownst to me, had picked up a bug which gave me a fever 4 degrees above normal and all of that "aching, fever, stuffy head, can't breathe, so you can't rest" for which there is no medicine but bed rest. My fever started to break yesterday (went down to 1.5 degrees above normal) but I'm still feeling like death warmed over, so I figured this would make an a propos posting. Plus it's kind of interesting. Click through the jump-break if you're into Facebook apps.

If not, that's okay. Join in this weekend for another #SciFiSaturday on Twitter. Come tweet about your favorite science fiction treats, from books to movies and TV shows. Hey, #Fringe is about to relaunch a new season. Can't. Wait. It's going to be almost as awesome as the 6-episode half-season of #Archer coming Jan 19. Yes, I have my TV addictions and they are silly but fierce.

So you're into morbid Facebook apps, huh? Glad to know it! haha. This isn't a game, though, just in case you were wondering. I'm sure it'll get abused and treated like a joke by some of the tens of millions of Facebook users but the fact is, If I Die is an actual Facebook app which was really and truly designed to send out messages for someone after they've departed this life. I first read about here, in a Mashable article. It sounded like a prank but then places like AdWeek started covering it as actual news. Okay, as quirky bizarre news, but still, AdWeek doesn't post about social media pranks unless they're marketing strategies. This isn't. This is a real app developed to meet a real need. Click through the Mashable article to read about its origins, the reasons for its inception.

People have been leaving recorded messages for children or friends to hear/view/read after their death for some time now. This is just one more variant of that, but the nifty thing about this one is it involves a less-formal verification stage than having some attorney file a Last Will with the Probate Court. Since the probate laws vary from country to country, and the internet is, well, international, it seems like this system of having 3 friends verify your death might work better than the legal system. Or at least, more quickly and efficiently, assuming your friends continue to use Facebook after you die.

What's Next....

I promise to have an actual tip next Tuesday, not an amusing curiosity like this but no clue what it'll be! Probably a new Twitter tip since I've been noticing a lot of interesting behaviors connected to my Twitter activity.

Hope to see you this Saturday on Twitter for the 3rd #SciFiSaturday - Marjorie "Friday" Baldwin (@phoenicianbooks) will be online until 11am EST (then it's back to the day job with me--erm, her.)

MONDAY MARKETING Law 18 Success + Law 19 Failure: Different Name, Same Game? #marketing #pubtip #promo #indie

2012-01-09T07:36:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to my Monday Marketing series on the best little book of marketing strategies ever written, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. If you haven't already read this book, do so now! It's pretty short, quick and easy reading--and jam-packed with rich information from the experts who "wrote the book." This is the book.

Not familiar with this series? I've been relating each of the 22 Immutable Laws discussed in the Ries/Trout book to the business of being an Indie Author. Catch up on my previous discussions by clicking here. Be sure to look for the complete series, edited and in eBook format, coming soon (est. late February, 2012).

Today, I'm discussing Immutable Laws 18 and 19: Success and Failure. Find out how alike these two seemingly-opposing concepts really are when it comes to marketing strategies by clicking through the jump-break.

Law 18: Success

This law is a word of warning, a cautionary tale that most vow to remember and then quickly forget the second it becomes relevant. Once you have attained a level of success, it's easy to think "I have arrived!" and sit back to reap your rewards. But you must be more vigilant than ever of your choices and mindset once you become successful.

For one thing, your success means you've just become a target. Remember, the Law of the Ladder states there will always be someone beneath you in the rankings looking to climb over you to get to the top. Then there's the Law of Duality, which stresses that even at the top, The Highlander rules (There can be only one!)

It's not quite as cutthroat in Indie Publishing as it might be in other corporate business environments but it's definitely a competition. Your existing customer base could turn on you--turn to the competition--at any given time. Your new customers expect you to treat them like their money matters to you just as much as it did back when you were just starting out. Otherwise, why aren't they giving it to someone else?

Just because something worked to get you to the top, doesn't mean it has the ability to keep you there. You must constantly analyze the market--and more so, your own strategies and decisions--to ensure you're maintaining your brand, maintaining your focus and maintaining your leadership as the unique and special snowflake you thought you were when it all began. Stay true to yourself and never lose sight of your brand, be the Company you want to keep, and new customers will buy into the program, too.

But staying on top is not just a matter of maintaining your customer base and soliciting new customers. Success also attracts attention--more so by your competitors than by your customers. Don't become arrogant and think you can shrug off your competitors and don't become cocky and think they're eating your dust and no longer competing with the likes of you. When you reach the top, you're not done. You're now beginning an even more complicated marketing campaign.

After you've achieved "success," the real work begins. Now you must maintain your position!

Maintaining position in the rankings can often be harder after you've sold, say 100,000 copies, than it is when you've only just topped the first 100. Once you've achieved a certain measure of success, you might find yourself leveling out. You may have achieved the meteroic rise by using tactics that got you pulses of results--that is, discrete events that resulted in large quanties of sales over a short amount of time gleaning overnight changes of rank. If this is you, then did you ever learn how to make that slow and steady climb to the top? If not, you might find yourself falling down the ranks even more quickly than you shot up them!

Tortoise vs. Hare - Not Just a Fable Anymore

If you've achieved large success in a short time, you probably got used to doing a specific thing and getting a big result for it. You caught a break instead of learning how to chip away incessantly at the rankings and making a solid foundation under yourself that won't slip away as you push off it to the next "product ladder rung." I can't help but envision the cliff scene from "300."

Throngs of Indie Authors are pushing at the backs of the leaders, the Top 100 (who are, in turn, pushing against the Top 10) because everyone wants to be in the same spot and there's only enough footing to support a finite number of us.

Eventually, unless you have a rock-solid following (customer base) holding you up, you're going to fall over that cliff. Your sales will plummet and you'll have no way to stop the fall.

You are a "hare" and you need to become a "tortoise" to keep from falling off the cliff. Trust me, the masses behind you are ready, able and willing to keep pushing, non-stop, until you get out of their way. Know how I know this? I'm a tortoise and I'm pushing--more slowly than your fellow hares but I'm relentless. I Will. Not. Quit. Ever. ^_^

I'm often in conversations with potential competitors about strategic methods of approach to various marketing activities. It might be a race, but I am pure "tortoise" and seem to attract the attention of a lot of "hares." Why? Because they want to understand who they're passing on the way to the top and wonder if I'm a threat. Immutable Law 18 would warn them that I am a threat--very much so--and tip them off that the way to defeat relentless tortoises like me is to be just as relentless. To become a tortoise themself.

I can hear you hares shouting now, But I'm winning the race! Hah! Even if you haven't read Aesop's Fables, haven't you heard that "winning" is Charlie Sheen's strategy? The mistake there is neglecting to notice "winning" is a transitive verb denoting a process in motion, not a finite achievement in the past. Okay, Sheen made other mistakes (grin) but don't follow his ego-driven lead unless you want the same results. Sheen had a good ride but I'd still rather be the Jon Cryer of the pair--or better yet, the kid with the $15 million net worth at age 15. Shame I'm 51 already but I'd still take the $15 mil!

Ego can help you--it's probably what helped you achieve your level of success. Ego can assure you in moments of doubt that you do actually have that magical "it" in you. Just don't be too full of it (grin).

Law 19: Failure

This is the other side of the same coin so I'm bundling the two together. When you achieve some level of success, as noted, you start expecting success--so encountering failure can be a negative experience. Some successful authors who've risen the ranks into the Top 10 can actually feel rejected by falling back down into say, slot #63. The rest of us think Wow, they're in the top 100! but these previously-successful authors have neglected Immutable Laws 18 and 19: they expected their success to last forever. Only rocks live forever.

Expect and accept failure as part of the journey. Being a tortoise gives me a distinct advantage. I know that I'm going to keep going no matter how much it rains, no matter how many little rocks in the road I have to maneuver around. I don't stop. Ever. I take every little setback--each customer who says "Your book sucks!" or "I'd rather buy something I actually want than pay for your book."--as a learning opportunity. You may never get these kinds of customers to buy your book. You may never even learn the real reasons behind why they didn't. That's okay. Not everyone in the world needs to like you or buy your book. A tiny fraction--say a few million--would be just great, wouldn't it?

Try to learn something from every sale you fail to close. If someone does not click through, figure out why not. Then you can fix it. Observe what works and what doesn't. If you dwell on the fact they didn't click and simply feel badly about it, you're not failing; you're a failure. It's that transitive verb thing again ^_^

Failing is okay. Because it's a process--and not over 'til the fat lady sings--and as a process, you are in motion. You still have a chance to succeed. You just have to learn what negative thing is going on right now this second so you can turn it around. That's when re-applying the earlier Immutable Laws becomes key. You have to figure out where you went astray as soon as possible because it'll only get worse if you don't. Instead of seeing failure as an end; see it as a new beginning. Even better, see failure as a means to an end.

If you can set your ego aside and admit you failed, you can improve and find a new measure of success. Ries and Trout point to the success of the Japanese for marketing with an egoless approach--and quick admission of a mistake as a human flaw that won't be repeated, together with a plan for corrective action towards the successful future. It's not just patriotic doublespeak.

Failure brings you closer to success.

Think about the Japanese for a minute. Never even mind that this tiny little country came out of a nuclear attack in World War II to dominate the world economy in micro-electronics. Just look at the eBook market since that's our business. The Japanese are more innovative and willing to be early adopters of new ideas than any other nation with cell phone service ;-) Japanese were reading eBooks on cell phones in 2000. What kind of phone were you using in 2000? Did it have a cord attached to it? Probably.

Be forward thinking and failure becomes an asset, not a weight dragging you down. Be true to yourself but be the unique and special snowflake you were meant to be, not a clone of the flake next to you. (haha)

What's Next....

Next week we'll look at Law 20: Hype. It should be a good one, don't you think? Over the hiatus while the blog was down, I also came to a decision: I'm going to be publishing this series as an eBook just as soon as I get my first book out (Conditioned Response), so probably sometime in mid- to late-February, 2012.

For Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip, I'm torn between some new Twitter tips I've been wanting to share and a Facebook tip I just ran across. Be sure to tune in after 10am EST to find out which one it'll be!

Thanks for joining the blizzard. Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter for more tips tweeted throughout the week.

Blog on Hiatus 4 "the" Holidays (well SOMEONE's holidays)

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

It always gets me that Americans talk about "the" holidays like there's only one set of holidays in the whole wide world. I'm Jewish, not Christian, so my holidays were months ago, back in September/October. I gave away my Jewish Inspirational / Romantic Comedy free for "the" holidays--my holidays ;-)

I'm also pretty sure that Muslims in the US are not actually celebrating "the" holidays with the Christians (though Muslims have a busier holiday season than even us Jews!)

I do, however, realize I live and work in a Christian country, so I am living La Vida Loca in "the" holiday season even though it's not my holiday season. It's kind of a ripoff. I come to this conclusion every year and it always amazes me as though it's news. Then I have to laugh at myself for not remembering the stress is universal and not religion-specific. Everyone gets to "enjoy" the holidays here. It's the law! Okay, stop laughing. This is serious. Books are at stake! ^_^

My day job is working in a grocery store so the Christian holiday season is making my life crazy-busy and totally unpredictable right now. I really need these 2 weeks off instead of crazy-busy so it's a double-whammy ripoff! Why? I'm trying to get my first book finished, edited and released.

Conditioned Response was scheduled for a December 31, 2011 release but due to the craziness of the Christian holidays pre-empting my plans on a daily basis, I've had to push the release date back repeatedly and now it's "sometime in January, 2012." To say the least, I'm feeling a little frazzled these days. Since I cannot cancel "the" (Christian) holidays -- the US economy would collapse if I tried! -- I have to focus on eliminating stressors that I can control. Right now, that's this blog.

Sorry but I'm going to put the blog on hiatus for the next two weeks. That means no posting until after New Year's for those of you who don't know what "hiatus" means (smirk) I'll setup Hootsuite's Scheduler to tweet links to past Monday Marketing blogs or Tuesday Tips while the blog is quiet and I'll start blogging again after New Year's.

See you in 2012!

TUESDAY TIP #Nanoworimo Winners Claim UR Prizes @CreateSpace and @Scrivener

2011-12-20T06:53:00.000-05:00

If you were a Nanowrimo 2011 winner, you completed 50,000 words in 30 days--and you got to download one of these kewel little icons. Actually, it's kind of a tacky graphic. They keep changing the icon every year and I guess they're running out of ideas on how to make it interesting. I also guess they never heard of branding (haha). Despite the identity crisis at the Office of Letters & Light, the nano prizes have been available a couple of weeks.

When I say "nano prizes" I mean real prizes -- available courtesy of Amazon's CreateSpace (POD production and distribution service) and Literature & Latte's Scrivener, the Writer's Environment for organizing your fiction, screenwriting, dissertation or any other writing project. Click through the jump-break to find out how to get your valuable gifts, you winner, you!

CreateSpace

As noted in my earlier post, Amazon is making a fabulous offer to Nanowrimo winners: 5 free copies of your book produced through their CreateSpace service. Caution, it's not completely free. Still, if you were planning to get a paperback of your book made, this is a great way to get 5 quick and easy copies!

You need to be logged into the Nanowrimo site and of course, you have to be a Nanowrimo winners (having verified your 50,000 words prior to midnight November 30, 2011). If you didn't do the verification step back then, it's too late now. You are not an "official" winner of Nanowrimo. That's why I mentioned these prizes and suggested verifying your status back in my November 29, 2011 post (smirk).

Once you're logged into the Nanowrimo site, go to the Winners' Prizes Page. The instructions at the top of that page will display a special code (see image at left, click to enlarge) I blacked out most of my code but your code will be auto-generated by the Nanowrimo site once you're logged into this page. It'll be a comination of letters and numbers.

There's a link to the CreateSpace "claim" page where you use your personalized Nanowrimo code to get a second special code from Amazon that you can use when redeeming your 5 "free" copies of a paperback from CreateSpace. It's a multiple-step process and sounds complicated, but that's just to discourage you from claiming your free stuff. It's not all that bad and took me less than a minute to get the CreateSpace code to use at CreateSpace checkout.

You have to create your book on CreateSpace (which I haven't done yet so I saved the second code to use once I have done this) and purchase a package then use the second code to zero out the cost of the first 5 copies printed. If you can follow instructions, it's not all that hard, works well, and only takes a minute or so to get to the point where you're setting up your book's template.

As noted in my earlier post, you might want to just pay a CreateSpace expert to create your book for you and then get your 5 "free" copies printed from that template. All depends on how much the hassle factor matters to you and how much money you have. If money's tight, you can do it yourself. The CreateSpace team will try to help you via email and they are mostly helpful but never forget their goal is to sell you their services, not to help you do it yourself for free. They'll get you 80% there--you need to be prepared to do the last 20% yourself! See? The 80/20 rule applies in all situations! ^_^

Scrivener

The claim process here is similar to the one you just did with CreateSpace, but it's much simpler. You have to be logged into the Nanowrimo site and have won or you won't get a code displayed, but assuming you're a Nanowrimo 2011 winner, scroll down the Winners' Prizes Page. You'll see something similar to the image at right (click to enlarge). Again, I blacked out most of my code. Yours should display for you. If it doesn't, you're either not logged in or not a verified Nanowrimo 2011 winner.

Once you have your code, copy it to your buffer (Ctrl-C or Command-C on a Mac) and click through to the Literature and Latte page for Scrivener. There, you can choose the version of Scrivener you want to download (MacOS or Windows). The software you download for the free trial is a full version, just with a time limit on it, so go ahead and download the free trial for your OS and install it. Start the program and on the splash screen, click to buy a license. At checkout, you enter the code you got from Nanowrimo (in your computer's buffer if you followed my directions) and the price drops from $40 to $20 USD - yep, half off and it's not all that much even before the discount! This all took me less than 3 minutes, by the way. It's super easy.

If you weren't a Nanowrimo 2011 winner, you still might like to download and try Scrivener. As I said, you can get a copy of the full version of the software, free to try out for 30 days. There's an interactive tutorial you can work through in 1-2 hours that will take you through all the features so you can fully-evaluate whether or not Scrivener is worth buying. I think you'll find it's well-worth the price after completing the tutorial. It's well-worth "twice the price" if you get the discount (haha).

I think the thing I like best about Scrivener isn't even related to its features or usability. What I like best is that it's just a small bunch of geeky guys and grrls providing the writing community with tools we actually want and use at a price we can actually afford. Talk about the antithesis of the Microsoft Evil Empire! Give Scrivener a fly-through. Click here to download a free trial now. In a future Tuesday Tip (when I find time!) I'll give you a report on my journey through the interactive tutorial.

What's Next....
This week's kind of crazy. I'm not Christian but my day job is working in a grocery store so the Christian holiday season is making my life crazy-busy via the day job. It's kind of ironic that I can't just enjoy the way the whole country shuts down for 2 weeks--and I really need these 2 weeks! Why? I'm trying to get my first book finished, edited and released. It was scheduled for a December 31, 2011 release but due to the Christmas holiday craziness pre-empting my plans on a daily basis to work on my things instead of the day job's needs, I've had to push the release date back to "sometime" in January, 2012. To say the least, I'm feeling a little frazzled these days.

Since I cannot cancel the Christian holidays in my life, and I don't want to go completely insane, I'm going to put the blog on hiatus for the next two weeks. I'll tweet links to past Monday Marketing or Tuesday Tip blogs (thank you, Hootsuite scheduler!) while the Webbiegrrl Blog remains on hiatus. See you in 2012! :)

MONDAY MARKETING Law 17: Unpredictability #pubtip #amwriting #marketing

2011-12-19T08:17:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the Monday Marketing series. I've gone over branding (as the concept applies to Indie Authors) and looked at branding your tweets as well as staying true to the Company you want to keep. I'm reminding you about my branding discussions this week because it's been a while since I mentioned it and this week, it becomes particularly relevant to understand your chosen brand.

Over the past few months, I've reviewed one chapter a week from The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, the best little book on marketing ever written. It's only about 1/4" thick in paperback, so if you haven't read it already, take 5 minutes to read it now. Done yet? I've given you 5 minutes a week, so you should've read this ten times by now (grin)

Every marketing choice you make should have your brand behind it, should be made so that it strengthens your brand. While it's important to know what the opposition is doing, you need to stay true to yourself above all else.

Today, I'm reviewing Law 17: Unpredictability. This is one of those laws where you need to really know yourself and your brand in order to apply it. The law states (paraphrased here) that unless you can write your competitor's plans, you cannot predict what they'll do next. That's why you need to focus on what you do know and can control: your next move. Click through the jump-break to begin.

The Enemy Has Other Plans
I'm not a Civil War buff, but I found this example of the Law of Unpredictability in action particularly amusing. When Confederate General Pickett was asked why his charge at Gettysburg failed, he replied, "I've always thought the Yankees had something to do with it." In other words, he was successful enough to survive alive, but failed the mission when the enemy didn't behave "as expected." The opposition never behaves as expected.

To quote Carl von Clausewitz (famous Napoleonic war military strategist and attributed for many war-related quotes): no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. This is the crux of the Law of Unpredictability. In fact, his coining of the phrase "fog of war" referred to the need to be alert to the unpredictability that is guaranteed to occur on the battlefield. The bottom line is, you must remain focused but flexible since the only guarantee of unpredictability is the situation will change.

Successful short-term marketing strategy is coming up with that angle or word that differentiates your product or company, that identifies your brand as a unique and special snowflake among the blizzard of choices. You cannot predict what the opposition will be doing three days or three weeks from now--let alone three years down the road. You can only predict your own actions. Instead of creating a long-term marketing plan, give yourself and your brand a long-term direction that will maximize the one word you "own" in the customer's mind.This sounds like a lot of marketing double-speak until you have an example so let's look at one with staying power.

Staying Focused Results in Staying Power
Dominos Pizza is the one in the book and amazingly, it's still not outdated more than 20 years later. When Domino's founder Tom Monaghan set out, he wanted to create a system that delivered pizzas quickly and inexpensively. That was the short-term "angle" or "word" in the customer's minds. Domino delivers is still a slogan in use today because that was the long-term direction he had.

If he could have owned the phrase home delivery, he would have, but Domino delivers is nearly as good, isn't it? And no matter what the competition does, with all of their line extensions into breadsticks and stuffed crusts and foods that aren't pizza, Dominos still delivers pizzas quickly and inexpensively. Monaghan stayed focused and stayed on top. Dominos broke into the market and maintains the majority market share by staying focused on brand, not short-term returns, not long-term strategies--but short-term strategies and long-term direction.

Branding the Unpredictable Future
How do you hedge your bets and choose the right direction for the long term? You don't. You choose your long-term direction based on your chosen--you remain faithful to the Company you want to keep. Another classic example in Ries and Trout's handy little book is Xerox. Way back when they first considered introducing a plain-paper copier, naysayers in marketing firms told them no one would pay five cents for a plain paper copy when they could get a thermofax (or mimeograph!) for less than two cents. Xerox executives ignored the "expert" advice and moved forward with their long-term direction--making plain-paper copies the "standard" of document replication.

Today, not only is the name Xerox synonymous with the concept of copying a document, but neither thermofaxes nor mimeographs even exist anymore. They were made obsolete by the Xerox commitment to plain paper copies. Xerox maintained their long term direction while introducing short-term changes to accommodate the changes in technology.

Ironically, scanning and reproducing documents at remote locations--essentially, faxing them--is one of the many features Xerox introduced to its deluxe copier lines. However, while the initial faxes were output on thermal paper, they streamlined those deluxe machines and have since returned to their brand's "word" of plain-paper copies. They kept the short-term change of how the process was implemented but maintained the end product in line with their long-term brand name.

The Predictable Future of eBooks
Given how the eBook market has changed just in the 3 months since I began this marketing series, I cannot imagine anyone trying to predict the eBook market six months or a year from now. The Big Six have tried, even Amazon is trying to force the market into a specific niche where their Kindle format is the "standard" but since the market is still evolving, it's not possible for a single form or format to dominate. Yet.

The one thing Indie Authors can control and predict is our own content--regardless of the delivery system. Don't tie yourself to one or another--choose both. Choose them all. The most-predictable thing about the future of the eBook market is that it will continue to expand and evolve, spawning new technologies to accommodate new content. Interactive eBooks are still not quite caught on, more because of the lack of tools to create them without learning how to code in various programming languages than for the lack of imagination of authors to create them. Once the tools become true point-and-click level of ease of use, the Indie Authors out there are going to start thinking of new ways to incorporate interactivity into their books.

I've been saying this about interactive books since 2003 and while interactive books are exploding on the children's market, the other markets of books haven't yet seen it--but I still see it coming. Reader involvement is our inevitable goal. The interactive book makes the reader engage more and that's too irresistible an opportunity for Indie Authors (who get more involved with our book's production and distribution all the time) not to pursue it.

Experimental book formats where readers get to choose the path the plot takes, where books are closer to "games" than mere books, are definitely coming. I probably won't ever create one but 10 or 20 years ago, I imagined it would be fun to try. I think the next generation will be combining XBox Kinect and iPhone Siri technologies with literary content providers to let readers "experience" a story, not merely read it on a flat screen.

That's my personal prediction for the future.

The only knowable prediction, however, is that eBooks are going to continue to grow in popularity and readers will always want to feel as strong a sense of being "in the story" as they can get. That level of emotional and intellectual connection is why a reader loves a story and recommends it to their friends and family. That level of connection is what makes a book a success.

That level of connection should be a part of your long-term direction. Not the technology that lets you create the connection but the connection, itself, and that comes from your content--which you control completely. Choose wisely, Grasshopper. Create content that supports your brand and create a brand that supports your content. The future may be unpredictable but your customers should always be able to predict what kind of reader experience your products will deliver.

What's Next...
Next Monday's entry in this series is the Law of Success--a cautionary tale for those who are already seeing returns and think they're really "onto something great here."

Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip will be a revisit to Scrivener for Windows, which it turns out is not only available free for a 30-day trial, but is available for purchase at 50% off for all winners of Nanowrimo 2011. Tune in tomorrow to see how to get started.

#SciFi #SampleSunday #ConditionedResponse @phoenicianbooks

2011-12-18T10:45:00.003-05:00

The new material is nearly all done and I'm about to return to the beginning to start a cover-to-cover read-through and self-edit for internal consistency. Then, I'll pass it onto my First Readers to edit for internal inconsistencies (hopefully not finding any!) while I do yet another cover-to-cover read-through and self-edit for pacing. Then it's onto formatting and proofreading.

So yeah, this is nearly done but all these read-through's take time--periods when I can be focused for a long time, not merely an hour here or there. Getting those chunks of time is the delay so this book won't be released before New Year's. I can sadly admit that with utter certainty now. It irks me no end, but I know the book will be better for holding it off until it's "ready for prime time." Speaking of slow but steady progress, what do you think of the cover art? Yet another revision (changed the foreground again). I like it better with each subtle change I make!

In the meantime, click on through if you don't care about spoilers or have been reading all along anyway, but be warned if spoilers bother you: MANY SPOILERS LIE AHEAD! For the brave and bold, 2600 new words lie ahead ^_^ Enjoy them all!

Seated in front of the fire inside the main tent, Shayla’s mind raced. She wanted to ask about Joshua’s obvious familiarity with the Seven Chiefs, but she was so tired of him and all of the other Outsiders. She wanted justice from those responsible for what happened to Raif but beyond that, she just didn’t care anymore about the Council or any of their problems. If she never saw another Outsider again, it would be too soon. It was time she remembered that she was Phoenician. Maybe that was why this had happened to Raif. Maybe the Seven Chiefs had planned his death to bring her back here, back where she belonged. If she asked anything, it would be for them to confirm Raif’s death had been for a reason, had served a purpose, was part of their Plan, not just part of some personal vendetta Dramond and Kindi had to hurt her.

She’d have to learn how to be Phoenician again, it wouldn’t come overnight, but she’d already told the Seven Chiefs about Charlie, about how she’d need time to teach him the Ways of the Phoenix. She’d only made one mistake, but it was a big one. She’d let too much of Problem 4368 fall under Joshua’s control. What had she been thinking?

It wasn’t part of anyone’s plans for Joshua to control the viability of Shayla’s future, of Charlie’s very existence. The Seven Chiefs had agreed to give her one year to teach him in their Ways before she brought him back here to face the Three Tests and receive their approval. She knew he’d pass any tests they put him to but she’d train him well. She’d refamiliarize herself with real life, leaving the Council and their Outsider ways behind her by living with Charlie and teaching him on a daily basis. The year of instruction would be a welcome change—after two years of even more welcome solitary existence she’d spend servicing his crèche to bring him to full term. She could manage that part on her own. It just wasn’t that complicated to service a crèche and Charlie had his own program of Orientations for the new body. She wouldn’t even need to run any psychological checks or intellectual evaluations. It would be like running a silent little black box in the corner. She hadn’t been alone for most of her life. Two years of aloneness would give her time to rediscover herself. She needed that time. She just needed to figure out where she could stash the crèche while she took that time for herself.

She didn’t trust Joshua to manage the process, not even as far as she could throw him. And she was fairly sure she could throw him pretty far despite how big and bulky he was. She’d only struggled to lift him onto that MedTable because she hadn’t wanted to do him damage. She wouldn’t mind doing him damage now. In fact, the more she thought about it now, the more she could just picture how easily and how far she could throw him and how much damage it would do.

(Shayla?)

She’d been staring into the fire but now glanced down at her left hand. The golden metal gleamed back at her in the firelight. She’d forgotten about that thing.

(Charlie?)

(Yes, it is me. You asked me not to speak, so I have not.)

(Then why are you bothering me now? )

(Because I cannot listen to your condemnations of Joshua and allow your misconceptions to go on uncorrected. He has been extremely helpful to me, even critical to the success of Problem 4368. He has also only had good intentions towards Brennan. He has never forced Brennan to do anything. I have monitored nearly all of Joshua’s interactions with Brennan and can confirm that Brennan is choosing to ally himself with Joshua of his own free will—and he is choosing to do so. Eagerly from what I can tell and as Joshua said to you. You are wrong in suspecting that he is stealing Brennan’s future—or mine.)

(Fine. If that’s true, then that’s fine. I’ll be happy for Brennan. I just want to hear it from him. In his own words.)

(And will you grant me the same right too choose?)

(Choose what?)

(My own future. If so, then I would choose to continue working with Joshua. His people—Cory in particular—have been put at my disposal and Cory has been an invaluable resource. Joshua has a wealth of knowledge and equipment I did not realize could be made available to me. He has put it all at my complete disposal without restrictions. In return he has asked for very little. In fact, I cannot identify any specific requests from him that could be said to be payment for the favors he has granted me. He has not infringed on any of your private data, nor has he attempted to do so.)

(I never thought he would.)

(Then why were you just thinking about removing my crèche from his facility prior to completion of the gestation period?)

She sighed. (Because I’m angry at him, Charlie. I don’t want him in my life. It’s not you, it’s him.)

(Then do not punish me for it.)

(I wasn’t. I—I’m sorry. You’re right. He has resources. We should use them but Charlie, I can finally see why Raif didn’t like Joshua.)

(Why?)

(He’s not trustworthy—and he keeps too many secrets. No one with that many secrets can be trusted, not with anything valuable. You’re extremely valuable to me, Charlie. You’re irreplaceable, and I don’t want to trust Joshua with your care and maintenance. It’d just be easier to just take the crèche somewhere secure until you’re done growing. I can service the crèche alone for the next two years. Even a Class One tech could do it.)

(The gestation period will not take two years, Shayla. Did you not understand the update from Joshua? I heard him tell you. Their procedures are far superior than the standard production line. With the new formula for growth accelerant that Cory has provided and by using their modified memory-installation process, I can complete modifications and gestation in a fraction of the time. I shall be removing the body from the crèche in approximately eight days.)

“A week?” She gasped, amazed at the speed.

Joshua, seated on her left, between herself and the Elder, turned to look at her and she realized she’d whispered aloud. She ignored him and asked silently, (Only a week, Charlie? Are you sure?)

(The process was scheduled for ten days but two have already passed, so yes, in effect, I shall be completed one week from today. Is that not good news?)

(That’s…great news.) She chewed on the inside of her cheek and thought about it. She could attend to Dramond and Kindi and whomever else she thought might be involved, then she and Charlie could leave. Immediately.

(They are trying to speak to you, Shayla.)

“Hm? Who?”

“Shayla?” Joshua asked, “Are you all right?” He looked down at her left hand, at the Shaklet, and she saw him figure it out. “Is there a problem with Charlie?”

Charlie told her, (Lorinth just asked if you are well. You should answer one of them aloud.)

(Thank you, Charlie. Please don’t speak to me again while I’m here. It’s distracting me.)

(Understood.)

She ignored Joshua and looked straight across the fire at Lorinth, the Speaker for the circle. “I am well, Lorinth. May I make a Request?”

The man’s steel-grey eyes widened a little, and he glanced quickly at Joshua but then bent his head in approval. She’d practiced the words while she’d been sitting back in her office, but now she struggled to remember what she wanted to say.

“As you can see, I have suffered a great loss. I’m sure you’re aware it was Raif, but I state that now, for the record, and I Request the right to avenge his death. A life for a life, from those who did this to me. To him. He was mine—my—he was taken from me and I am entitled to the lives of those who did this. I will not take more than the few behind this, but I claim this right of vengeance. Their lives are mine, by my hand…and their ashes are not to be retaken.”

Lorinth frowned but she was surprised to note the men on either side of Lorinth—Thuvius at his right hand, Marcus at his left—both nodded in approval. She noticed Cantoria bowed his head and closed his eyes while B’tar kept himself focused on the fire. Cadmus reached a hand out to Joshua, who let out a long, belabored sigh before taking the Elder’s hand. It was distracting the way the two of them acted as though they knew each other. Maybe they did. She didn’t care anymore. Well, she did care and she had to admit, she was getting pretty curious about it the longer this went on, but she didn’t want to care. She wanted to pretend she didn’t even notice.

“Am I denied this Request? I have the right as…I have the right.” She’d almost said as his Mate but although she might feel like Raif’s surviving Mate, she wasn’t actually Mated to him, especially given he wasn’t actually Phoenician. She kept stumbling over what to call him. It was strange but she’d never struggled for words to describe him before. He was Raif. That had always been enough before now.

The fire between her and Lorinth brightened and climbed high enough to obstruct her view of him. The Elder spoke quietly, too softly for her to hear, and when she looked over at the sound she noticed Joshua was shaking his head, murmuring something she thought was “No, that’s too much. I can’t let you do that.” The Elder murmured something back to him but she couldn’t hear what he said.

Joshua kept his eyes on the fire and his expression somber when he said, “All right, that’s enough. Shayla, someone has to speak up for the human interest here.”

“And that would be you?” She asked, indignant.

“Well, I’m human and I’m interested.” He looked up from the fire and met her eye to eye. “And since I’m here, yes, that would be me.”

The Elder smiled and added. “Child, we have already offered to do this thing for you, for both of you, but Joshua feels it would not be fair to kill them all. He believes some of them are victims of your actions. Is this true? Have you brought this on the humans?”

Joshua smiled and stretched his legs out in front of him, leaning back on his hands—looking exactly like Raif did when he used to sit beside her at this fire. “Now, Cadmus, what I actually said was some of them are worshipping her and depending on what action she takes next, they could become victims. Like Raif.” Joshua looked over at her again. “I think you know what I’m talking about, Shayla. Your followers? You do remember that you have Class Ones worshipping you, don’t you?”

She shrugged. She’d forgotten until he mentioned it. She never really gave it much thought because she didn’t take it seriously. From what she could tell they’d worship a rock if they thought it would do them any good.

Joshua went on, “I object to the whole idea of humans worshipping Phoenicians, especially in your capacity as a Councillor, but obviously, not even I can control what people feel and think. I wish I could have stopped this before now but you, at least, have a responsibility to choose your own actions from this point forward. You need to choose with others in mind. You can’t simply go out there and start killing, using a Phoenician throw to kill humans, and expect there to be no secondary effects.”

“I’ve practiced. Raif and I spent hours every week on target practice. I’m very good, Joshua. I could demonstrate if you’d like to volunteer.”

“I don’t doubt your skill at throwing. I doubt your thoughts have taken you past the immediate gratification of killing. What do you think your followers will do? Is it possible they might take it as a sign and follow your lead? Maybe take it further and kill all of the Privilege Class Citizens whose family lines have held control of the Council since the day we landed. Or maybe the Proctors would have to slaughter all of the Class Ones to stop it, not knowing who follows you and who does not.

“We have no way to prove anything, so the Proctors would have to kill the entire Class One population—that’s millions, Shayla—and don’t neglect the fact, that in the process of this genocide, half of the Proctors might die. Assuming of course, you care whether or not a Proctor lives or dies. I don’t know, you tell me. Who would be better off dead? Class Ones or Proctors?

He kicked dirt at the fire near his feet and it dimmed slightly before regaining its brightness. The Elder poked at the fire with his cane and it almost looked like it became lopsided, brighter close to Lorinth, dimmer and cooler near Joshua’s outstretched feet. He looked over at Cadmus and smiled warmly, with a quick, “Thank you.” Then he turned back to Shayla and resumed his tirade.

“Out of curiosity, who do you think gave you the right to sit here and choose who lives and who dies? You may have the right to avenge Raif’s death, a life for a life, but you can’t do this, Shayla, not millions for the sake of one man. He may be my Heir and your—lover—but no single life justifies a blood bath, not just to sate your blood lust. Raif would certainly never have approved of it, from what little I know of the man.”

Cadmus shook his head. “No, he would have let us take care of it instead, Joshua. He would have seen the benefits to our expediting the process. We can kill them all quickly and end it without another thought. No one need even remember—”

“I’ll remember!” Joshua insisted and stared into the fire with a deep concentration paralleled only by the old men. “I remember it all.”

“Wait!” Shayla said suddenly, when it dawned on her he’d been speaking Phoenician. Heavily accented, granted, and salted with untranslateable terms like Councillor and Proctor, but otherwise, perfectly-formed, fluent Phoenician. “You’re speaking Phoenician! Since when do you speak Phoenician? What’s going on here?”

“Hm, you know I can’t remember exactly when I first learned to speak Phoenician. It was a long time ago and I had a hard time at first.” Joshua turned to the Elder and asked, “Cadmus, my memory’s not what it used to be. What did it take me, a whole year before I could speak full sentences?”

“That was too long ago for me to recall either.” The Elder shook his head and chuckled. “You struggled with the words, my friend, but you never gave up. That is why we grew to love you.” The Elder smiled and patted at Joshua’s hand, “And we always understood your mind.”

“Hm, from your moment of first contact.” Joshua said, cryptically, with a sardonic smile. “It was a painful first contact but at least some things fade with age.”

[to be continued]

TUESDAY TIP 2 New Promotional Tools You Need to Understand @MarkCoker @HuffingtonPost @AmazonKDP @AmazonKindle @socialmedia2day #NewTwitter

2011-12-13T08:48:00.000-05:00

Today I have 2 new promotional tools that have just been released into the wild. One is KDP Select from the world's #1 retailer, the behemoth that is Amazon. The other is Brand Pages from the #1 social networking site in the world, Twitter.

Being #1 should automatically make these two tools great, right? Well, not so fast. Let's take a look at the fine print and workings behind the scenes before hopping up on that band wagon, shall we?

Before I say anything else about the new Amazon program, I should note that the entire discussion applies only to US-based Indie Authors and US-based Amazon customers. If you are based outside the US, these programs and services are not available to you, whether you are a customer or content provider. It is possible that some of the content providers participating in the new KDP Select program have made their products available outside the US; however, their business activities are based in the US. That is, they receive their revenues in US Dollars paid to a US bank account.

If you are located outside the US and would like to participate in a program similar to KDP Select, I suggest you contact Amazon's Vendor Customer Support and let them know you are interested in being notified if and when a similar program is launched for Indie Authors in your country. I know it sounds like sending a call into a black hole, but they do actually receive and review a lot of these emails--and it makes a difference. Slowly and not always the difference we want but a difference nonetheless. ^_^

Click through the jump-break to start sifting through the details of both new promotional tools now.

Newness over at Amazon's Kindle Store
There's a new program at Amazon's Kindle Store (US only) called KDP Select. Mark Coker, the Founder of Smashwords, discussed this program in a featured column over at Huffington Post's site and reproduced that column on the Smashwords blog, so you can read up on it if you'd like to understand the program. The 100 or so comments on the Smashwords blog are where the real discussion and gems are hidden.

The gist of it is this: Amazon's letting Indie Authors offer their books for free in a limited and controlled fashion via the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL). Making your book free for a limited time is something we Indie Authors have asked for and Amazon appears to be delivering. Appearances can be deceiving.

Amazon is luring Indie Authors into this program by offering revenues for enrollment based on how popular your book really is. That is, if your book is downloaded by a bunchaton of people, let's say 10% of all KOLL downloads, you're going to see 10% of the revenues in the pot. Amazon's offering to pay a maximum of $500,000 each month for the first 13 months, starting with this month, December, 2011. The percentage system and cap on the revenues that can be earned are actually pretty fair. I don't take issue with any of that theory. Basically, you get to offer your book free to customers while still potentially earning money off each download, so what's not to like, right? Well, there are a few catches.

Mark goes over several of the catches in his article so I won't repeat everything here. Instead, I'll look at how this program affects the customers. Remember them? Yeah, the readers actually have to be careful of this new program, too. You have to be sure you're right for the program and the program's right for you, but if you fit the profile, Amazon's new KDP Select might be a real boon to customers and content providers. It's not right for everyone, so proceed with caution. Click through the jump-break to learn more.

For Readers/Kindle Customers:
The new KDP Select program is going to make a huge number of books available to you to read--free of charge--via the Kindle Owners' Lending Library (KOLL). That is, it'll be free if you're paying the $79 annual subscription fee to be a member of the Amazon Prime service. The KOLL is just one of the many "benefits" you'll enjoy as a subscriber to the Prime service. Like the other "benefits," you have to actually want these things to make them beneficial. If you do, then this is a great little bundle to buy for one flat, annual fee. There are no "hidden costs" from what I can tell, just restrictions on the products and services to which Prime "benefits" can be applied. Briefly, the benefits are as follows:

1. Shipping
The Prime account subscribers get a free upgrade to 2nd-day expedited shipping of any or all products from the Amazon store--paper books, widgets, whatever you buy that is eligible for expedited shipping options.

2. Streaming Video
Prime account subscribers get unlimited streaming of videos available on demand from the Amazon web site. These are movies and TV shows available on a per-episode basis and are limited to what titles Amazon has rights to stream. Amazon has license to stream tens of thousands of titles available. Unlike Netflix's streaming video "Watch Instantly" library, the Amazon titles are mostly new DVD/BluRayDisk releases and currently-running American television series.

3. Kindle Owners Lending Library (eBooks)
Prime members who are also registered Kindle owners can download as many as one title per month, free of charge, from the KOLL. Many books are already opted into the library so you may want to have a look through the titles before you decide if Prime membership is worth $79/year to you. That's about $6.58 a month for those who can't do the math in your head.

It's not a bad price--so long as you actually need and want the services offered and might use them more than once per month. If you only ship something twice a year, you'll pay a heck of a lot less than $79 to upgrade to 2nd-day-delivery speed for the individual purchases. If you want to read 12 books in the KOLL this year, do you think you could buy all 12 for that $79 annual fee? Possibly if they're all 99c titles, but you might be able to get a $9.99 best-seller--free--each month and that would nearly pay for the entire $79 annual subscription fee right there.

Two catches on the KOLL for readers: (1) You're only allowed to borrow one free book a month. Most voracious Kindle readers I know read a heck of a lot more than one book a month but hey, it's free. (2) You're only able to access the titles and download the books directly to your registered Kindle device. This service is not available through the Amazon web site, nor is it available to users of other eBook devices. That's fair. The Kindle platform has plenty of eBooks and is Amazon's product, after all.

If you're a customer and you like the streaming video, expedited shipping and enjoy reading at least one book a month, you might be just exactly the customer for whom Amazon developed the Prime membership service. The KDP Select program has definitely added value to the Prime membership program.

For Indie Authors/Kindle Content Providers:
As noted above in the "for customers" discussion, there are also specific audiences of content providers for whom this new KDP Select program will--and will not--work out to be an advantage. Be sure that you're the correct target audience before you jump on board this bandwagon of newness.

There are two serious drawbacks I see with the KDP Select program from the perspective of Indie Authors: Exclusivity (non-compete) and Accountability (lack of accounting reports from Amazon) as well as the ability to easily "opt out" when and as you please.

I'll discuss these issues below and note why I feel they are so negative, but before I start down the negativity path, let me note, there are some authors for whom this new program could be a boon. If you're the right kind of author for this program, it could be a free and easy way to kickstart the launch of a new book--or new career. Just be sure you read all of the fine print. Twice. Carefully. Then measure your benefits a third time. Then go ahead and sign on the dotted line.

Exclusivity
The non-Compete clause requires authors to restrict their sales platform to Kindle and only Kindle for the entire 90-day term of their enrollment in the program. This means you cannot sell your book anywhere else and if Amazon finds out you have, you have violated the contract and are no longer eligible to reap the rewards. In fact, technically speaking, you could be sued by Amazon for infringement.

One might ask why this is a negative thing. Amazon's the #1 retailer in the world. They are not, however, the one and only retailer in the world. I know it's hard to remember that, sometimes, when you get caught up in their exceedingly well-done promotional verbage, but it's true. I know other online retailers might seem to pale in the Great Amazon Shadow but hey, just because Amazon is the leader, doesn't mean they hold a monopoly.

Interestingly enough, in my Monday Marketing series, I've been discussing what to do when you are in a #2 spot and want to grab market share away from your direct competitor in #1. You do something bold, different, opposite from the competition and highlight it, boast about it, sell it as a strength.

That's precisely what Amazon--already in the #1 spot--has done with this attempt to lay exclusive claims on Indie Author content providers. They've made it sound as though signing with them will give you a shortcut to the long, hard, drawn-out path of selling your book in dozens (or hundreds) outlets worldwide. In case you didn't notice my introductory words, this program is only open to the US-based customers and content providers, so Amazon's solution isn't actually going to get you exposure on a worldwide level--and it precludes you from attempting to get any such exposure yourself for the 90 days in which you participate in the US-only program. That still might be okay by you, but you should know going in that this is the case.

So how does this affect you in practical terms? If your book is brand new and never been released, it's pretty easy. You just upload it to KDP, opt into the KDP Select program and wait 90 days before sending it off into any other distribution channels.

If your book is already present on other platforms likethe B&N Nook Store, the Apple iTunes iBookstore or some of the other distribution channels offered through Smashwords, or if your book is offered for sale via any non-US based web site, you need to remove it completely before you're legally allowed to enroll it in the KDP Select program. If you don't, you are knowingly violating the Terms and Conditions of the program.

Amazon reserves the rights to claim you misrepresented your book's suitability--that is, they put the onus on you, not them, to check it out and do whatever's necessary so you can swear it's not present anywhere else. That's what you're doing when you agree to their Terms and Conditions, swearing to a specific exlusivity. Be sure you mean it before you do it. Don't think they won't pursue you just because you're a measly little author. They have $6,000,000 at stake. Trust me, they've got a list and they're checking it twice. Plus, as I discuss below, when you add up millions of authors, losing a penny per author is not small change anymore.

Accountability
Amazon does not provide their Indie Author content providers with any stats or methods of tracking individual downloads (of free samples, free copies or paid copies) and they only reports paid sales -- and those only on a monthly basis at the end of the period. If you cannot track your daily downloads via the KOLL, you have no idea whether or not the reporting Amazon claims is correct.

The inability to track individual titles on a daily basis is a common practice in the publishing industry. Sometimes I think it's a deliberate and malicious failure on the part of the publishers, not merely being technically-impaired or ignorant of the available tools with which such reports might be generated (neither of which is particularly an inspiring trait for a business owner in the 21st century). Publishers have historically failed to report royalty earnings to traditionally-published authors in a timely fashion--and worse, failed to pay royalty earners to their content providers. At least, Amazon pays in a timely fashion on a monthly basis.

I've seen a lot of comments claiming that the KDP Select program might be good for those who have large followings, because those authors might see large revenues from the pot while getting into the hands of readers interested in new/free reads. I'm of the opposite opinion. I think the financially successful authors are at the greatest risk for not receiving the full amount of revenue they are due.

I'm not trying to be melodramatic here. As I said, publishers have an "industry standard" of not reporting or paying royalties to their most successful authors. I'm not sure what the deal is with that residual payment that makes it so painful for large corporations to just pay out to their "Little Guy" authors but it seems to be a bone of much contention--and has been for decades.

Often times, as I said, the publishers claim it's not even deliberate or malicious. They claim they simply don't have sufficiently-good reporting and accounting tools to track individual sales and report them to authors on a title-by-title or daily basis. Given that database-driven web site tools have been around since 1995 (I know because I used to design them!) I find this a little amazing. When it comes to Amazon, there's absolutely no excuse.

Amazon was one of the first database-driven web sites (in 1996--I was there and remember it!) and they have some of the most sophisticated metrics analysis tools out there for web site management. The very idea that Amazon could fail to report earnings to content providers on a per-title and daily basis due to a lack of technology is ludicrous.

Amazon's failure to do this level of reporting is knowing and deliberate. I don't know what they hope to gain by withholding this information. I take that back, because actually, I do know--money! Amazon can mistakenly fail to pay out pennies here or there and multiplied by the millions of content providers failing to notice the error, make millions of dollars a month in pure profit. Even if your book is only 99 cents a download and you only have 100 downloads a month, you're one of millions. Think about it a second.

So many Indie Authors don't even know they should object to not receiving this information--or worse, don't even know the information exists or matters!--that Amazon is probably just hoping to slide on by until this, too, becomes the new industry standard in ePublishing. If you care and want to band together, the thing to do is not agree to be a silent sheep. Object to errors in your reports--or request reports that don't yet exist. Demand accountability. If enough content providers shout the same demand, they might just hear us.

Again I say, this might not matter to you. If you're an Indie Author who's just interested in giving your book away free for 3 months and you aren't looking to earn money on it for those 3 months--or have it given away anywhere else for those 3 months--you might be the "prime" candidate for the KDP Select program. And after all, it's just 3 months. It's not that long, right? Well, let's move onto problem #2 then, shall we?

2. Opting Out, Not an Amazon 1-Click Service
If you don't remove yourself from the enrollment in the program within the specified period of time, you are automatically re-enrolled. Yep, you aren't required to opt-in a second time. You are assumed to be opted in unless or until you explicitly opt out. It's not a 90-day program. It's a lifetime exlusive, non-compete agreement with self-renewal. So be sure to know how to remove your book once your 90-day period nears its end if you want to start selling it anywhere else.

I heard a rumor--that is, not something I can link to so I cannot verify it's true or false--that you must cancel renewal within the 7 day period at the end of your current 90 days and that Amazon may take up to 3 days of those 7 to actually cancel (like they claim the right to delay your book going live on the Kindle Store for up to 3 business days) and that if your renewal cancellation is not approved by Amazon prior to the end of the current 90 day period, they will carry it over for "an additional 90 days" -- that is, until the next 90-day period ends.

I would really like to get someone who's in the program to confirm or deny this rumor. Of course, you can't do that until, at the earliest, March 1, 2012. Since the program just started December 1, 2011 and March 1, 2012 will be the first 90-day termination point. If you've signed up any of your books with the KDP Select program and have any personal knowlege of how the opting out process works "in practice" rather than in theory (or according to rumor), please speak up in the comments thread or tweet me @webbiegrrl on Twitter.

There is no risk to you even if this "7-day" rumor is true because your cancellation will go through and you won't be bound by the non-compete clause for the "additional 90 days" but you also won't earn any revenue given that your cancellation is on record. You'll basically just have lost sales opportunities at Amazon for an additional 3 months--sort of like having your book priced at $0.00 without your consent. At least you can sell it elsewhere after the first 90-day period has actually ended.

More newness over at Twitter
Finally, the other topic I wanted to discuss today! The new "New Twitter" is focused not on individuals but on business users. Yep, Twitter, the #1 social networking site in the world is going to join Facebook and Google Plus in selling services to business owners. They've already been selling "Promoted Tweets" to third-party providers (like Hootsuite) who offer free products with embedded advertising. Now, Twitter is developing what they call Brand Pages and they're coming soon--but not yet.

Although there are 21 Beta testers of the new Brand Pages (e.g., businesses paying money for the right to customize their Twitter profile page) actual Twitter users still can't see the Pages. Oops. Social Media Today discusses what the new Brand Pages will offer and why small businesses might want to pay for one--or not. As the beta Brand Pages roll out and are debugged, and the Twitter program starts figuring itself out, I'll blog again on this topic and include it in my ongoing Twitter Series if it seems to be a bang worth an Indie Author's hard-earned bucks.

What's Next....
I'm slaving away at the edits on Conditioned Response and wish I could be sentenced to this kind of slave labor 24/7!! This book--entire series--is just so fun! I can't wait to release this beast into the world, but it's almost definitely going to be delayed beyond the December 31, 2011 slated release date, so I'll be snippeting again. Tune in this weekend for more of Shayla, Joshua and the Seven Chiefs in Book 2 of the Phoenician Series.

MARKETING MONDAY Law 16 Singularity: Taking the Path of Least Expectation #pubtip #writing #indie #marketing @MelissaConway1

2011-12-12T08:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my Monday Marketing blog and the ongoing series using of one of the best little books on marketing ever written: 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

If you've never read Ries and Trout's book, click on the book image now and get a copy. It's not very expensive, will take you 5 minutes to read. When I say "these guys wrote the book," this is the book I mean. Even though they're talking widgets sold by multi-national megacorporations like General Electric and Kraft, I've been looking at each of the 22 Laws and how it applies to our Indie Publishing industry.

Today we're discussing Law 16, the Law of Singularity. Unlike the Law of Exclusivity (Law 6), which was the first law not really applicable to Indie Publishing, the Law of Exclusivity is definitely one for us!

It states In any given situation, there will always be one action you can take which will glean more results than any other path you could choose. Writers are all about making the right choices, aren't we? Everytime a plot twists and turns, we have to choose which way to go. Why should it be any different when determining what marketing efforts will glean the best ROI (Return on Investment)? Click through the jump-break to find out how to identify and choose that path of greatest ROI.

There are lots of ROI's. Sometimes you invest money and want to see sales in return. Sometimes you invest time and want to see...well, sales in return ^_^ Yeah, the whole point of trying to sell books is to actually sell books, not to gain Twitter followers or blog "shares" on Facebook. You can spin your wheels trying to find the magic combination of time and effort but know this: trying harder is not the secret of marketing success.

Choosing the correct activity into which to pour your energies is the key--and then you must temper your efforts to market your work with your energies spent creating more of it. Although it's fun to play games on Facebook, that's not necessarily how you connect with prospective customers there. Nor is chatting with fellow writers in the writing-related Twitter hashtags going to get you new sales of your books (though it might help them with theirs GGG)

Of course, many Indie Authors argue that befriending fellow authors might get you RT'd more often which, in turn, might get you more sales if the quality of your tweets glean you click-throughs--you still need to have an effective pitch. Focus your energies not on where or how often you post, tweet or share a link, but rather on the context of the presentation.

Recall that perception is everything. How you present a book influences how the prospect sees it. The reader will make up her own mind and the prospect will or won't buy your book for his own reasons, but if you don't make an effective pitch, you've given up the sale before the prospect has even gotten involved in the decision-making process.

If you have actually written the single-best novel of the century and you promote is "another one just like the last one," why would anyone want to read it? This is not to say that you can write a lousy novel and, just by calling it a breakthrough novel, meet with guaranteed success by shouting your own accolades from the highest mountain (Buy my book! Buy my book! - still laughing at that one, @MelissaConway1). You have to deliver what you promise--but go ahead and promise the best book ever written, so long as you write it ^_^

Reader Expectations

This morning, I saw this blog discussing reader expectations. Lynette mistakenly calls this "branding" but (a) she's an agent/editor, not a marketer, and (b) she's got a good point: readers do have expectations and we consumers have been trained for years how to respond to certain terms. We hear the term "romance," as Lynette points out, and we form certain expectations. If the book turns out to be different than what we expected, we are disappointed. If we are a savvy Kindle customer, we might even return the book for our money back. That's not the ROI you want, in case you couldn't guess.

When you spin your wheels selling your wares, you want people to buy your book, read your book and enjoy your book--maybe even enough they feel compelled to write a review or tweet about your book, encouraging others to read it. That's the Holy Grail of a ROI for an Indie Author (an unsolicited reader recommendation). So how exactly do you get a reader hooked, converted from interested in reading your pitch to interested in paying for your book, and then inspired enough by the reader experience to write a review or recommendation? Working backwards, is easier to address.

3-Write a great book and readers will love it and recommend it. It's that simple.
2-Have a great cover image, blurb and product description and readers will want to buy your book.
1-How to hook a reader sufficiently they click through to your book's sales page....that is the question, and subject of today's Immutable Law of Marketing.

The Path of Least Expectation

The Law of Exclusivity advises against taking the "path of least resistance," or doing whatever everyone else is doing just because you think "It's proven to work for them, it should work for me." Instead, you can choose the "Path of Least Expectation," as it was called by military strategist, B. H. Liddel Hart (the man who masterminded the WW II attack on Normandy). The idea is that you look at your "enemy" (your direct competition is the book on the product ladder rung directly above you, recall from Law 7) and find their weakness, then exploit it. Yes, it sounds a little cutthroat but let's face it, if a customer only has $5.00 to spend, we all want it to be on our own book(s).

You need to make that single, bold stroke that strikes a prospective customer through the noisy masses of information out there and grabs their attention. As noted in the Law of the Mind (Law 3), you cannot worm your way into a customer's mind, you must crash through and take ownership. In publishing, this is called being a breakout author or writing the breakthrough novel. You grab their attention by doing something different, something unexpected.

Not sure what to do? Apply the Law of Focus and Law of Opposites to start and then use the Law of Perspective and pitch your book in 140 characters on Twitter, in 3 times that many (with your cover art included to help sell the click-through) on Facebook or Google+ and be sure to use reader sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari to present your book to pre-qualified audiences. That is the path of least resistance to take--where to sell--but be sure your pitch brands you as something new, something different. Especially, something different than your competition!

What's Next....

Tomorrow I'm going to discuss the new program at Amazon's Kindle Store (US only) called KDP Select. Mark Coker, the Founder of Smashwords, discussed this program in a featured column over at Huffington Post's site and reproduced that column on the Smashwords blog, so you can read up on it before tomorrow if you'd like to get a head start. The 100 or so comments on the Smashwords blog are where the real discussion and gems are hidden.

I've also got a little bit of an update on Scrivener and Outlining for the Organic Writer blog I wrote for last week's Tuesday Tip, so I might do a second, bonus tip blog. Depends on how much writing and editing I can get done today on Conditioned Response (my SciFi Thriller slated for release December 31, 2011).

#SciFi Saturday Snippets #Conditioned Response

2011-12-10T07:02:00.000-05:00

My day job has been crazy-busy this past week so the progress on edits have slagged behind schedule. Even so, I can snippet another 2500 words to get you to the end of the same chapter snippeted earlier. Just bear in mind that all of this content is still in draft form and in fact, the previous snippets have already undergone additional edits, both adding and removing content. The general storylines won't change, but the impactfulness of the delivery might--I hope!

If you haven't been reading along, you can catch up by clicking on Conditioned Response in the tag cloud to bring up a list of earlier snippets from my upcoming SciFi Thriller.

The release date was scheduled for December 31, 2011, but it's looking more and more each week like I'll have to reschedule that for January, 2012. I'd rather deliver a polished work, late, than a mediocre work, early.

As always, 3 words of warning: SPOILERS LIE AHEAD!

If you're kewel with spoilers, go ahead and click through the jump-break to read the end of the chapter, in sequence, with what's been snippeted before. If you don't like spoilers, please don't blame me for accidental clicks.

Getting Shayla into clothes, so she could travel, proved a challenge. She finally acquiesced when Joshua stopping arguing against her wearing Raif’s jacket. The brown one he’d had on the last few days was about ten sizes too big for her, the sleeves coming down past her hands, the bottom reaching nearly to her knees, but Joshua knew she didn’t care how it fit. She didn’t want it for a its utility as a piece of clothing. She wanted it for the little bits of him she might still get out of it. The scent of his body, a random strand of his hair, any of the little marks he might’ve gotten on the fabric during their two days of travels. She’d want to keep all of those remnants for the memories they’d preserve. Her attachment to the jacket did, at least, remind Joshua to give Brennan one additional task.

“Clean out his quarters. Make sure you trust whomever it is you task to that activity because until we know who did this and why, everyone’s a suspect. You should trust them implicitly—or tell William and he’ll bring in someone from the outside. Just don’t give anyone an opportunity to examine his things until we’ve gone through them for evidence.”

“What am I supposed to do with it all?”

“Send it over to Gaultier’s. Your genetic print should gain you access to his life—and allow you to control access to it by others. Restrict it, that is. I’m surprised that hasn’t sunk in by now. I’ll have my own people sift through it. My genetic print should gain the same access.”

It took Brennan a minute, but then his eyes went wide and he said, “Wait, so you mean all this time, Raif and I could’ve—either one of us could’ve pretended to be you?”

“Thank God you’re not a complete idiot. I was beginning to worry even years of training wouldn’t be enough to salvage you.”

Joshua strapped Shayla into the passenger seat of his Viper with surprisingly little difficulty. He’d expected her to object but she’d hardly said another word after he’d taken Brennan’s knife away from her. It’d be more correct to say she’d given him the weapon just to make him shut up about it. Then she hadn’t said another word to him. Normally, he didn’t mind it when a woman gave him the silent treatment, but he needed to talk to her again before they landed.

Once he thought he could be coherent about it, he tried to sound non-chalant and said, “Shayla, there’s something you need to know about me before we land.”

“Thank you, but I know as much about you as I can take right now.”

“Shayla, have I offended you? Because after our nice, little holiday in—”

She scoffed and shook her head. “That five minutes was a lifetime ago. Raif’s lifetime.” She looked out the window, pointedly away from him, and muttered, “It’s hard to believe I can fit into this tiny cabin what with your ego along for the ride.” She turned back to him and said clearly, “I don’t know how I ever thought you were anything like Raif. You’re not even half the man he was.”

Joshua had hardly known his late descendant, and the fact he still thought of him as “the lost sample” certainly didn’t raise the man’s esteem in Joshua’s mind. Even so, Joshua’s ego was a little bruised by her implication that he didn’t measure up to a dead Proctor. There were hundreds of dead Proctors every year, hundreds of thousands had come and gone over Joshua’s lifetime, yet Joshua was still here. Surely that counted for something.

“I’m not the villian here, Shayla. Just so you know, everything I’ve done has been intended help, not harm.”

She added, “Just so you know, everyone in the Phoenician camp has met Raif. They know and love him. Most have sat over a meal with him and over the years, we’ve overlooked the fact that he’s not, technically, Phoenician. He’s learned our ways and practically become a member of my clan, so when you show up at my side looking like you think you’re him or some kind of replacement for him, you’re going to be sorely disappointed with the reception you get. I appreciate the ride, Joshua, but your kind are not welcome among my people. There’s a reason for that Closure I just pushed through the Council. It was to keep your kind out. You can drop me and leave. I’ll find my own way out.”

“I’m not dropping you off and…Shayla, I’m sorry if my relationship to Raif bothers you. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t ever supposed to meet you or even be him.”

“That’s right, he was supposed to be you, and now you’re planning to take Brennan’s life instead, aren’t you?”

“No! I’m not taking anything. I’m making Brennan an offer, the same one I made Raif, and I hope he’ll accept. He seems to be soaking it all in eagerly enough. I certainly wouldn’t force Brennan to do anything, just as I never pressed the issue with Raif when he didn’t show an interest. I don’t know why you have such a nefarious view of me, but it’s just not true. I’m not what you—Shayla, we’re nearly there. This isn’t at all how I wanted this to come out.” Joshua had already painted the large, flat mesa where he wanted the autopilot to land. Now he tapped in the Administrator’s code to let them pass through the Closure, coming up fast as they descended from the high speed lanes. “You have to listen to me for a minute—because that’s all we have left.”

“Because you want it? I’ve been called controlling and manipulative, and I think it’s good to know these things about myself because now I can work on changing, but you…you don’t want to change, do you? Joshua, I don’t have to do anything. You, however, have to pay attention to those controls, unless you have a death wish you forgot to mention. I’d probably survive the crash from this altitude.”

She crossed her arms and he was tempted to crash-land just to prove her wrong, but he didn’t override the controls he’d already set.

“I set the autopilot to take us down safely and…I thought I had mentioned my death wish to you.” He bared his teeth at her and gave her his best threatening glare. She took it in and had the decency to look a little taken aback. Unfortunately, he noticed the clouds rushing past the window behind her. Time was nearly out. When he glanced out the front, he could see the flat mesa where he’d directed the auto-pilot to land. There was a small cluster of people already standing there and Joshua could see more movement in the trees surrounding the area. There’d be a crowd gathering by the time they opened up the hatches. “Shayla, I’ve been here and learned your ways—”

The braking jets fired, screeching too loudly for her reply to be heard but he caught the gist of it by reading her lips. She wasn’t exactly calling him a liar but that might’ve been better than the word he thought she called him. Phoenicians had so few swear words in their language, he couldn’t be sure.

She climbed out but stopped in her tracks two steps from the car. Joshua took in the view and knew why immediately. More than a dozen excitable young Phoenician men had gathered on the mesa and more were pouring out of the treeline every second. They were here to protect—or follow the orders of—a cluster of three old men. It had been a long time since a human had ventured uninvited onto Phoenician land but Joshua wasn’t a threat. He hoped they recognized him and knew that, too. He recognized the three old men, of course. He’d sat with them so many times over the years, he knew them all intimately. He didn’t know any of the young faces behind them. Except for the Seven Chiefs, he realized it was quite likely every last Phoenician he’d ever met and befriended all those years ago had long since died. It was good to see at least three familiar faces.

The ancient one leaning over the bent cane was Cadmus, the Elder, and holding up the Elder’s other side was B’tar. Half the Elder’s age, B’tar actually looked older than Cadmus today. As the next in line to be Elder, B’tar now lent his strength to Cadmus, literally. Joshua had learned that, too, sitting for hours around their fire. The third old man, standing just an arm’s length away from B’tar, was Thuvius, the youngest of the Seven Chiefs. He wasn’t nearly as old as he should be, Joshua decided, but frail as the old men were, they stopped Shayla in her tracks with a single silent glance.

Abruptly, one tall young man broke through the growing crowd of spectators, breathless anticipation lighting up his face. He stopped at the Elder’s side and the gleaming smile fell as he took in Shayla’s appearance. It was like a light had gone out inside the man. If Joshua had to guess, he’d say the guy had to be the lucky man who’d been Mated to Shayla when they were children. Assuming Phoenician customs hadn’t changed, this man would have been here, waiting all those years she’d spent with Raif on the Outside, for her to come back and be officially Joined with him.

That wasn’t going to happen now. Joshua could see that as clearly as this man could see Shayla's hair had been cut off. The cutting of her hair was her indication to all who saw her that she’d lost a Mate. Given that this young man was supposed to be her Mate, he couldn’t be happy to see her standing there, as though she were in mourning. He had to have known about Raif’s relationship to her if Raif had spent as much time with her here as she’d said. Maybe no one had realized how close they’d been. Joshua couldn’t imagine how anyone had missed it. He’d seen the charged chemistry between them in the first three minutes after meeting them at the Centre.

The Elder lifted the gnarled hand with the cane and waved his index finger at the young man, indicating he should move forward, then the Elder dropped his weight back onto the bent stick. The young man stepped forward, never taking his eyes off Shayla, but his was dark with simmering anger now. His long hair was pulled back with a simple tie at the base of his neck, leaving the ends to fly loose around his waist in the light breeze sweeping across the open plains. He reached up now and pulled the mass of blue-black Phoenician locks over his shoulder. Joshua was sure the slight glow to the man’s hair was not a trick of the light but rather, a symptom of the man’s emotional state. Joshua was afraid he knew what was coming next. He hoped all the guy cut off was his hair. No one else moved to intervene, so Joshua held his position in front of the Viper, several paces away from Shayla.

The man stopped in front of Shayla, toe to toe. He had to be breathing into her face that way. She looked up at him as he withdrew the sizeable blade from the sheath strapped to his hip. Then, with a single quick, firm stroke, he cut through all of the hair in his grip, keeping the blade close to his skull, above where the hair tie had been. The long tail dangled in his hand a moment before it lost its glow. He leaned back to resheath the knife and threw the hair down at her feet, saying something quietly enough Joshua couldn’t make it out. If the man held to tradition, which Joshua suspected he had, then it was Now, you are dead to me. It was a very old-fashioned form of dissolving a Mating. Joshua had heard of it, by only because it had been mentioned in stories as something done in the “old days” which were hundreds of years old when Joshua had heard the stories—hundreds of years before today. He’d like to meet and get to know a Phoenician man who held so firmly to the old Ways. It was strange that Shayla, the lone Phoenician to venture Outside to live among the humans had been Mated to such an old-fashioned man.

Joshua sighed in relief when the man finally turned on his heels and trotted across the plains, away from the crowd. Three men broke away from the crowd and ran after him.

Shayla stood there, her eyes unfocused, her head turned away to remove the shank of hair at her feet from her peripheral vision. When she finally moved, she stepped deliberately over the clump of hair at her feet, but continued to pretend she hadn’t seen it there. Joshua moved to join her and Thuvius took one step forward before the Elder’s cane came up to strike Thuvius in the solar plexus. No one spoke. Not aloud. That was what Joshua had always hated about these old men. So much of their conversation was not spoken aloud.

He’d learned, through much practice with Athena, to keep up with the Seven Chiefs’s high-speed silent conversations, but it had been a long time. He was out of practice and Athena wasn’t here to help him. He lowered his mental guards and gathered up all of the pieces of his mind then did his best to prepare for the onslaught of thought. When Cadmus entered his mind this time, Joshua’s prevailing thought was that he remembered it used to hurt a lot more. Maybe the deteriorating of his mind had an advantage after all. He smiled at the old man.

The Elder straightened and said, “It is good to see you again, Old Friend. You must stay and sit with us.” B’tar handed the Elder’s elbow over to Joshua who took his place walking slowly with the old man back towards the treeline. Joshua knew how much more deeply Cadmus could probe his mind when he had physical contact like this, but he’d forgotten how warm and comforted he felt inside when the old man hugged would do it. It was a sense of coming home. Shayla followed behind him with Thuvius and he couldn’t help but feel as though the pair of them wanted shove a knife into his back. He wondered if they’d fight each other for the right to do it—or just for who got to go first.

TUESDAY TIP Outlining for the Organic Writer #pubtip #iamwriting r u #reading? @ScrivenerApp #Scrivener #IndexCard #Storyboard

2011-12-06T08:08:00.000-05:00

There are two kinds of people in the world: those with loaded guns and everyone else. Do you feel lucky? Oh Clint, you'll always be my Hero! Then again, it's true. There are only two kinds of people in the world ^_^ and when it comes to writing style, there are pretty much just two kinds of approach.

One is to plan everything out ahead of time, point by point, detail by detail, before ever writing a single word of the story. Another is to just sit down at the keyboard and feel lucky. Surprising as some of you may find it to learn, I fall into the latter category. I like to just sit down, load up the MP3 playlist and fire, blasting the words onto the screen "at will." When I do that, yes, I do feel lucky and more often than not, I get lucky because what I write is mostly usable. I don't sit down to write until I've had "the voices in my head" repeating the scene enough times it's starting to get annoying. I have to write it to "excise" it from my brain. Like cutting out a tumor (LOL). Kidding, my writing habit is not a cancer but it's nearly as random and prolific.

However...on the other side of the jump-break you can see why and how I force myself to outline, despite hating every moment of it. I'll even note there are benefits to reap for the effort, so click through now to learn why Russian Roulette is only for the movies (and best-selling thriller novels *haha*)

Organic vs. Organized
I don't like to outline and plan a story before I write it. This is a little strange, given that I'm almost compulsively-organized in the rest of my life. In fact, my most successful roles in IT Management were in the estimating, planning and scheduling of a project, then managing the execution according to plan. In offices where I've worked, everyone knows I love plans. I am organized in the extreme. I make exceedingly realistic estimates and I do not like surprises. I'm definitely not your surprise party gal. Your surprise interrupts my plans--and I always have one even if it doesn't seem like it to you. I even made a joke of myself by making that the tagline for my SciFi thrillers, the Phoenician Series (There's always a Plan!)

Yet when it comes to writing, the idea of planning a story--outlining it first--and then limiting my writing to the execution of that plan seems...cold, clinical, even counter-productive. If I'm going to go to all of the trouble to write an outline, why not just write the story? And if I'm going to bother empowering my characters, why limit them once I set them loose on the page? The ever-popular Raif character completely took over the page once I set him loose. If I'd had an outline, and stuck to it, Conditioned Response might not even exist in its soon-to-be-released form!

The problem I have is this: I don't always write all the piece-parts in chronological order. This is the case with many so-called Organic writers. Although many creative types are described as flighty or careless (literally, without a care), I can tell you, I'm not disorganized and I know that to finely-tune a plot, one must examine the Big Picture. In fact, "Big Picture vision with attention to fine details" is how I'm usually described in the business world. It's a rare combination, I've discovered because most people are either one or the other, not both.

But I'm a writer, so I'm a mass of contradictions. When I plan, estimate and execute a project in the business world, I always refer back to my schedule along the way. I double check my status on a weekly basis (or more often) and see when and where I might have gone astray--or if I'm ahead of schedule.

In writing terms, going astray from the plan means getting lost in one of those self-indulgent tangents we organic writers love to take, exploring some aspect of a character that doesn't really serve the plot but is really interesting and adds depth to that character. Getting ahead of schedule translates from business process to writing process in terms of failing to follow up on one of those foreshadowed plot points you so cleverly planted back in Chapter 2. It's probably not because you are a bad writer who doesn't resolve all of your plot points. Sometimes, it's just hard to keep everything in our tiny little brains. That's why G*d invented computers! And that's why even Organic writers can benefit from the much-loathed outline.

Being an organized person--at a compulsive level--it aggravates the living daylights out of me when I forget things or when I get "lost" on a tangent in a story. I love the tangents, but I always feel the little niggling in my gut saying "This is not supposed to be part of this story. You were supposed to be writing something else right now." It's annoying when I know I'm doing and can't help myself because the stuff coming out is just so interesting to read! I try to make little notes to myself to come back and fix the tangent departure points, but it doesn't always work. Again, what helps is outlining.

Like everything else in my life, I don't do it the way everyone else does. I am an original. I like to be a unique and special snowflake. While I might make a list with bullet points for a business process definition, I won't for a book. I don't start at the beginning and map out each event that will carry the MC through the middle and off to The End. I outline the way I write--organically, in whatever order comes into my head according to the way the characters want me to see it. Eventually, it will all add up to create the Big Picture that is going to be called a book when I get to The End.

In order to convert this Organic chaos into order, I color code things and I like to have at least three dimensions to my visual representations. I can't envision a 3-dimensional world with two dimensions of texture or description. I need to really give my book "outline" a full body. Sounds like I'm still doing a lot of work, doesn't it? The secret is, my form of outlining serves my random thought process, not my need for organization. I trust that eventually, the organization will become apparent. And it does. Always.

Art for Art's Sake vs. Selling Books
Sometimes, splattering a bunch a of dots on the canvas works best for the artistic quality of the work, but eventually, if you're to have a publishable story, you need to connect the dots with appropriately measured brush strokes. No matter which metaphor you prefer--loaded gun or paint splatter--I hope you're getting the sense that my approach to writing can appear to an outsider to be quite haphazard. It probably is. It makes perfectly logical sense to me when I create, but I suppose it is random in its own way.

To counteract this, I use what's commonly called a storyboarding process. I learned this in my 20s when I was cartooning and interested in learning to do animation. I don't necessarily describe camera angles and panning or zooming like I might have done on an animation project back in web design days. However, I will make little notes about setting and description if those are particularly vibrant in my mind at the time I'm envisioning the scene. Instead of the storyboard "card" describing the scene's action, it might just describe the scene--and at that point in the book, when I finally get to sit down and write it, I remember the vibrance and its significance to that character. A setting is only as good as its influence on a character; otherwise, it's just a Dickensian penny-per-word filler. (Gosh, I would love to get paid a penny per word!! I'd be a millionaire--no, billionaire! I've written well over a billion words in my life.)

I used to use a big whiteboard (8 ft long by 3 ft tall) but I gave that prized possession away when I moved internationally for the first time in 1999. Nowadays I used color-coded stickies (Post-It Notes) on a wall. The danger, of course, is they could fall down or worse, when I move in spring of 2012, I'll have to take them down on purpose. That should be interesting. Hopefully, by then, I'll have the book currently on my wall (the Lacey / Rainey Story) completed.

Using Post-It Notes on the wall allows me to be "organic" in my creative process, jumping all around the story, focusing in on whatever scene or moment or snatch of dialog might pop into my mind while still ending up with a fully-described story arc, one that has a beginning, middle and end. One that has a logical progression from Point A to Point B.

Using color-coded Post-It's means I can actually see the character's subplots--or whatever I choose to have represented by each color. At the moment, I have a color assigned to each of the major characters who will have plotlines in the novel. Or rather, I have each of the 6 colors available to me assigned to 6 of the plotlines in my novel. I had to combine Lacey and Rainey's stories into one (but since their lives are supposed to merge into one at the HEA, it kind of made sense, right? Plus I ran out of colors so someone had to share; seemed like the Hero and Heroine were the most likely candidates.) So when two colors converge, I know two plotlines have intersected.

I have a "timeline" from left to right, horizontally and the plotlines from major to minor vertically, descending down the wall area where the Post-It's are mounted. This means I can see when one plot point is fully-described (or overworked and needs to be less detailed) or when one plot point lacks setup or resolution. There'll be a big, gaping blank space on the wall where I need to fill in "connections" from Point A to Point B.

When I write a scene, I sometimes think to myself "I should insert a conversation back there where so and so is talking." With an outline, I can just go back and insert a note to self to do so. I don't have to write it, I just have to remember to write it later...when the mood strikes me :) This system works with any kind of outlining process. I just like my Post-It notes because they are quick and easy (and color-coded). I use white notes to indicate logistical information like equipment I have available or personnel lists--or a Note to Self as described above.

By applying timescale to events by clustering Post-It's together if the events described on them occur at the same or near same time in the story, I identify points where I have scene or POV changes.

The bottom line is, no matter how much my "creative process" requires I have the freedom to write at will, wherever and whenever in the story I want at any given time I sit down to write, when I finally reach "The End," if I've written all of the stuff I jotted down on my Post-It's and have no large gaps on my wall, then my book will have a beginning, middle and end with all the dots connected and plotlines resolved in a satisfactory manner. Otherwise, I'm not selling the book. I can write it. I can even publish it. I just won't sell it. I'm always going to write for the sheer joy of it but I'll be honest, right now, I'm in it for the money!

A book that sells is one that has all the piece-parts, has them arranged in the right order, and resolves everything in a satisfactory manner. Oh and does this process in an engaging way that entertains the reader (or at least, fulfills their expectations for the reading experience). If I were to try to sell stories the way I hear/imagine/create them? Well, there's a reason for the proliferation of the term "starving artiste" through the ages.

There's an App for That

So how's a compulsively-organized gal like me supposed to get organized while still having the freedom to write Organically? Again, I say, that's why G*d created computers. There's an app for that. I love my iPad and while 99% of the time, I do my creative work on the laptop, there is that 1% of the time the apps are just better on the mobile devices than they are on the desktop.

I've tried to find good apps for recording and manipulating outlines--the way I want to do them--but the closest I've found is IndexCard which is nice but not three-dimensional enough. It allows me to color code and specify a label and timeline for each color--but then I can't interweave one color's timeline with another's. I need to see where the timelines overlap. For instance, at the same time the Hero is sneaking around the corner, I want to outline that the Villian is on the phone with a shooter saying "Kill him!" Those are two different POV scenes so they'd have to be 2 different colors but occurring at the time (or at least adjacent) times. With IndexCard, I can't mush them together and make them diverge again as the Villian goes off to dream up another plan when the Hero defeats his lame lackey. The two timelines end up totally separated, visually, or merged into one, thus defeating the purpose of the color coding in the first place. IndexCard is very close to what I want, but just misses the mark.

Another tool I've tried out is CorkboardMe (seeing a trend here, I trust?) It's super flexible but doesn't have the color-coding and timeline I want. It's really just for "notes to self" and not for planning a novel. I need something that will intelligently tie the pieces to a timeline while also allowing me, the AuthorGod, to move them around at will.

I gave up on the iPad apps and checked into desktop solutions and got a nice list of selections at eHow (of all places!) Check out the complete list here. Out of the choices listed, Scrivener is one I've been wanting to try. It's only been available for the Mac but appears from the Literature and Latte site that Scrivener for Windows has finally been released. Not sure if the Beta is debugged yet but it was Nanowrimo-tested so it shouldn't be too horrible.

I might try it out soon ($40 isn't all that bad a price) but since I'm considering moving to a Mac next year if I make enough off the release of Conditioned Response to purchase a new computer, I might hold off buying anything else for this Win7 laptop. This keyboard is already on its last bouncy leg! Scrivener does have a free trial so I might just try that out to see what it's like, "hands on." Scrivener has the outlining "in 3D" which I crave and as you can see in the screenshot array above, it even has the corkboard visualization screen I like so much. But Scrivener has much, much more!

For a series writer like myself, Scrivener's capability to link books, as in a series, is a plus. It'd make keeping track of series storylines (versus plots which open, crescendo and resolve all in one book) a lot easier. Right now, I use my white notes on the sticky-note wall method. However that sort of thing leads into the biggest disadvantage of Scrivener: the learning curve. I already know how to use Word--exceedingly well, I'm told. I don't (yet) know how to use Scrivener.

Scrivener's not merely an outlining tool--that's just one of its many functions. It's a writing environment, a replacement for MS Word. It does everything instead of just one thing. I'll have to migrate to it and as I said, I'll probably wait until I have the new computer to do that kind of time investment. Learning a new environment means at least a month of low productivity. I'd like to have at least two books out and selling before I stop being productive--on purpose.

So it's back to the apps. I don't even care if like my "wall" they won't export to MS Word because it's more for me to look at and mull over, which is the point of separating the outlining activity from the writing activity. I just want to be sure to have a digital copy of this Wall Method. Just in case ;-)

Both Storyboard Pro and Storybook are freeware (Storybook has multiple levels of "pro" versions) Storyboard Pro is available for both Mac and PC platforms (I don't see an app but haven't searched the iTunes app store or the Android marketplace yet). Storybook (free version) is OpenSource software available for both platforms.

They both look interesting but neither appears to have the versatility I need. I'm not sure I want to bother installing anything else on this laptop unless it was going to "do it all" (like Scrivener will). For now, I'll stick to my Wall Method but after I finish editing and release Conditioned Response (January, 2012 at the latest) I'm probably going to get, use and review Scrivener, so stay tuned to the Tuesday Tips for a Scrivener series (like my Twitter Series and Marketing Series).

In the meantime, I'm fine with my color-coded wall. If nothing else, having to see it everytime I walk into the room sure does remind me I need to finish that darned book already!! It's 80% done.

What's Next....
I can definitely say with complete certainty that I'll have more SciFi snippets to share this weekend. Not sure you'll want to read them with Shayla in her mood. She's going around and killing people and it's kind of creeping me out. I had no idea she could be this violent! Since this week is a "first" for automation at the day job, I might have to hold off on the snippets until #SampleSunday so be sure to check my Twitterstream (@webbiegrrl) for updates on the schedule or just subscribe to the blog via email and you'll get it sent to your inbox whenever it's ready. Thanks for stopping by!

MONDAY MARKETING Law 15 Candor #marketing #pubtip #myWANA #indie

2011-12-05T07:15:00.000-05:00

I am not speaking about the Lost City of Kandor from the Superman stories :) Figured I should say that just in case anyone thought I was confused on how to spell the word. Today, I'm going to talk about speaking openly and honestly to your prospective customers -- and turning that into a marketing advantage.

For those just joining us, the Monday Marketing blogs have been serializing a review of one of the best little books on marketing ever written. One by one, I've reviewed how Ries and Trout's 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing apply to Indie Authors, with a specific eye toward the eBook marketing activity, since eBooks are such a bigger part of the marketing activity for Indies than are the DTBs.

If you've never read Ries and Trout's book, click on the book image now and get a copy. It's not very expensive, will take you 5 minutes to read once--and you'll read it a hundred times again, getting something new each time. I'm a good example since I got this book in the 90s and here I am, 20 years later, still finding new interpretations for the same lessons. This week's lesson, as I said, is on the Law of Candor. No super powers required. Just click through the jump break to find out how being up front about yourself and your product can be marketed as one of your finest strengths.

Why the Law of Candor Works
The Law of Candor states that when you admit a negative, the prospect (potential customer) will give you a positive response for it. People appreciate honesty. It makes them feel a connection with you when you trust them enough to be honest with them. In fact, when you admit a negative, customers assume it is the truth--otherwise, why would you admit it? When a customer knows the salesperson is lying, typically, they won't want to buy the product because somewhere in the back of their minds, they're wondering, "If they lied about this, what else are they lying about?"

Nothing could be worse for an Indie Author than for a reader to think we've pulled that kind of bait and switch. For example, our book covers must give some kind of indication as to what kind of story lies inside. Otherwise, how is a reader to know whether or not they want to buy that book? If we market ourselves as a mystery/suspense writer and then go off into a paranormal story, we haven't been honest with our readers--and they probably won't ever buy one of our books again because of it.

The Secret to Candor
Now here's the key to the Law of Candor: Since you cannot change a customer's mind once it's made up (see Laws 3 and 4), your marketing must be devoted to using ideas and concepts already in their mind. That is, if your product delivers a first impression, use your marketing opportunity to "rub it in," so to speak.

Last week, we discussed the Law of Attributes, and how finding one attribute which is opposite that of your direct competition (Law 9) can help you claim some of your competition's market share, maybe moving up one rung on the product ladder. The Law of Candor is not endorsing a mud-slinging campaign, but you can say "I am not ..." and fill in whatever they are, turning that difference into a positive.

Don't attempt to invoke the Law of Candor by putting down your competition. Do it by making your difference an appealing alternative. Mud-slinging isn't candor; it's back-stabbing and makes you an ugly person, not a likeable author. In fact, the only negative you can or should ever state, without risking alienation of your customer, is to state up front your own negative attribute. By doing so, instantly, you'll have opened up the mind of the prospect to hear what you have to say. They are immediately disarmed and intrigued. Now is the time to drive home the one word you want to own in their minds (Laws 5 and 6).

Logistics of Candor
First of all, whatever negative you choose to admit must be widely-perceived as a negative. If you feel it's a negative but your audience doesn't see it as anything relevant or bad at all, you cannot claim it as some great admission. Your admission of the negative must trigger instant agreement in your audience's mind.

Next, shift the negative into a positive by linking it to your "one word" or attribute and selling the idea that your attribute is going to benefit the reader or somehow fulfill their needs. Create the need, if you must, have your negative be that "one word" need and then fill it! Don't forget, you cannot be all things to all people (Law 13: Sacrifice) but you can be one thing to all people, even if that one thing is a negative. No, especially if that one thing is a negative!

What's Next....
Next week's Monday Marketing will look at Law 16: the Law of Singularity. Tomorrow I'll have another Tuesday Tip for you. Be sure to stop back around 10:00 AM Eastern Time to check it out (or follow me @webbiegrrl on Twitter to get a link tweeted when the blog is up).

FREEBIE FRIDAY #SciFi Snippets #iamwriting r u #reading ? #ConditionedResponse

2011-12-02T07:43:00.000-05:00

As I said earlier this week, I wasn't actually planning to serialize Conditioned Response prior to its release date but it sure seems to be turning into a good Freebie Friday snippeting event here, doesn't it? If you haven't read last week's snippet, catch up by clicking here; I even added another 1500 words on Tuesday so if you read it then, read it again ;-)

Three words of warning: SPOILERS LIE AHEAD.

Big time. I'm currently working on--and snippeting from--the section of the book after the big climax has occurred (cough cough...yeah, double entendre intended, sorry, but I couldn't resist). Click through the jump break to read the next sequential scene of the book. Again. it's draft, subject to change, probably contains missing words or typos (or both) not to mention Microsoftian formatting quirks but hey, it's free. ^_^ Tell me what you think in the comments - your feedback is salve for my soul.

# aftermaths #

Joshua had wondered if he’d ever get a minute to speak alonewith Shayla. The way her Proctors hovered, it was a wonder she didn’t go madbefore now. Then again, she’d been acclimated to this behavior all her life. She’d been achild when she’d come here. She’d grown up with the Grey Suits around everycorner. It wasn’t normal, not for a human and certainly not for a Phoenician,but it was her normal. She’d probably be uncomfortable if she realizedshe was alone in the room with himself and Brennan.

Luckily for him, Brennan wasn’t likely to be getting upuntil the medic had him stitched and anesthetized. He was glad to have Jaredcoming. He knew the man. He could ask the man to medically-require that Brennan stayput in his quarters if it came to that, but hopefully, Brennan wouldn’tprove so difficult to contain. More difficult than he had already, that is.

Joshua crouched down in front of Shayla, to make sure he wasin her range of vision, and rested his hands on her knees. She still held theknife in her lap, cradling its hilt in a dangerously fixated way. Joshua knewthat look in her eye. He’d had it in his own eyes more than once. He also knewwhy she’d cut off her hair. It was a thing Mates did to signify they were inmourning, so all who met them would know of their loss. It was a means ofreleasing the emotional turmoil. He’d tried it once himself, a lifetime ago,when his first wife had died. It hadn’t worked and he’d resorted to moreextreme measures of self-destruction, so he understood the point of the Phoeniciancustom. He just doubted it would prove effective enough to give Shayla respite from her pain right now.

He’d heard that Phoenicians used to cut off a hand. That would have helped Joshuagrieve in the past but he’d been watched over like some crown prince and unableto try it out. He didn’t think Shayla would try it but he was actually worried giventhe way she was fiddling with the hilt of the knife. He wasn’t fast enough orstrong enough to stop her should she make a move with it. He didn’t think even hecould double talk his way out of it should the sole Phoenician living among thehumans manage to slice off her own hand—or anything other than her hair. If shewere already Mated—and she probably was—then just the absence of herhair was going to be hard enough to explain. He was definitely going to have toexplain her situation, he could see that now. His future held a veryuncomfortable conversation with seven very old men.

“Shayla,” He spoke quietly, soothingly. “We only have a fewminutes before one of your Proctors finds an excuse to come back in here, so I need you to focus, please. I know you want to avenge this, to takeaction against them for what happened to Raif, but I’m begging you, please don’t. Not yet.”

“I don’t need your permission.” Her voice was low, her eyesstill fixed on the gleaming metal in her lap.

“No, but your people—”

“They will forgive me. Afterwards.” She looked up, adistance in her eyes. Her lashes were still wet from tears but the tears haddefinitely stopped now. She’d moved on into anger. Unfortunately, Joshua also knewthat look all too well.

“Raif always said it is better to ask forgiveness thanpermission.” She choked on a sudden sob. “I never understood how he could saythat—until now. I understand now. They will forgive me after I have done this.”

“What are you going to do?”

She looked him in the eye and her gaze was cold enough tosend a chill down his spine, not an easy feat after the things he’d seen in hismany lifetimes. He’d only seen a Phoenician look at him with those glowing blueeyes once before. He hadn’t feared for his life back then, being protected bythe circle of old men, but he was worried now. She could kill him with athought.

“I’m going to kill them. All of them.”

He didn’t doubt she could and even would—if no one stoppedher—but he had to try to stop her. She blinked slowly and the light faded fromher eyes.

“How will you know who’s to blame, Shayla?”

“Charlie told me.”

“He could have lied.”

“Not about this. You have no idea what’s been going on here, Joshua, locked away in your big house on the—”

“I know about your plans for an uprising, Shayla.”

She looked back down at the blade in her lap and started spinning the hilt aroundbetween her fingers, making the gleaming metal catch the light in the room. “Then you do understand. This was deliberate. I cannot let it go unanswered. They have to answer for this.”

“If you still have loyalties to your friends, to that plan—”

She looked up at that. He’d forgotten how tied to plansthe Phoenicians were. It was a superstitious belief but he could use it. “Theplan included vengeance on them, didn’t it? Just stick to the plan, Shayla.”

“They didn’t. Why should I? People like Dramond and Kindihave no honor. They don’t deserve a dignified departure from the Council—and they’renot the only ones behind this. I can’t let any of them remain. There’s only oneway to kill a Gorthon worm and make it stay dead. You can’t justcut off one head, Joshua. It just grows another. They’ve been in this together…”She looked back down at the knife. “They’ll go out together.”

She was fully-vested in this, he now realized. She waswilling to kill herself to avenge Raif’s death. He couldn’t let her just throwher life away, not after everything he’d gone through to make peace with herpeople.

“Will you give up your honor for this?” He asked, knowingnow how to reach her. “Shayla, you know Raif kept a lot of young Proctors aliveover the years, and he didn’t ask forgiveness to do it. He asked permission.Always. And he never acted alone when he had someone there to cover his back.More than half the Proctors on the planet are going to want to avenge Raif’sdeath—for their own honor. So many are alive today because of Raif. Letthem repay him with honor and dignity. Let me help you find a way that doesn’tinvolve a blood bath. No one needs to die for this. Spilling blood won’t honoranyone, especially not Raif.”

“Blood will be spilled. It won’t be mine.”

“Will you have the Proctors Corps slaughtered to feed yourneed for vengeance?”

“What do you want from me?”

“Let me go with you, we’ll ask permission together.”

“Whose permission, Joshua? I’m a Senior Councillor. You’rethe Administrator. Just whose permission do you think we need?”

“The Seven Chiefs. They’ll have a plan for this. They alwayshave a plan.”

“That’s the problem with asking their permission. Fine. I’llask them. I don’t guarantee to obey their requests.”

He found it unlikelyshe would disobey the Seven Chiefs. No one disobeyed the Seven Chiefs. Twice.But his concerns were allayed by her agreement to ask. At least they’d beinformed and know he’d tried to stop her. What really settled his nerves,however, was the fact that she gave him back Brennan’s knife.

When Jared, the MedTech, arrived, Joshua had him examineShayla first, just to be sure she was physically unharmed by whatever it wasshe’d done to Raif. Joshua had seen a body incinerated by a Phoenician throwbefore—it hadn’t looked like that. He’d seen two different versions of remainsafter a Phoenician throw. The first had been a corpse lying on a funeral altarand the clan of the deceased had combined their throws to incinerate theremains into a light, powdery ash that flowed up in the resultant sudden hotair column and then fell on the mourners like snow. The focused and directedthrows of the circle of mourners had left nothing behind on the pyre.

He’d also seen the results of a Phoenician throw on a human.Back in the early days, almost a hundred years of expansion after the humanshad first landed here, there’d been a lot of conflict between the two peoples. Thestubborn humans wouldn’t take the hint that the planet was already inhabitedand the Phoenicians didn’t like the attempts to displace them. It was theirworld, after all. The humans were welcome to go back to their own. Except, ofcourse, they couldn’t. The remains left behind when a Phoenician attacked ahuman, one on one that way, were more ash than a funeral pyre powder but far lesscharred corpse than was the thing on Shayla’s bed.

The thing on her bed was disturbing in the extreme.

He needed to get those remains out of this room and then he neededto get this room out of her mind. The Seven Chiefs might help with the latterbut he knew just the man for the first job. While Jared examined Shayla, Joshuatook advantage of the fact Brennan was physically immobilized to have a quietconversation with him about it.

Crouched in front of his damaged future, Joshua said, “I’mtaking her back to Phoenician land. While we’re gone, you’re going to do twothings, just two. No more, no less. Are you listening?” Brennan tried to nod.“One, get rid of that thing on the bed. Get rid of the bed with it.” Joshuaraised his index finger when Brennan’s mouth opened to object. “It’s not Raifanymore and I don’t ever want her to see it again. She’ll have nightmares aboutthis for years even if I take steps to prevent it. Have MedTech dispose of theremains, Jared will liaise for you there, and then have the entire roomsanitized, floor to ceiling. Make sure there’s not one molecule of Raif’s DNAleft in this room. If I thought she’d be willing to change quarters, I’dsuggest you get her a new assignment, but I’m guessing she’d object?”

“Yeah, no way she’s moving. Raif tried to move her intoGaultier’s place more than once over the years before I came along and—bottom line, he said, she’s never moving out ofhere. He planned on giving me Gaultier's place because he wasn't using it. He was going to stay with her wherever she..." Brennan glanced over at the bed again. "I think this is the only home she’s ever had.”

Joshua knew the problem. She’d nested here and that made her harder to dislodge from her home than a moon from its orbit. “All right, then, we can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain,so we shall have to move the mountain.”

“Who’s Mohammed?”

“No one. It’s an old saying. Have the room emptied beforeyou set up the cleaning crew. Everything is to be taken out of here anddestroyed. Have the rest of her Proctors help you pack up her personal itemsbut use plain, impersonal containers. Requisition some movers and havethem take a cut of the repo. They can sell some of it on the Black Market formore than their work crew fees after the union dues are paid. You’ll be incharge of this project but you obviously won’t be doing the physical labor.

“If your fellow Proctors won’t do it, I’ll authorize a workcrew under the Administrator’s Office. No one will question anything with thatlevel of authorization. Draw on Raif’s funds in the Gaultier account to buy newfurniture.” When Brennan started looking worried, Joshua added, “You’re goingto have to get used to giving orders, and spending his money and mostespecially, you’ll need to become accustomed to getting what you want, when youwant it. Redecorating a vacant room isn’t much but you have to start somewhere.Just arrange everything exactly the same way it is now using new materials. Youdon’t even have to decide anything. You have the codes for his bank accounts,don’t you?”

“Yeah, but I’m not in charge of the team, Collier made thatreal clear and I know Raif never wanted to put me in charge. He was talking to Ronen.He’s the guy—”

“I know who Ronen is. Let him direct your teammates if itmakes you feel better, delegate whatever tasks you like but ultimately, you’rein charge of this project. I’m giving you personal responsibility forthis matter. Do you understand? It’s personal, not business, and if anythinggoes wrong, I’ll hold you responsible, not Ronen, not Collier, not anyof the other Proctors. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“Good. Now the other matter. Can you speak as freely toJulia Travis and Ashley Rains as you do with me? Will you be intimidated bytheir being Councillors?” Brennan shrugged then winced when the brokencollarbone complained. Joshua went on, “Then you’re also in charge of informingthe…what shall we call them? Rebellion? Freedom fighters? Hm, let Ashley pickthe name for their little group. Propaganda’s his department, and because Iknow your Tactical scores, I’m going to give you a little help planning thebalance of the rebellion.”

“What rebellion?”

“I thought we already settled this, Brennan. I know whatthey’re doing. You know what they’re doing. We all know what’s really going onhere. Isn’t your friend in Julia’s department in on it as well?”

“Yeah, okay, so you know but—look, I can tell Julia andAshley what happened to Raif, or what I think happened, but—”

“But you’ll need help to plan a response.”

“It’s not just that. I can’t get involved, in the middle of—they’regonna overthrow everyone. I’m just a Proctor.”

“I know, which is why I’d like to suggest you work with someonemore capable of managing the situation—and the people. Would that be all rightwith you?”

“Depends who you got in mind. Collier only got an eighty-twoon Tactical and I don’t think he actually took the Strategic course. Besides,he hates me. He’ll screw it up just to get rid of me.”

“This isn’t an exam, Brennan, this is real life—real livesare going to be lost. Haven’t you ever seen anything more serious than thosescuffles with the Spooks we had back in Trouville?”

Brennan shook his head in the negative.

So he’d never face real battle against a formidable enemy—orone who could think beyond the next five minutes. “All right then, this is whatwe’re going to do. William Harrington will be your very special advisor. You’vespent some time with him. Do you think you can take orders from him? Passorders from William onto your team? Ronen’s team. Whosever team the otherProctors are in your mind.”

“What were his scores?”

Joshua noted Brennan was suppressing a grin. It faded assoon as Joshua said, “One hundred and five on Tactical and one hundred andtwelve on Strategics.”

“He got everything right and all the extra credits?”

“He wrote the extra credits. Now, can you shut up andtake orders from William or do I need to put Collier in charge after all andlet you confine yourself to redecorating her quarters?”

“I’m not a decorator. I can work with Harrington.”

“Good, but you’re still going to do both. Wait until we’regone and start with getting this room cleared.” Brennan motioned to indicatehis incapacitation. “As soon as you can manage to get up, requisition the workcrew. I’ll make one available that you can trust and they’ll just so happen tobe next on the roster, so don’t waste time security-checking them. Just takethe first crew issued to the Administrator’s Office I advise you to manage themso that this room is cleared before William arrives but at the very least,don’t let Julia and Ashley see that corpse. In fact, don’t let anyonebut William or the work crew in here until it’s cleared, understood?”

“You know Ronen and Collier have already seen it? Bowman,too.”

“I’ll take care of them. William should be able to get herewithin the hour, maybe less. At that point, you should contact Julia andAshley—unless he’s already contacted them before he locates you. He’s very goodat multi-tasking and he’ll anticipate your very thoughts. Don’t let it throwyou. I should have Shaylaback here tomorrow, though honestly, I really can’t say how long this business willtake. Her people have their own customs for these things.”

“Why are you taking her back there?”

“Because I’m afraid only the Seven Chiefs can control her atthis point and honestly, I think they’re the best ones to handle…her perceptionof the situation. Unless you think I should allow her to massacre half theCouncil in a bloody streak of vengeance?”

Brennan gulped and looked past Joshua’s shoulder. “So she’sover the shock and thinking about vengeance already?”

“Oh, yes, she’s firmly grounded in anger now. The sooner Iget her out of range, the better for everyone.” Joshua paused then added,“Especially those of us who remind her of Raif.”

Brennan looked up at him, puzzled, glanced over at the bedand looked back in horror. Joshua was pleased to see it had finally occurred tohim that if she could do that to Raif, whom she loved, she could do far worseto them, whom she barely knew.

[to be continued]

TUESDAY TIP #Nanowrimo Wrapup Next Steps for 3 Nanotypes #pubtip #iamwriting r u #reading?

2011-11-29T09:28:00.003-05:00

We are 24 hours away from the end of Nanowrimo 2011 and either you have close to 50,000 words or you do not. You still have a day left but for most of you, it's a done deal. You already know whether or not you "won" this year. Winning isn't really what you might think. It's more of a badge of honor--but I'll admit that I'm going to upload a scrambled version of Conditioned Response today (November 29th) just to "win" a badge for myself this year! ETA got my badge, isn't it pretty? LOL.

It's something a lot of us writers just really want. Plus there are perks. Click through the jump break and I'll direct you to some of them. Be sure to note that some of these perks are only free to Nanowrimo winners or require you to sign up by or before November 30th (during Nanowrimo), so check all links carefully.

Today I'll offer advice on where to go from here--no matter where your personal "here" might be. I'll advise those who did not reach the 50k word mark, those who just made it but don't have a full novel in those 50,000 or so words, and those who finished a complete novel (replete with a beginning, middle and end) but aren't sure what to do with it now that they've got it. Click through the jump break for Webbiegrrl tips on what to do next. Others may (certainly will ) have other tips. In fact, it's pretty much guaranteed that the #nanowrimo hashtag on Twitter will be flooded today with tips and tricks and advise and services--in between all the "woe is me, I didn't make it" and "hoo-rah! I won" tweets. These are just my tips. Use at your own risk.

Are We There Yet?
How do you even know if you've made it? Word counts are tricky and Microsoft Word keeps changing the file size and word count and ....yeah, Nano'ers seem to get really wound up over word counts at this time of the month (LOL). Good news. The nice people in the Office of Letters & Light (OLL) have had a set of instructions for how to scramble your novel and upload it for word count validation since...well, since before my first Nanowrimo in 2006. Check out the scrambling instructions here.

Now, suppose you're one of the Nanowrimo participants who didn't quite make it. You wanted to write 50,000 words this month but one thing after another kept you from it. You did write something, just not enough of it. That's okay. That's the first thing you should tell yourself. It's not an easy thing for some people and it's not a crime if you're one of those people. Accept it and move on--and never ever stop writing or trying to write more!

Even if you completed 50,000 or more words, you might find yourself in the situation where you know you don't yet have a completed novel--or maybe you know you only got 50,000 words by stuffing all kinds of crap and nonsense in there that you planned to later "edit" out again. Okay, that's fair (according to the Nanorules) but that means that you're not "done" just because you got 50,000 words stuffed into a file by November 30th.

Whether you need to write more words or edit the words you have, if you're in this first category of "not there yet," be sure you don't just stop because the calendar reads "December" now. Hopefully, over this past month, you started to learn about yourself, your writing habits, your moods and how they affect your writing (or vice a versa!) and you started to figure out where in your life you need to focus attention in order to open up "writing space" for yourself. Make the changes permanent. Establish a niche in your life for writing. Make this your "holiday gift" to yourself. Or make it a New Year's resolution if you're into those instead, just make the choice, no matter what you have to call it to do so.

Editing ensures a story has a beginning, middle and end and that it's a story which will fulfill the Contract with the Reader through its telling.

Editing, A Horse of a Different Color
If you need to edit, and have never done so before, be sure to seek out help. You cannot edit your own work alone. Not unless or until you learn how to be an Editor. Being an Editor is a very different mindset than being an Author. In fact, I like to describe it thusly: writing is a creative process; editing is a destructive one.

They are not quite opposing activities but they do require entirely different mindsets. It's not that editing will destroy all the good in your fictional world. It's that Editors will murder your darlings and tighten your words into neat little passages that sear into a reader's mind. It's called the difference between a first draft and a polished work.

I've blogged about editing before but I'm going to put it more succinctly here today: There are two different activities that get clumped into this one word "editing" and they are not the same things at all. Proofreading tweaking word choices, doing sentence-level changes, correcting spelling, grammar and conjugation errors are all good things and what I call "wordsmithing." No matter what you call them, these activities are not editing.

It's confusing to new authors because publishers call those activities "copyediting" or "line-editing" (both of which terms contain the word "editing"); but in fact, "editing" is not attending to letter-level or word-level or even sentence-level issues. Actual editing addresses book-level issues, problems in the plotting or pacing or character development. Editing, not "line-editing," addresses the basic elements of a story that make it or break it as a book.

See below for more on the basic elements of storytelling.
If you're not already a member, join Goodreads (that link's to my Author Profile on GR and you can friend me if you'd like; I'll reciprocate all friend requests there). Then join some groups where people read and critique each other's work. Click "groups" and then use the search box to find some you'd like to join. Most are open to join without any pre-approval. Those that require approval are just trying to prevent spammers and bots from harvesting members' emails.

Although writing is a solitary activity, learning how to edit is usually best done as a group. In other words, you need to seek out others to help you get the hang of doing this activity. In fact, you'll learn more about writing and editing by helping to edit someone else's work than you ever could by editing your own. There are a lot of ways to get help. I suggest seeking out other writers, not readers, at least for the first pass of editing.

You never get a second chance at a first impression. Some reviewers are unforgiving. Some fellow writers are, too, but at least with them you can point out it's your book, and they can go write one of their own (I don't advise speaking that way in public, not even in a critiquing forum).

Once you're in a writer's group on Goodreads, you can create a thread where you ask for people to volunteer to help you. It's rare that anyone will want you to upload your book to the Goodreads site--so don't. Your book will remain on the Nanowrimo site until October of next year or until you take it down. Alternatively, you can upload the content to a site like Authonomy (run by the multi-national publishing conglomerate Harper-Collins). As a last resort, you can offer to send out a PDF to anyone who wants to help you by reading and critiquing your work. I don't advise sending your book to strangers in PDF form. You never know who these people are and while it's unlikely anyone's going to steal your book from Goodreads, Authonomy or Nanowrimo, it's not so safe if you send a completed PDF out via email.

A Cautionary Tale
There are money-launderers in China who pulled this scam with Nanonovels last year. They stole identities, posted stolen books on Amazon and Smashwords and other online bookseller sites, and collected money off the stolen works until they were caught--then they set up a new fake identity and sold the book again. All they had to do was change the name on the cover image which is as basic as it gets in Photoshop. Smashwords' founder, Mark Coker, discovered it last year when they went even further and set up fake affiliate accounts to collect affiliate fees on the stolen books "owned" by the faked/stolen identities! Three levels of theft! It nearly crashed the Smashwords site last January and February and it definitely caused a major hassle in the bookkeeping for a few months.

So don't volunteer to email PDFs right now. Maybe next summer (grin) Better to just share your content somewhere else. There aer other places you can upload your content free of charge to get critiqued, if you're willing to critique others in exchange. One I suggest is YouWriteOn which also runs a contest where winners get read by publishing house editors. Like Authonomy, no guarantees you get a publishing contract. Go to YouWriteOn for the feedback not the contest.

How Do I Know What Color Horse I've Got?
You've written your 50,000 words and think you have a completed novel, a salable book, a story that fulfills its Contract with the Reader. You are the only one who can decide what your story is or is not, so I'll just give you this set of rules of thumb, as it were. These are basic elements to a story--any story of any length in any genre. Yes, short stories, novels and everything in between all follow the same rules of thumb. I did not write this. The late great Marion Zimmer Bradley did in her incredibly supportive community for mentoring new writers in the SF/F genre. Her estate was directed to set up a web site under a trust to continue making these resources for writers available. She was a very successful author. Take a look around her site.

1. You have a Main Character (MC)
2. Your MC exists in a setting
3. Your MC has a goal or objective
4. There is an obstacle (or series of obstacles) between your MC and their objective
5. Through their own powers or abilities, the MC conquers the obstacle(s) and obtains the goal (triumph) or the obstacle overcomes the MC (tragedy)
6. Your MC is transformed by Step 5 either for the better or worse--point is they are changed from the journey they took from Steps 1 through 5

The one thing MZB did not harp on was that all stories must have a beginning, middle and end. I think she figured that was so abundantly obvious it would be silly to mention -- but publishers have rejected tens of thousands of books for one of those 3 things being missing, odd as it sounds. Many writers will start a story in the middle or skip from the beginning to the climax without any logical progression of the plot to get there. Or the worst, in my opinion, they get to The End and just keep writing. As a rambler myself I'm particularly sensitive to this flaw.

The Contract with the Reader is a concept I'll have to blog about some other day but in short, it says, in the beginning, here's the situation and then throughout the middle it takes the reader through logical steps (that do not rely on AuthorConvenient creations but rather, on the character's own powers of mind, body and soul) that bring about a resolution of the main conflict in The End. If The End is a resolution of a totally different conflict than was set up in the Beginning or if the middle never set up how you were getting from point A to B, then you have broken the Contract with the Reader. Your reader will not have what is called a Satisfying Reader Experience. This can happen for a number of reasons, but lack of a plausible plot or unsympathetic characters are the two most common reasons for it.

If your 50,000 words or more address all the basic elements of a story, you're good to go onto the next step: editing. Yep, even if you think you had all the right words in there, you should still do a bit of editing and get it critiqued by others before you sign off on it as "done." If you can't find the help you need on Goodreads or YouWriteOn, or if you'd rather just hire someone to take care of the hassle for you, there are a lot of Editors for hire on Goodreads as well.

Polishing Off the Rough Edges - Wordsmithing At Last!
After the real editing is done, now it's time do that wordsmithing so many writers seem to love to do. All of the sentence-level or word-level choices, all of the punctuation and grammatical issues and all of the spelling errors are going to be caught at this stage. Again, don't try to do this alone. Seek out help. This time, I suggest you solicit some "beta readers" or "first readers" or whatever you want to call them to read and as them to help you proofread your book. I suggest you use the word "proofread" and don't try to get fancy by calling it "copyediting" or "line-editing" or "wordsmithing" (grin). Just keep it simple--and never EVER argue with anyone. You can take their suggestions, say thank you (because they spent time and effort regardless of what you think of the results) and then you get to decide whether or not you want to do anything with that information.

You find "beta readers" on Goodreads the same way you did for writer's groups. Go to the search box and find groups that like to read the kind of stuff you write. If you're looking for mystery/suspense readers, then type that into the search box. You can go to other sites, like Shelfari, but I like Goodreads the best. Go wherever you can--go to them all!--and solicit readers the same way, by targetting people who already say they are interested in raeding what you write.

Join those groups and offer an "Advance Review Copy (ARC)" FREE and tell them you'll mention them in the Acknowledgements in exchange for their help proofreading your book. If you're offering a free book--even if it's in exchange for a service and it's not a final version of your book--you'll probably get a lot of takers. If you don't, you might not be pitching or describing your book well. That's helpful information to know, too, isn't it?

I say to do all this after the real editing is done and I hope it's obvious why. If not, let me explain. Anytime you touch the text, you introduce an opportunity for new typos to appear. Also, note I did not suggest soliciting reviews with your ARCs, just help proofreading. There's a good reason for this.

Reviews will come from those who really loved your book. They won't be able to contain themselves, trust me on this. Those who don't like your book, won't be eager to gush about it and since all you asked for was help proofreading it, they are free to not like it--and not obligated to tell anyone. I know you hear how so many people get bad reviews and it must seem that hateful readers are out there eagerly waiting for the chance to put your book down, but that's simply not true. Most people don't like having to write a review for a book they didn't like. They'd rather just forget they even read it.

If you're not getting useful responses from your readers (they write "It's fine." or "I'd buy the book." or other things that are subjective opinions and have nothing to do with proofreading) then I'd suggest you delineate actual tasks you want them to complete. For example, in a cover email, state explicitly that you want them to note corrections by telling you something like:

Typo - "The brwon fox jumped..." should be "The brown fox jumped..."

This is the standard protocol publishers use for review of a galley proof by an author when it is sent back to the copyeditor (proofreader). Appalling, isn't it, that the publishers have the authors do their own proofreading?

Okay, let's say your book is complete, has a beginning, middle and end, has been edited and gone through all the polishing your beta readers can stand. Now you're just trying to figure out how to get it out there now so people can read it. Great news. There are two fabulous methods of distributing your Nanonovel! Read on, McDuff!

Smashwords - The Free ePath to Distribution
If you want to get a free eBook version of your Nanonovel produced and distributed, Smashwords will help you. They have a special Nanowrimo Catalog that'll get separate distribution and extra-special promotion during the month of December. You need to do this TODAY (before November 30th) so don't delay if you want to be included.

If you sign up for Smashwords today and upload your book to get it into the Nanowrimo Catalog, be sure to use their special links and pages. Don't use the regular "publish" or "distribution" links. Those won't work the same way. By uploading your book to Smashwords (a) you still own all of the rights and (b) you can control where it gets sent--or not. You also get the option to choose which formats you have the Smashwords conversion script (called "the Meatgrinder") produce for you. It's capable of spitting out all of the most popular formats but you don't have to tick all those boxes. You control what happens to your book. That's the beauty of Smashwords.

Because it's a Nanonovel, its price will be set to FREE. If you want to charge for your book, you cannot get the special, free promotion as part of the Nanowrimo Catalog. You should use regular distribution channels and you can charge whatever you like--but you'll have to do your own promotion effort :-)

Amazon's Not-Quite-Free Paperback Option
Back in 2008, Amazon's CreateSpace outbid Lulu.com on the right to make a "special offer to all Nanowrimo winners" to produce their books. You might be wondering why Lulu or Amazon would "compete" or "bid" on the right to offer to give you a copy of your book free of charge. It's not quite free, that's why. Plus they are super slick and sneaky about selling you services you can probably do for yourself (or do without). I'm not trying to talk you out of using the "free offer" from CreateSpace to get a paperback copy of your book into your hot little hands. I'm just trying to caution you, it's not really FREE. Almost, but not quite.

There's good news though: starting this year, CreateSpace will produce five (5) copies of your book as a paperback "free" (not quite). In fact, what they will do is take whatever you give them (which may or may not be correct) and they will not check it for you. They will take the file(s) you give them "as is" and do whatever you tell them to do with it (which may or may not be correct to get the results you want) and they will produce a "proof copy" (which you have to pay for and pay to have shipped to you). Then you have to approve the "proof copy" and that is when they'll send you five (5) free copies--except you also have to pay the shipping costs on those five copies, so it's not free then either.

It's still super cheap (just shipping costs!) and if you know what you're doing and have it all edited, proofread and formatted just perfectly for a print production, you can get five copies of it in a paperback format. So that's pretty kewel. Just be careful. There are wonderful content experts in the Amazon forums who'll answer your questions so ask before you submit anything. You have until June of 2012 so there's no rush to do this in December. Take it slowly. Check it carefully. Twice. Three times. Join a group on Goodreads and ask for opinions about your cover art. Get the templates CreateSpace offers (actually free!) and then ask in the CreateSpace forums when you're not sure what to do with them. It's not easy and I've done this stuff before!

Some people prefer to just hire CreateSpace to create their cover--even if they had a cover design in a JPG already created. It's not expensive and it's a lot easier. I don't know if I'd advise using the CreateSpace staff to do your editing but you can even hire them to do that if you want to streamline your process and money is no object. Then again, if money is not an object, why are you going for the not-quite-free offer? :-)

What's Next...
I wasn't planning on serializing my SciFi novel on the Webbiegrrl blog but I'm thinking about sharing some more of the scene I snippeted last weekend. I haven't gotten much more done yet, between blogging here and working the day job, but by Friday, I should have a bit more ready to share. Let's see what happens.

MONDAY MARKETING Law 14: Attributes - Your Voice is Your Best Attribute #pubtip #indie #marketing #writing #myWANA

2011-11-28T10:08:00.002-05:00

Thanks for stopping in on the Monday Marketing series. I've been discussing branding and designing the Indie Publishing Company you want to keep. Like any other business, your career in Indie Publishing requires you to define a brand for yourself--that is, define you, the Author, as a product to be sold. The exact same rules apply to selling the Author product that is you as apply to stores selling widgets. You just have more control over your marketing than they do.

If you're just joining us, we're using one of the best little books on marketing ever written: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by two of the original Madison Avenue wizards. If you've never read this book, it's only about a 1/4" thick in paperback. Take 5 minutes to read it now then check the previous entries of this series to read how these laws apply to the Indie Publishing business.

This week's lesson is on the Law of Attributes, which states "For every product attribute, there is an opposite and equally-effective attribute." Related to the Law of Opposites (Law 9), this Immutable Law of Marketing zeroes in on an effective sales tool you can make your own secret weapon. As noted in Law 8 (Law of Duality), no matter where you are on the Product Ladder, your immediate competition is the book on the rung directly above you in the market. Your goal, as we learned in Law 9 (Law of Opposites) is to identify some attribute to your prospective readers (your potential customers) that makes you "new and different" (read: better) than the same old, same old that is your competition. Click through the jump break to learn more.

This is a psychological battle. You are at war, battling for a place in the customer's mind. You don't want to "take over" the competition's place. You want to "own" a single word or concept--a unique attribute--in the customer's mind. You want to own it first and exclusively. That one attribute is not your competition's, they already own that idea and are using it. The winning idea for you to use is you. It's your brand, your trademark. Your unique and special snowflake is your strongest attribute.

Find your unique and special voice. It is your best-selling attribute--because it is yours and no one else can "own" it.

We Are Not Widgets

As Indie Authors, our self-esteem and self-image are directly tied to our marketing success. We are what is being marketed. One of the most-common mistakes made in marketing--whether widgets or books--is to try to copy the winners. You probably think If I can write a vampire story like Stephanie Meyer's, my sales will soar like the Twilight Series's. Wrong!

And just because J.K. Rowling has found financial success with Harry Potter's world, is definitely not an indication that you should copy the way she writes. She doesn't just write about kids at a magic school. She writes about world she created in her own mind. It's hers. She already owns it. You can never "be" J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer in the readers' minds. You can only be yourself. See that as the advantage it is! No one can copy you!

You might think But they figured out what works; I should just copy that and it'll work for me, too. Again, you'd be missing what they found unless you realize that what they each did was find themselves, their own unique voice--and they dared to write it. That's what you need to do. Have the courage to be you, and be convinced that you are unique and special enough.

As noted above, it is a little different for us writers who are selling our art, than it is for Kraft Foods or Motorola or General Motors. They're selling things. We're selling ourselves. Once you realize that, you'll stop wanting to be someone else and realize what enormous power you have at your disposal by embracing your voice and exploiting it for financial success.

You Are What You Say You Are
The reality is that in marketing, customers will believe what you tell them--unless or until you prove it untrue upon delivery. Tell the truth about yourself and it will get you to the bank. Exploit just how different you are and pure curiosity will sell your books. Keep trying to be "like" [fill in name of anyone who's not you], and you'll be selling that person's books, not your own.

If your competition has a unique attribute they've identified in order to sell books, guaranteed, you have a different one. Your success lies only in how effectively you can sell your attribute as the Next Best Thing. You don't have to put theirs down. You have to make yours as different from theirs.

In fact, it will be even more powerful if you make your unique and special attribute so different from your direct competition that you are the "opposite" of them. Again, this is easier to do with widgets than books, because you don't want to describe your book as so different as to make it sound like you belong in a totally different genre than you're in, but you want to choose adverbs that separate you from the herd.

Yes! Finally a good use for adverbs!! It's a writer's dream! Oh, and exclamation points. You can exclaim and excitedly note every last unique thing about your voice and your book. It's called selling. It's not the same as marketing but closely-related.

Whatever you say to sell your book needs to intrigue, not inform. You need to entice, not describe. You're not giving it all away (push), you're luring the reader in (pull). You need to become you, not your competition, in your reader's mind. That's what will make them click to buy your book not the other one. Read the descriptions and marketing blurbs your competition uses--then find something about yourself that is exactly the opposite and use that to sell yours. Don't write the opposite; write what you need to write, just sell the opposite.

What's Next....
Next week is Law 15, the Law of Candor, and it should be obvious after reading this week's entry that it will be closely-related to today's discussion about "being yourself."

Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip will be a Nanowrimo roundup. Have you finished 50,000 words? Done more? Less? Tune in tomorrow to see what you can do now that the event is over.

FREEBIE FRIDAY It's a #SciFi Surprise and not even Saturday Yet! #ConditionedResponse Snippet

2011-11-25T15:53:00.010-05:00

Warning, spoilers ahead!

If you are at all interested in reading my upcoming SciFi thriller, Conditioned Response, without knowing what happens, just leave now. I'm going to snippet something I'm currently working on from about the 80% mark of the book and the spoilers are abundant! Video and synchronicity lie ahead with the spoilers, though, so if you're spoiler-resistant, click on through the jump-break for the good stuff. If not, well, sorry...the eBook should be out sometime around New Year's or by the end of January, 2012 at the latest! Paperback edition to follow 3 months later.

I love synchronicity and today, it hit like some kind of cosmic harmonic. I was editing along in the scene right after Raif's death (around 125,000 words into the book). It was kind of a gruesome death: briefly, he and Shayla were having sex and a mental directive (or programming or brainwashing or whatever you want to call it) was triggered by the flood of brain chemicals that occurs when a man orgasms. Such a ripoff we females don't have the same flood of chemicals in our brains! The triggered directive was for Raif to try to kill Shayla. Her only defense was to kill him instead.

As we will have found out after the first 100,000+ words of this book, Phoenicians (the people of the Phoenix, sun worshippers) can absorb and radiate heat energy and some (99% of the time only males) can even direct it in what's referred to as a "throw" like firing a laser. A Phoenician throw is a glowing blue-white light that can be directed, focused, intensified--and obviously, fast "as the speed of light" :-)

Shayla is part of the 1% of females who can throw...so she does. She has to kill Raif--just after she's come to grips with the fact she's in love with him. Yeah, this is NOT a romance novel. The Hero dies and the Heroine...well, let's not give everything away just yet ^_^

Immediately after Shayla has done this, she's in shock. A couple of Proctors (Collier and Ronen) are trying to calm her down and find out what happened. Raif's "son" (Designated Heir as a person's sole legal genetic progeny is called in this futuristic dystopia), named Brennan, comes into the room and is looking at the charred remains....and at that moment, my playlist in RealPlayer started playing The Cruxshadows "Flames" from the album, Ethernaut. Check out these lyrics and play the video before scrolling down to read a snippet of what I was working on at that moment:

(chorus)
Anger, blacken my dream
A phoenix in flame,
returning in redemption
Angel, burning away
Cutting against the heartless unforgiven

And I see, the angel is me...the angel is me

Edited to add that another song from that album, Sofia, also has such amazingly relevant lyrics--and started playing as I was just finishing assembling this post.

And through these doubts and through your confusion
Know that you are chosen to this fight
Look to find a soul filled with compassion
Look to see a living source of light

(chorus)
Do not injustice to another
Defend the weak and innocent
Let truth and honor always guide you
Let courage find the light within

Stand up when no one else is willing,
Act not in hatred or in spite,
Be to this world a perfect Knight,
Even if it means your life

Here I am
Alive among the injured and the damned
Thy Will be done

Soooooo eerie how these lyrics fit the story! Proctors are essentially slaves, abused and injured and still willing to lay down their lives to protect the innocent (or at least the Councillor who owns them because their honor demands it) They are the injured and the damned, designed to stand up when no one else is willing. Proctors are the least entitled and most deserving in my futuristic dystopic view of humanity.

Oh yeah, and the snippet I was working on? As follows.....Bear in mind there's a lot of new material here so it's first draft, not proofread and could have missing words or other kinds of typos (as well as too many words because I blather on freely when I write and then go back to trim it up later!) I am NOT editing the formatting at all, just copy/pasting directly from MS Word into Blogger which may or may not format the paragraphs correctly. To anyone reading this blog via email, my apologies. I know Blogger's been munging any post where I copy/paste in from Word, leaving out spaces and such.

Soldier on, it's a rewarding enough read to make it worth it--and only 2275 words long. Just be sure to click "play" on The Cruxshadows first. Here's the Sofia video:

Brennan and Joshua walked apace, shoulder to shoulder, downthe wide hallway on the third floor ofthe Council Office building in the Western Region. Their heels clicked on thepolished stone and Brennan noticed their cadence was synchronized. He felt a little traitorous about that, marching along as though he belonged atJoshua’s side. He didn’t, not the way he did with Raif, but in just the fewhours he’d spent alone with the man, they’d slipped into a comfortable and familiar rapport.

He was definitely in the middle of somethingnow and for the first time in Brennan’s short life, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to be a Proctor anymore. That wasn’t going to go over well with Raif, who was a Proctor to his core, and especially not when he saw Brennan marching along in time with the man like he'd become some kind of puppet. Maybe it was petty, but Brennan put a little half step into his march to deliberately knock himself out of cadence with Joshua. The man glanced quickly at Brennan then shook his head with a smile and returned his attention to their destination at the end of the hall. The man certainly was focused, even more so than Raif.

Until the very moment when Joshua’s retinal scan had grantedthem access to the private lift out of the underground garage and up to theCouncillors’ Level A3, Brennan hadn’t completely believed the man was really theAdministrator. He believed it now—but that only made him feel even more guilty.Raif really didn’t trust this guy no matter what kind of title he claimed.Brennan wasn’t sure what his progenitor had against the man, but he suspectedhe was going to end up in the middle of their conflict the same way he hadended up involved in Raif’s complicated relationship to Shayla. Then there wasJulia. To say the least, Brennan was in the middle of that Raif relationship.In fact, Brennan seemed to have ended up in the middle of everything lately,just when he’d thought joining Raif on Shayla’s team was going to simplify hislife. So much for that idea.

It was clear from the congregation of grey uniforms outsideShayla’s office that something was going on. Of course, Brennan already knew somethingwas going on; he just didn’t know what. Joshua did, or had hinted asmuch back in Trouville but Brennan had been so caught up in riding in thatViper, he’d neglected to take the few unmonitored minutes alone with the man togrill him about what he thought was going on here.

And it really had been just a few minutes, barelytwenty, from the time they’d taken off until they’d scanned into that privatelift. The Viper was so damned fast. The ground under his feet still sent littleripples of vibration through him from being shaken around in that thing. Hehadn’t known the Viper had no dampening field. It was fun, once, but once wasenough for Brennan.

He hoped nothing bad hadhappened to Shayla, but given Raif’s erratic and emotional state when last he’dseen them, Brennan wouldn’t be surprised to learn Raif had lost all situationalawareness and let something slip in under his guard. Or worse, given hisprogenitor was falling apart at the seams—Raif’s own words that morning—andBrennan really didn’t want to be in the middle of an investigation, not witheverything else he was in the middle of already.

Private Bowman, the only one newer to the team than Brennan,was apparently defending the door alone against an onslaught of Proctors allasking questions at once. No one even noticed Brennan and Joshua’s arrival atthe back of the crowd. Brennan recognized most of the guys, a few were onShayla’s team but most weren’t, they just worked on the hall. That’s whenBrennan realized the hallway had been empty as they’d walked down it. Heglanced back and sure enough, the guys who worked the doors they’d passed weremissing—or rather, they were all crowded in here—and some of the crowd didn’teven work on this floor. What was the big attraction?

If he’d been in uniform,he might’ve gotten an emergency code tapped out on his Proctor’s belt. TheProctors had learned long ago to use their alarms—the means by which theirCouncillors could call them—with a binary code to communicate. It was based onsome archaic code named after some guy back on Earth named Morse but sinceBrennan wasn't in uniform. He was still in the Class Two clothes he’d been wearing when they'd left so hehad no idea if a call had gone out.

One of the guys at the front of the crowd, Sam, was right inBowman’s face, demanding he be let into the office. Sam was a big bruiser of a guy and the only other Proctor still alive from Raif’s class atthe Academy. Sam had been working in Security ever since graduating. If Samwere here, whatever Bowman was coping with was way over his paygrade. Brennan hoped he'd realize that soon and just cave. It would be the smart thing to do.

Joshua had been standing quietly next to Brennan, handsclasped low and loosely in front of himself, eyes scanning from one Proctor to the next. Now hecleared his throat and quick as that, every head turned and fell to silentattention. Then every Proctor in the crowd turned to face the pair of newarrivals and bowed over at them.

Without thinking, Brennan muttered, “What the fuck?”

He felt, rather than saw, Joshua's reaction. Sure enough whenhe glanced over at Joshua’s face, he found the man looking back with condescending impatience. Quietly, Joshua said, “Brennan,I’m glad you’re comfortable enough with me to open up and speak freely whenwe’re alone, but I’m afraid, Proctor, that in public, I must insist youremember I’m still the Administrator.” Then Joshua raised an eyebrowat Brennan expectantly.

That’s when Brennan’s gaze took in the golden broach pinnedto Joshua’s silk tunic, just over his heart. The Administrator’s Seal. The guyhad been wearing it in his hair, like some kind jewelry, hiding it in plain sight. Fuck. Brennan forced himself to bow overin proper deference to the office and he had to admit, to the man as well. When Brennan straightened up and scanned the faces in frontof him, he noted Sam was practically grinding his teeth to keep from speakinghis mind in front of the Administrator.

Joshua asked the crowd, “Which of you is actually assignedto this Office?”

“Sir,” Bowman actually raised his hand and tried to shoulderhis way into the crowd, “That’d be me, Sir. Private Bowman. Sir.”

Joshua’s eyes danced in amusement but his tone belied nocondescension. “Stay right there, Bowman, and,” Joshua turned to Sam, “You’refrom Security, I take it?”

“Yes, Sir.” Sam answered.

“Then I’d ask you to secure this hallway, starting withdispersing this crowd so that I might have a word with PrivateBowman.” When Sam didn't immediately jump to comply, Joshua added, “Immediately, if youdon’t mind.”

“Yes, Sir.” Sam repeated, “But I’ll have to ask you notto enter the premises before I return. Ishould accompany you in if you choose to enter the Office. I haven’t yet conducted a formal investigation into whathappened and I can’t allow forensic evidence to be disturbed. I’m sure you’llunderstand my request that you wait for me to accompany you.”

Joshua said, “I understand.” But Brennan could hear in theman’s tone that he completely understood Sam’s request. There was something inside that Sam figured might need to be covered up—and Sam intended to do sobefore letting the Administrator in to see it. Unfortunatelyfor Sam, Brennan also knew that Joshua Andrew Caine had no intention ofallowing Sam the lowly Security Proctor to either conceal evidence or tell himwhat he could or couldn’t do. Sam was going to be lucky if Joshua allowed himinto the room.

Sam corralled the Proctors down the hall and left Brennanand Joshua alone with Private Bowman in front of the closed door to Shayla’soffice and living quarters. Now that everyone was gone, Brennan got a clearview of the door. Something had hit it hard—from the inside—hard enough to actuallydent the door. That was a door made out of a laser-proof alloy. It would take acannon to make a dent like that and you couldn’t exactly fit one through thefront door of the building, let alone the interior door of the office. Therewas only one thing on the planet that could dent the door like that and stillfit inside that room and she didn't strike him as the kind of woman to be into violent sex so Brennan had to think of another reason why she might havebanged on the door like that. It came to him quickly: to get out. What had Raif done that Shayla hadfelt she needed to escape by banging the door down?

Joshua waited until the crowd was nearly out of earshot andthen spoke quietly to the private. “Now, Private Bowman, I’d like you to openthat door so that myself and Brennan here can go in. Then, you are to close itand keep it closed unless or until I, personally, direct you otherwise. Noone goes in, no one comes out. Is thatclear?”

Bowman gulped, nodded, then finally said, “Yes, Sir.” Theprivate took an override key off his belt and held it over the contact. Thedoor started to slide open but scraped and ground to a halt three quarters ofthe way. It was enough. Brennan could see into the room. Joshua took in and letout a deep breath then put a hand onto Bowman’s shoulder. The greenhorn wasstaring at his feet as though afraid to look anywhere else.

“Thank you, Bowman.” Joshua said and patted at the man’sshoulder then strode into the room without hesitation.

Brennanstood there in the doorway looking in. Inside and to the left, Collier wascrouched down next to the desk, at Shayla’s feet, and Ronen was behind thedesk, trying to close the door again. Joshua was headed straight for them, butnot Brennan. His eyes were drawn inside to the right, where the morbidity ofdeath, starkly dark and crisply charred against the soft, peach-colored sheetsof his Councillor's bed was laid out before him. Brennan walked slowly towardsthe grisly spectacle and noticed Collier stood up and moved to intercept him. They met at the side of thebed, Raif’s clothes mingled with Shayla’s on the floor at their feet. It waspretty obvious just from the discarded clothing who was in the bed and whathe’d been doing there. Brennan had hoped he’d had it wrong but the charredcarcass on the bed spoke volumes.

He just had to hope Raif hadn’t hurt her, the way he’d saidhe was worried he might do. It wasn’t right for a man like Raif to end hislegendary career in an act as heinous as assaulting his Councillor. Sexually assaulting her. Raif wouldrather have died, which had to kind of give the scene in front of Brennan moremeaning the longer he took it in. Ofcourse, it was possible Shayla hadn’t deliberately done this but had just hadanother “accident” like the one she’d nearly had back in Trouville. He’dprobably have to testify against her if that were the case. That would be justgreat.

Collier asked him, “What do you think happened?”

Brennan's head snapped up from his study of the remains.“She didn’t tell you?”

“No, she’s not making any sense." Brennan was going to ask something else but Collier rattled on, flood gates wide open for a sympathetic ear. "She hardly even knows herown name right now. I’ve never seen her like this, not even when Dramond—notever, not in the thirteen years I’ve known her. She’s always been able to keepit together. It’s what made her such a good leader. You could trust her to keepit together when everyone else fell apart." Collier finally ground to a halt and added in a whisper, "It’s what they had in common.”

Brennan’s eyes had fallen back to the charred remains on thebed in front of him. “Has this been going on for a while?”

“Has what been going on?”

“Him, them sleeping together. He told me he wasn’t but obviously, he was. How longhas it been going on?”

Collier straightened up. “Look, Brennan, you’re new so I’mgonna pretend you didn’t say that—once. Don’t you ever say a thing likethat again. He never laid a hand on her in thirteen years and she wouldn’t havelet him if he tried. That doesn’t happen on this team, you get it?”

“Collier, look at that corpse. It happened today. I’m justtrying to figure out whose idea it was. If he forced himself on her—”

“He wouldn’t and you see this?” Collier pointed to his ownscarred face. “She wouldn’t have let him. She’s told me for years how seeingthis reminds her, she’ll never take a human lover again. And no onecould force her to do anything. She could snap you in half over her knee, andshe could have thrown him off with one hand tied behind her back if he’d evertried anything—but he wouldn’t. Neither of them–you don’t understand, Brennan.You haven’t been here long enough. They weren’t like that.”

That’s when Brennanrealized the guy was in love with Shayla. He’d heard the Proctor talk in the Loungethat Collier kept the scars because he thought he and Shayla were going to getback together, but now Brennan could see it. Looking at the charred remains,Collier saw Shayla’s betrayal of his own unrequited love. Brennan hadn’t beenhere long, it was true, but he’d seen how Shayla had looked at Raif, how she’dpractically melted under his touch. She was never going to look at Collier thatway. Poor guy just didn’t know it.

“Look Collier, the dent in that door says she had a reasonto want to get out of here.”

“You’re looking at it, Brennan. Shit, I’ve only been here afew minutes and I want to bang the door down to get away from that. Weneed to figure out what happened—and how we’re going to handle…them.”Collier looked past Brennan at the closed door. “I’m not the only one who’llwant to avenge Raif’s death, but something truly fucked up happened here and wedon’t know who did it. Either you’re going to help me get to the truth or youcan just turn around and wait out there with the rest of them. I had tolet the Administrator in. You, I got no problem tossing outta here. With Raifout of the picture, I’m ranking officer and that puts me in charge. Gotit?”

Brennan had to admit, the stench of burnt flesh was gettingto him but he wasn’t ready to leave and he wasn’t about to let Collier take theupper hand with him. For some reason, the guy had had it in for Brennan sincethe day he arrived. It had to be the face he was wearing. Raif’s face.

“Got it. Let’s work together, Collier.”

“Good call, asshole. Now see if she’ll talk to that magicface of yours. Get down low so she can see you.”

Yeah, Collier’s objection to Brennan was definitely tied tothe way he looked. Brennan never asked for this face and he’d offered to changeit when he’d found out about Raif. He used to like to look in the mirror, didn’tmind the way he looked but now…. He didn’t like being one of many. He wasn’tmuch but at least he’d still been himself until Raif and Joshua showed up. Nowhe was just some copy of some else. Two someones. A copy of a copy? He didn’teven know anymore.

He crouched in front of Shayla and at first she didn’t evennotice him then she suddenly recognized the familiar face and took said face inboth hands, cradling the damning features between her palms. It made him feel likea thing, like he’d felt back in the early days on Kindi’s table, before he’dlearned to disassociate from the moment. He wanted to distance himself now,escape into his own mind and never come out again—or not until she stoppedlooking at him like that, searching for Raif behind Brennan’s eyes. What wouldshe find, he wondered. Not Raif, he hoped.

Her hands dropped to her lap and her eyes welled up again.Not Raif, it seemed. He didn’t want to feel guilty for being glad she could seethe difference so easily.

He asked her, “Tell me what happened, Shayla. After you andRaif came in here, did he—what did he do?”

“He asked me to kill him, Brennan. He handed me his gun andasked me to just—he knew. He knew they’d used him and…I thought I’d fixed it. Itried to fix it, but they tricked me. They used him, Brennan, they used him toget to me and used me to—”

Brennan glanced back over at the bed—and all of the facesstaring down at him, expecting him to magically extract the truth from her. Itseemed to be working so he kept going. “Shayla, a pistol wouldn’t have donethat. The whole bed would’ve gone up, half the room or—you didn’t use his gun,did you?”

“No. No gun. Just me. I killed him myself.” She looked up,directly into his eyes. “I hate guns, Brennan. You know I hate guns. I just couldn’tstop it.”

“Like in Trouville?” Joshua asked from behind her.

“No.” She shook her head. “The trigger. I couldn’t stop thetrigger in his head from firing.” Brennan leaned back and the other twoProctors took a small step away from her. It was a conditioned response. Theword “trigger” held that kind of power in their conditioned minds.

Shayla went on, “They planted it, mixed it in with his realfeelings and I just…I was respecting his privacy. I didn’t see it when wemade—” She put a hand up over her mouth and her chest heaved a few times then,faster than Brennan could even track with his eyes, she’d reached forward intohis jacket and pulled out his long blade, the one he’d had sheathed under hisarm. She just knocked his arm out of the way and grabbed almost twentycentimeters of lethal metal. It gleamed in her hands as her eyes spilled overwith tears. She lifted the knife and turned it towards herself and he grabbedfor her, trying to stop her from hurting herself.

She blocked with her free arm and then kicked him once, hardin the center of his chest with the flat of her foot. He went flying across theroom. His head slammed into the wall over the couch and he stumbled over thearm of the couch on his way down to the floor. He broke his fall badly, landingwith all his weight on one hand. He didn’t lose consciousness but he had to havebeen hallucinating. When he focused on her again, Joshua was holding Collierback and Ronen was helping her hack off her hip-length hair. It was glowing. Shewas glowing as she sawed at the locks, one handful after another, cutting thehair off up at the base of her skull and throwing the clumps to the floor whereRonen was picking them up.

Collier got free and crossed the room towards Brennan, thenslapped at his face to get his attention.

“You hear me?”

“I’m here.” Brennan assured him but it was hard to focus. Orbreathe.

Collier’s fingers probed roughly in a quick fieldexamination. “You’ll live. I’ll get a MedTech up here to stitch that. Don’tmove.”

“What?”

Brennan looked down at his hand, where Collier had pointed,and saw that his wrist was probably broken. He didn’t know how his hand couldbend back that way otherwise. He hadn’t even felt it until he’d seen it. Now ithurt, to say the least.

Collier went back to the desk and Brennan heard him tellJoshua that Brennan’s collar bone was fractured. Was it? No way. He lifted hisgood hand to probe himself and decided it was probably a shoulder blade not hiscollar bone, but he’d be glad to see the MedTech and his pain killer patches. Ronenleft the office carrying Shayla’s hair stretched between his hands like it wassome kind of corpse he was carrying. Brennan tried to twist his head around tosee up over his head and check the damage his impact had done to the wall. He’djust decided maybe his collarbone was broken, too, when Joshua crouched down infront of him.

“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”

“Hey, I’m the one lying here.” Brennan defended himselfthough he wasn’t sure what he’d done wrong.

“Exactly my point.”Joshua stood up and added to Collier. “There’s a specific MedTech I’d like youto get up here if you don’t mind requesting him by name.”

“We got a guy weusually use. He’s already familiar with all of our—sorry, Administrator.”Collier dropped his head in shame. “What’s the name of the MedTech you’d likeme to request?”

“Jared.”

Collier’s headsnapped up. “That’s our guy.”

“Is it? Well, isn’tthat nice? Then we’ll all be happy. Please see to that immediately, Collier, andthen I’d appreciate your waiting out in the hall for him, to intercept himbefore any of your friends out there do.”

“Yes, Sir. I’lltake care of it, Sir.” Collier snapped to attention and gave a curt bow thentrotted off to fulfill his assignment.

Joshua croucheddown again and said “We’re going to get you patched up good as new andthen you’re not to get yourself broken again, is that clear? Just say yes,Brennan, like a good little boy because I really don’t have time to kill youand start all over again.”

Brennan was definitely seeing what Raif didn’t like about the guy.

TUESDAY TIP #Nanowrimo 8 Tips for the Last 8 Days - R U #writing ? #nanonano

2011-11-22T08:00:00.091-05:00

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 and there are 8 days left to Nanowrimo. Today's post is addressed to all of you who are participating in the worldwide event to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I don't know if I can help you but I'm going to try. First I have some questions for you.

Are you ahead or behind as of right now this minute? Even if you were precisely on schedule, and have been doing exactly the 1667 words per day for 22 days, you'd have 13,336 words left to write by midnight on November 30th. That is, as of today, do you have 36,674 words done? Is that you? Some people could write 13k words in a day (I've done it more than once, when I'm on a roll and have no interruptions). Some people can't write 13k words in a month. Which are you? How you answer this word count question is the biggest danger of all this week. Are you being honest with yourself or conning yourself and everyone else?

Be truthful with yourself. Don't worry about checking in with your Nanowrimo buddies, don't even care about logging your word count at the site and having to explain it to anyone. Just be sure you're being honest with yourself. You are the only one whose opinion matters when it comes to how you "should" approach your writing activity. In addition, you have to live with yourself no matter what you're doing or how you're doing it, so be honest and you'll have an easier time of sleeping at night--you need your sleep to think clearly and write!

Are you ahead, on schedule or behind? Just make sure you know where you are now and then you can figure out how to get to where you want to be. Nanowrimo is supposed to be FUN not a conscience-breaking activity of guilt, stress and worry. Take a breath, sit back and click through the jump-break to see which of the following applies to you: Ahead of Schedule, Right on the Mark or Falling Behind.

Ahead of Schedule
You are the lucky ones but don't get too full of yourself. You could still fail to meet the 50,000 words in 30 days goal unless you're already so far ahead you have met or passed that goal today. If you're, for instance, at 45,000 words and think No problemo, I can write another 5,000 words after the Thanksgiving break.

Careful! Don't bet that nothing will happen to get in your way. Murphy lurks around the corner just waiting for you to think like that. Also don't bet that taking a few days or a weekend off writing completely won't have an impact on your ability to get your head back into the story. Sometimes the best thing to do when you're a little ahead is take a short break to just relax, but don't take a long one. Keep up your energy and enthusiasm and rhythm until you are at or past the deadline. THEN you can relax ^_^

Right on the Mark
You are not out of the woods just because you're on the mark. You still have 13k words to write! If you can get a little ahead, you might want to do that while you still have time. If you're American, this week is going to be so full of distractions and temptations to not write it's going to set you back unless you're a strictly self-disciplined individual. Not to denounce my own kind, but creative writers aren't usually the most organized or disciplined individuals. Sometimes, you run across one (like me) who's compulsively organized or analytical (I'm an engineer), but usually, creative writers (artists of all creative endeavours, actually) are kind of lacksadaisical about deadlines.

In fact, generally, the more a creative person tries to "force" their creativity onto a schedule, the harder it is to create. That's kind of the point of Nanowrimo--forcing yourself to learn how to be creative "on demand" and work against a deadline. It's not easy and in fact, if you've achieved 36k words already, you can pat yourself on the back for being committed for the first 21 days. Good job! Now for the home stretch.

Falling a Little Behind
I'm distinguishing this last category into two parts because if you're just a little behind--say at 30k words--you still have a chance to catch up. It's not impossible. If, however, you are at say, 5-10k words still, I'm pretty sure you'll never make it. I'm about as prolific a writer as it gets and I'd have trouble churning out 40k-45k words in 8 days. That is, I would if I had to live real life as well. I could do it if I had 16 hrs a day to devote to nothing but writing and had my meals prepared for me, groceries magically appeared and laundry either got done by itself or didn't need to be done at all. Seriously, who's taking the last 8 days of November "off" from life, work, home, and everything else just to devote 100% focus to writing the bulk of the project? No one, that's who.

If you're still in the 5-10k range, admit you've given up and just enjoy the rest of your month. Hit the Nano forums and play the Nano games. Or better than just blowing it all off, help someone else meet the goal! You can encourage your fellow Nanowrimos by reading their stuff and commenting on it. If you can't write your own 50k words, don't beat yourself up for it. You can still benefit from the Nanowrimo experience.

One of the best-known ways to improve your own writing skills is to read others' work, and learning to verbalize a critique in a constructive and useful way is a hard-to-learn skill you can achieve this last week while helping others. It can still become a win/win!

If you're just a little behind or right on schedule (and American with holiday weekend plans), then the balance of this post is for you. Here are some tips for how to time-manage yourself for the next 8 days. First of all, if you're American, then you've probably already encountered the "mad rush" at work or out and about. Americans are scrambling to get "everything" done by Wednesday because either they're travelling to join family for Thanksgiving on Thursday or have company coming. If you're a Brit, you are at a serious advantage right now! This week is why you Britons keep slamming us Yanks on the word count each year.

So what's Thanksgiving got to do with your Nano plans? Accept the reality that you are probably not getting 7 days of productive time this week. Maybe 3, if you're lucky! Don't lay a guilt trip on yourself. Accept it and optimize the time you have left. (Geez, sounds like you've just gotten a death sentence, doesn't it?)

8 Tips for the Last 8 Nanodays

(1) Schedule a specific amount of time at a specific time of day to devote exclusively to writing. Say 1 hr every morning from 6am to 7am (before everyone else in your house is up; maybe that's 5am in your house. I'm up at 4am so no sympathy here! haha)

(2) Think about your writing during the other 23 hours when you're not at the keyboard. Don't ever stop "editing" in your head. Replay the last scene you wrote--you should be able to remember that much, right? Keeping your head in the game while away from the keyboard will get you back onto the keys that much faster when it's writing time again

(3) Use a kitchen timer to clock your 1 hr a day and enforce the NO INTERRUPTIONS rule. If this has been a problem in your house for the first 3 weeks, I suggest you draw the analogy that you would like to have your writing time treated as though you are sitting on the toilet. Note that you really need the privacy and would appreciate receiving that level of respect.

I know it's explicit language but I think you'll be surprised how the mention of a toilet gets attention, especially from kids who can't relate to the word "work" but can understand why you might want to be left alone in the bathroom. If you want your 1 hr, take it! If your kids are young enough that they (a) don't understand why you want to be alone in the bathroom and (b) still take a nap in the afternoon, plan your writing time for when they go down to sleep. Insist that they must be quiet--for themselves. It's nap time after all! And hey, added bonus, after a week of "training" like this, you might actually have some better-behaved kids when it comes to going to bed, huh? ^_^

(4) Color outside the lines, so to speak. Stop worrying about how to describe things or what a person "should" say and just write the first thing that comes to mind. If you're really having trouble getting past a plot point, you know, you can skip it. You don't have to write every single scene in the exact order in which it appears in the final. In fact, you don't have to write every single scene in the book right now. Or at all. Maybe the scene you're struggling with is a struggle because it doesn't need to be written.

Just put a little placeholder in there, write a note to yourself about the sucky scene or person or room description and move on. Right now, you're so deep inside the book's creation, you might bet getting lost in the forest for the sake of the trees. This is precisely the kind of situation from whence that cliche sprang! The details (trees) aren't anywhere near as important as the forest that is the whole book. You need to get to The End of the forest not wander aimlessly around the same trees five times. Slap a note on the tree so you can find it again later and keep going.

In December, when you come back to it, you might read the note and write the scene--or you might delete the whole thing and wonder why you cared so much. It's called getting a little "distance" over time. This week is not the time to get distance. Next month will be.

(5) Along those same lines, don't forget: You can write whatever you like. The 50,000 words do not have to be good words or even sequential words. Who ever wrote that rule? I definitely did not see that rule in the Nanorules and Chris Baty came up with some pretty amazing "rules." If you haven't read the rules already, you probably shouldn't take a few minutes out now to read them because they're guaranteed to give a much-needed laugh after all this "advice" of mine. Read Chris Baty's hilarious NanoFAQ. It'll cheer you up--and reassure you that you can write any scene from anywhere in the book and it'll count. My favorite is one of the first ones:

Q: Can I write one word 50,000 times?
A: No. Well… No.

See? He thought about a minute and took THREE words to answer :) Since you never have to upload actual words, no one will know...other than you and as I said at the start of this blog post, you have to live with yourself so be honest.

(6) This one will probably surprise you. Stop plotting. If you've never jumped around when writing before, give it a try. It's a lot easier to just use an outline as a guide when your concern is getting a logical progression of events for your plot and you want to assure your book has a beginning, middle and end. However....

If your goal is simply to generate content, you might find it's a lot easier to not care about how it all ties together. Worry about that in December--or maybe never at all. Maybe you'll find it easier to start writing more by digging into the past of a scene or character's life. This is a technique referred to as interviewing your characters and I've mentioned it before. Here's a sample list of questions or just Google the phrase "interviewing your characters" and choose from the list of results. There are a lot of sample interviews out there. It's a fairly common technique for generating content and has been for a number of decades (since WW II era or umm, maybe back to the time of Homer--and I don't mean Homer Simpson! *GGG*)

(7) Stop watching TV, videos/movies or playing XBOX. Or anything else that might distract you like email and Facebook and Twitter. In fact, hide the Wii, XBOX or Kinetic controller until December. Just make it go away so it cannot tempt you. Unplug the modem whenever you want to write and forget that the internet exists--unless your characters use it for something ;-)

If you have other activities you tend to do instead of writing, do whatever you can or must to eliminate those distractions from your life. It's just ONE MORE WEEK. You can live without pretty much anything for just one week, right? I happen to be totally addicted to a handful of TV shows but you know, I lived for over 2 years without owning a television at all when I first returned to the US. I did not miss it as much as I thought I would--and I got soooo much writing done!

(8) Take a walk, or if you don't have time to talk a walk (or have kids and can't leave them alone in the house), do some jumping jacks, jogging in place, something to get your heart rate up and your blood flowing. I'm not kidding. A very wise man named Gardner Dozois (used to be one of the top editors in the SF/F genre and is still out there selling gems of wisdom if you look for him) once noted: Your brain is your best tool for writing but unfortunately, it's attached to your body so you must maintain your physical health in order to maintain the optimal use of your mental faculties. Exercise is the best thing you can do to give the creative juices a boost.

That's it for the inspirational tips. I know it's not much but I'm sorry to have to say again, I've never been at a lack for things to write. Most people want me to write less, not churn out more words. Well, except for my unique and special snowflake readers :-)

What's Next....
I'm not sure what I'll be generating for my readers this weekend but I can assure you there'll be something. Possibly some artwork. Maybe even two new hands for Cartoon Dicky!! Woo-hoo!! The one thing I can say I'll be doing by Saturday is not a surprise: before then I'll have removed the content of Conditioned Response from Authonomy, so if you wanted to read the first 80% or so of that book before I release it, now would be the time! I haven't decided if I'll kill the files on Wednesday or Thursday but "Friday's" work will be gone from Authonomy before Friday (GGG) I'm getting so close to having that book done, I can almost taste it!

MONDAY MARKETING Law of Sacrifice - 3 Things U Can Give Up to Gain Market Share #marketing #pubtip #indie #publishing @MikeWellsAuthor

2011-11-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

Thanks for stopping in on the Monday Marketing series. I'm discussing branding and designing the Indie Author Publishing Company you want to keep. Like any other business, your career in Indie Publishing requires you to define a brand and market yourself in the most effective way. The exact same rules apply as those used by the Madison Avenue wizards selling widgets.

If you're just joining us, we're using one of the best little books on marketing ever written: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by two of the original Madison Avenue wizards. If you've never read this book, it's only about a 1/4" thick in paperback. Take 5 minutes to read it now then check the previous entries of this series to read my interpretations of how these laws apply to us and our business.

Today we're looking at Law 13: Sacrifice and I think it's timely this week falls just days before Thanksgiving because hopefully, you'll be in the right frame of mind to start thinking about what you have instead of what you have not. That is the key to understanding the Law of Sacrifice. There are 3 areas of Sacrifice: brand focus, target market, constantly changing to keep up with sudden shifts in the market.

The idea isn't new: No one can be all things to all people all the time. You have to choose your brand's focus, choose your target market, and choose your long-term strategy--then keep the Company you just created with those choices. Be "thankful" for your choices by being "faithful" to them. Click through the jump-break for more.

1. The Oh, Shiny! Effect

People--you, me, readers, reviewers, everyone--is affected by the next Shiny New Thing syndrome, some more than others. I don't tend to follow fads eagerly but I do notice them, and then there are some people who jump on the bandwagon in a heartbeat, hoping for a free ride. There are also many in between. Point is, no one is immune to the Oh, Shiny! effect, but you can sensitize yourself to it and make an informed choice next time something new and shiny comes along to distract you.

The world of business is populated by big, highly-diversified generalists and small, narrowly-focused specialists. If line extension and diversification were really effective marketing strategies, the generalists would be dominating the market. Instead, they're in financial trouble while specialists expand their market share with focused niches.

The point is, you have to stay focused, stay on path, not waver and not deliberately spread yourself so thin, you just vanish. From our reference book, we have the example of multi-national conglomerate, Kraft Foods, Inc. Pretty big multi-billion dollar corporation so you'd figure they're doing something right, yeah? Wrong.

Kraft Foods is a generalized brand that makes all kinds of things, including jams and jellies, but they only held 9% of the market (in 1993 when my edition of the book was released) while Smuckers (which at that time made only jams and jellies) held 35% of the market--four times the market share for specializing in one niche market! Smuckers has spent the last 20 years buying up companies but never once have they slapped the Smuckers name onto the products.

In fact, the book (from 1993) actually uses the phrase "...with a name like Smuckers, it has to be jelly or jam because that's all Smuckers makes." And today, the Smuckers slogan remains "With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good." Amazing? Not. It's proof that when it "ain't broke, you don't fix it." and it keeps working for you. Smuckers actually stuck it out and now owns other brand names: JIF peanut butter, Folgers coffee which actually competes with another Smuckers holding, Millstone coffee. They even bought the Pillsbury doughboy (pout) Check out some of the many other brands now owned by Smuckers) but note that the Smuckers brand, itself, is still associated first as a maker of jams and jellies. They own that "word" in the prospect's mind. When you hear the name Smuckers, you think jams and jellies.

In our Indie Author terms, the message reinforces the idea introduced last week: make a new author name for a new genre or you devalue the investment you already made into your original author name in your flagship genre. Since sales are tracked by exact name, creating a new name won't have any impact on your existing record and gives you a new opportunity to "be first" all over again. Take it!

2. Sacrificing Your Target for Your Market
The Law of Sacrifice not only warns against losing focus in an attempt to capture new sales, but also warns against misunderstanding the difference between your target and your market. This is a much-debated and oft-blogged-about topic in the Indie Author community just as the term "branding" gets tossed about and sliced adn diced by individuals according to their personal tastes. There is a reality, however, and while perception is everything, I'm a numbers grrl. I go with the real numbers that history has proven are truth.

The target of your marketing is not always the same as the person who buys your product.

I think everyone here can relate to this next example whether you're 25 or 50 (or older). Pepsi Cola decided to launch a new campaign in the 80s using the Law of Opposites and they did it very well.

Coca-Cola was "The Real Thing" so Pepsi was the "New Generation." Coke appealed with old-fashioned glass bottles implying their authenticity dated back to wagon-train days of discovering America. So Pepsi did the opposite.

Even if you didn't like Michael Jackson (how could you not love the King of Pop?), if you were alive when he had his spectacular mishap on the filming of a Pepsi commercial, you got the idea of Pepsi and pop music star inextricably linked in your mind.

The incident was all over the six o'clock news (back then, we did not yet have CNN's 24-hr news stations, so people actually tuned in at 6pm and again at 11pm to watch the news). It was a huge deal that a major music star had (a) endorsed a brand product and (b) been injured doing it. It even kind of helped blur that line between pop music stars and sports stars. Major impact on life in America. Pepsi Cola ads.

And it didn't stop there. Years later, Britney Spears had her own "mishap" and again, Pepsi became a "young kids' thing" in the news by being linked inextricably to the hottest piece of pop music news at that time. In addition to "making news headlines," the Pepsi ads in the 1980s when this Pepsi Generation campaign launched were so innovative, some of the Pepsi ads actually "premiered" as an event on MTV (that's what we had before YouTube *grin*). In fact, some of the Pepsi ads were so well-promoted they got better viewership than MTV's actual content. wisely, Pepsi has continued to use the same campaign and it is still working for them! Imagine that.

Guess what else? The target might be the "young kids" but the market includes everyone. Plenty of 50-year-old guys drink Pepsi because they want to feel like a 20-something.

3. The Only Constant is Change
Sacrifice #3 is constant change. Although it might feel like the right thing to do to change horses midstream and keep up with what the current best-selling author is doing, that's not always the best path to take. If you weren't convinced by the Pepsi Cola Company "New Generation" campaign still working 20 years later, you skimmed. Go back and read it again.

The best way to maintain a consistent position in the market, is to not change your marketing strategy in the first place.

To be effective in business, you have to commit to the brand you've chosen, and not let your self-confidence waver just because ten people in some online forum said something else is better right now. Be focused, be faithful, be patient and persistent. That last--persistence--was recently heralded as a secret to success in this great little blog article by Tweep Mike Wells (@MikeWellsAuthor). Be sure to check it out--but only now that you've finished reading thi--Oooh, shiny!

^_^

What's Next....
Tomorrow I'll have another Nanowrimo tip for you on the Tuesday Tips blog. This is historically the hardest week of the month. Remember, none of that Oooh, shiny! business! Let's see what advice I can come up with to help you stay focused.

FREEBIE FRIDAY #SciFi #Romance #Paranormal #Mystery and #Technothriller #action What r u reading? #WAYR @fridayreads @goodreads #weekendgoodreads

2011-11-18T08:37:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the last Freebie Friday feature at the Webbiegrrl blog. Due to a number of factors and recent changes to my work schedule (with more coming in the next 30-60 days), I'll be discontinuing this feature after today. I didn't want to just "cancel without notice" but don't worry, I won't leave you without resources.

Today's 3 freebies are selected (by me) from the collection of free eBooks by Indie Authors assembled at Bibliotastic.com. Bibliotastic has only free eBooks--all free, all the time. You simply register with Bibliotastic and you can download the Kindle (PRC), Nook/Apple (ePub) or PDF file in seconds. Please bookmark the site to find new freebies yourself in the weeks to come!

I was first turned onto Bibliotastic.com by Letitia Coyne, whose book, Petra, was featured here back in July, 2011 and will be the first of this week's featured freebies as my way of saying yet another "thank you" to Letitia for the tip. (hugs) Plus, I love that Letitia wrote a story highlight slavery. Given my November campaign to raise awareness to #StopHumanTrafficking and #endSlavery, I cannot think of a better way to kick off my final feature.

Petra is an "unputdownable" non-formulaic Historical Romance by Aussie Indie, Letitia Coyne, which has some fantasy elements of world-building in an alternate reality.

Aya grew up as a scavenger, trailing the Bedouin caravans. Bought from the arena as a young man, his new life as Sethos, the adopted son of a wealthy Roman merchant, is stained by the stigma of his past.

Jaida was raised in luxurious slavery, destined to be a virgin oracle. When the fall of a dice brings her future into question, it is Sethos who must define freedom and slavery, life or liberty – for himself and for her. He has money, strength and cunning, and she has no more than her faith.

Staying with the fantasy and alternate reality meme, I give you The Demon Girl by London-based Indie, Penelope Fletcher (@Miss_Fletcher). This is the beginning of the Rae Wilder series so proceed at your own risk if you're an addictive reader! At the moment (no guarantees about 5 minutes from now or whenever you might check it), this book is also priced at $0.00 in the American Amazon Kindle Store so you can download it for free direct to your Kindle if you'd like. Get the ePub (Nook) or PDF files from Bibliotastic. Check out Miss Fletcher's Facebook for deets on the other 2 books of this series.

Rae Wilder has problems. Supernatural creatures swarm the earth, and humanity is on the brink of extinction. Stalked by a handsome fairy who claims she is like him, demonkind, Rae thinks maybe it was a mistake breaking the rules by going over the Wall into demon territory. Plunged into a world of dark magics, fierce creatures, and ritual sacrifice, she is charged with a guarding a magical amulet.

The changes to her mind and body are startling, but rather than accept her purpose she struggles against who she is destined to be. Throw in a big lust for a vampire who can't keep his hands off her, and life starts to get complicated.

Rae is forced to make the ultimate choice: to live and die human, or embrace her birth-right and wield magics that could turn her into something wicked, a force of nature nothing can control.

Lastly, because we seem to have a theme going on here, I'll give you a mystery/thriller that is also set in an alternate reality but this last feature has no paranormal elements. Probably. Unless you count the ghost in the machine! ^_^

I haven't read this book but the reviews imply it is a geekfest of techtalk and since I am, after all the webbiegrrl, I figured Rice Tea by the young "queer Canadian" author/filmmaker, Julien McArdle (@BotnetMovie), was an appropriate title with which to close the final feature. Thank you for letting me use you, Julien! O_o

Seth Arnott is not your typical undergraduate student. Gifted and bored, he uses his computer skills and an uncanny understanding of the telephone network to unleash pranks across campus. When Seth accidentally listens in on the work of a computer criminal he blogs about it on his website. Within a day of encountering the criminal, he is framed for operating one of the world's largest networks of infected computers. Confused, Seth flees underground and attempts to prove his innocence. What follows is an exciting journey through the world of cyber-crime.

What's Next....
I hope you've enjoyed the Freebie Fridays at Webbiegrrl's Writings. If you're an Indie Author and want to be featured "solo" sometime, tweet me @webbiegrrl (on Twitter) or post a note to the Webbiegrrl Facebook Page. No guarantees, but it can't hurt to ask. I've done an author spotlight before and could do it again. Maybe.

For my readers, I'll have to find some other use for the Friday blog. The Saturday Surprise might have to be cancelled due to work schedule (again, not sure how things will play out for the next 2 weeks but should know by the first week of December if I still have a job and just need to completely overhaul my schedule or am job-hunting for something else entirely).

I don't like to complain about work on this blog but I'm more aggravated about how work is interfering with my writing career than I am about the fact I may need to find a new job (without any notice). I'm this close to finishing the edits on the SciFi thriller (in the Phoenician Series) which was scheduled for release December 31, 2011. Obviously that might have to be put off a month or more if I have to search for and start a new job instead. All in all, I'd rather be writing--who wouldn't?!

Please stay tuned to the Twitterstream and Facebook Page for news of my demise.

Shabbat Shalom (such as it were)

TUESDAY TIP #Nanowrimo Halfway There R U Still #Writing ? #pubtip #iamwriting #myWANA

2011-11-15T09:13:00.000-05:00

If you're doing the NaNoWriMo this year, you are either halfway there (got 25,000 or more words written so far?) or you're freaking out because you've stalled and don't know how to get going again.

When the event starts, it's easy to get excited, to get motivated, but as you start spending more and more time alone--writing is a solitary activity--your energy level might begin to fall off. Unless, of course, you're on a roll. One nano'er I know is actually at the 80,000 word mark now (Go, @AmosTFairchild!) For the bulk of you, however, you're probably struggling in either the 5,000 or 15,000 word range and need a new boost to your inspirational juices.

One way, of course, is the Write-In, which I mentioned in my first Tuesday Tip on Nanowrimo. A Write-in is where a bunch of your fellow nano'ers gather together with you in a common location to write "alone together." It's an interactive writer's group where you can ask each other questions (which could be diasterous if you're on a roll and someone else has a long list of interruptions) and where you can get inspired by each other's work.

Since I've never actually experienced the mythical "Writer's Block," I'm not sure I can relate to being unable to churn out words, but I'll try. Click through the jump-break for a few tips on how to approach writing slumps.

Support System - Life Line or Death Sentence
Your support system (family, friends, coworkers) may or may not be helping you. History describes writers as "struggling" or being "tortured" because the world does not like our selfish ways. We can pour our energy into our work -- or into other people. It's a choice. It's rare anyone can do both. If your family is supportive, you are blessed. There's a reason authors with supportive spouses, children, parents, etc. will dedicate their books to these people and thank them for their patience. Anyone who cohabitates your writing environment needs to understand and accept that when you're writing, you're not really there. Interrupting you to ask "a quick question" can stop your productivity for hours, not minutes and if you don't have hours left to spend, it can be incredibly frustrating to be interrupted. You can become angry, resentful or just plain fixated on the interruption, itself and wondering how you're going to get back into the writing momentum. It's especially hard when you beat yourself up, emotionally, for resenting the interruption.

Instead of sitting down at the keyboard with anger, resentment or guilt, try sitting down with your support system to ask them for their support. Point out that they are in a unique position of power to help you. Point out that if you're writing, you aren't really "in" the real world and that by drawing you back into it, they're only going to get half of your attention (because at least half of your mind will fight the return to the real world, knowing you're "supposed to" be writing). Point out that if they'll wait until you finish your allotted time at the keyboard, you can give them your full attention and be energized by a successful session writing.

Odd as it sounds, this is (in my opinion) the best reason for using a kitchen timer to actually time your writing session. That is, the visual aid tells your potential interrupter how much time they actually have to wait before you will once again become available to them. If you use one, be sure to reset it any and every time you get interrupted. Be sure the person who interrupts you sees you resetting it. I'm not going to say someone in your support system would consciously try to sabotage you, but they might inadvertently do so. Visual aids -- like a ticking clock -- usually help you and your support group to stay focused on the goal: for you, getting words written; for them, getting your attention afterwards.

I happen to live alone and one might think, after my going on about the negative side of a support system that lives with you that it would be a blessing. It's not necessarily. There are times when I have writing to do that coincide with other things I "need" to do. You know, laundry, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, running a life. If I don't do it, there's no one else around to get it done. When I want or need to write by a certain time, I had to learn to just set those other "needs" out of my mind. Sometimes, things just aren't going to get done and that's the way it goes. Life will not end. When I have time, I'll do them. Eventually, if I'm using my writing time productively, I do have time. The real trick was to learn to just stop thinking about the To Do List when I had writing to do. Let the writing be the only thing on your To Do list and you'll get it done. The world won't end if the laundry sits in the machine for an hour. The fiction world might fall to pieces if I spend that hour scurrying around doing housework instead of putting the fictional pieces back together while I'm "in the zone."

Never Stop Yourself
This is one of the most-common ways writers fall into the whole mindset often called "Writer's Block." It's not really a block, it's a lack of mental focus. If you feel the urge to write, do it. Don't stop yourself and decide something else--anything else--is more important. Again, this is completely dependent on how supportive your support system is and/or how able you are to just set life aside for an hour to serve the needs of your writing. Unless you're at work or otherwise committed to responsibilities you are literally unable to avoid (the kids have to get picked up from school; that's not something you can put off for an hour *grin*) then you need to cater to the whims of your mood. If you ever feel the urge to write something, do it. Don't suppress the urge and figure you'll get some time later and write down whatever it was you just thought up. Do it now! While the juices are flowing, while you're "in the zone."

Deliberately and consciously knocking yourself out of the zone, holding back the flow, is actually you sabotaging yourself. You are actually constructing the writer's block yourself so never talk yourself out of writing, never "put it off 'til later" when you rationalize your environment will be "better." It's never better than it is right now, right at the moment when you feel inspired to write. By feeding into the feeling of eagerness--instead of deliberately squelching it--you end up growing the energy and will experience it more and more often.

Being able to balance real life with your writing life is a balancing act, definitely, but it is the key to keeping the words flowing. If you cannot self-discipline or prioritorize your To Do list, things will spin out of control quickly, but if you can stay focused, you'll end up allowing yourself total focus on the writing when it's "Writing Time" and find yourself able to meet your responsibilities the rest of the time (rather than sitting to watch TV or doing email or getting on Facebook or any number of other things people do that waste time otherwise intended for actually "getting things done"). It's hard and you might just have to give up "fun" activities. If you don't find writing, in and of itself, to be one of those "fun" activities, I'm not sure I can help you. It's possible you should not try to be a writer.

Writers write. We don't choose to write. We have to write. Writing is our "fun."

If that's not true for you, you're probably not really a writer. You probably figure you're doing something wrong and that's why it's not fun. Trust me, if it's in your "design" to be a writer, it'll the most fun you can have alone because really, you're not alone when you write if you're a writer; writers live with their characters and worlds and stories in their heads and hearts and souls. We don't create them; we live with them!

How to Get Flowing Again
The #1 thing people want to know is if they get stopped up, how can they get going again, what can be done to get the creative juices unstopped and the words flowing again? Well, assuming you're really a writer and have the need at your very core--and assuming you've address the whole support system issue noted above--one of the things you can do to get back into your world and "reintegrate" with your characters is to "interview" your characters.

Dissect them, their history, their motivations, their deepest darkest secrets. These aren't necessarily details that will end up in your story, but there'll be details you discover this way that might inspire you to spawn a new 3000-word scene today, just when you thought you'd have no word count! If you ask yourself why something's happening and keep digging into the people in your story, you'll find things you didn't really remember creating. That's because you probably didn't create them--or not yet. Your "interview" process is the creation process.

What kinds of questions do you ask in these interviews? Really, it depends a lot on your story, genre and characters but there are general questions you can ask. Some writers use this kind of process in order to find ideas in the first place. I don't. I start with the characters and they bring their own stories with them, but I do get to know my characters this way (usually after I've written 30,000 to 50,000 words of random scenes (plot points) and need to connect them with that pesky thing called a plotline). I hate connecting the dots, but interviewing the characters tells me how to do it.

I ask them how they got here, why'd they choose this instead of that, what is it that happened in their past that motivated this choice or gave them that attitude. I basically dissect a scene and work backwards to figure out how it--and the people in it--ended up that way. There are a lot of writing advice books and web sites that have lists of questions for interviewing your characters or profiling your scene or all kinds of other expression that all mean the same thing: do an analysis of what tiny little bit you've got and you'll get more. Why does this work? Because it forces your thoughts back into the world/story without demanding you contribute to it. This process basically tricks your mind back into "the zone" without struggling.

But if you want to be a struggling author, starving artiste or tortured soul, be my guest. I'd rather crank out the words and get to read the next story! Yes, I read my work as I write it and my characters tell me the bestest stories ever! That's why it's so much fun.

What's Next....

The next blog will be Freebie Friday. If you're an Indie Author, you can submit your book here if you'd like to be featured and get some new readers. This week's feature will be the last one I'll run until December because I'll be shutting down the blog for the long, holiday weekend (next week is Thanksgiving in the USA).

Submissions for Freebie Friday (Nov 18, 2011) #pubtip #indie #marketing

2011-11-15T09:06:00.000-05:00

Freebie Friday is a feature I run to get new Indie Authors exposure to new readers (and to get my readers some free stuff they'll enjoy reading), not to mention driving traffic through my blog. It's a win/win/win the way I see it. I feature 3 books each week on a first come, first serve basis. You should enter your book as soon as possible, but your coupon codes (or price change to free) won't be due until 1700 hrs ET the Thursday before your featured date. If you use a coupon code, please make its expiration date the Saturday after your featured date (it will expire at midnight Friday when the date clicks over to Saturday).

I'll reply with a comment using my Heidi Klum voice (like from Project Runway, You are IN. You may leave the runway.") I'll review your submission, test-click your link and then post a comment. Until you get that reply, you are not yet "in," so be sure to tick the box to subscribe to the comments and you'll be notified when I reply

Sounds great! How do I join?
If you're an Indie Author, you'll need to have an English-language book that is on a web site and/or can be downloaded in multiple formats. I won't specify formats, but I highly suggest a minimum of Kindle (MOBI) and Nook/Apple (EPUB) formats, as those 2 file formats alone will saturate 90% or more of the market.

Click through the jump break for detailed instructions on submitting your free read to be featured.

The book needs to be priced at "free" or be made free for a day on Friday for the feature or for any length of time that includes the Friday you're being featured. Smashwords coupons are great. If you want to generate the coupon in advance but not place it on the blog, that's fine. Follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter and then you can DM me the coupon code -- wait until I've told you you're IN though. Alternatively, you can just generate a coupon on Thursday (make it expire on Saturday or later) and post the code in a new comment by 1700 hrs Eastern Time Thursday.

Your book must be a completed work (no WIPs, "teasers" or partials please). You must be the copyright owner to submit it. I'll accept any length story (book or short story) so long as it is a complete story and it can be in any genre of fiction or poetry and I even welcome non-fiction. I'll read your description and/or sample, and I reserve the right to edit my presentation of your book to accurately describe its genre or categorization. I also reserve the right to edit your description to adapt it to a more "sales copy" style. You are welcome to take whatever edits I make and reuse them if you like how I adapt your description on my blog. It's your book being described, after all.

Entering the book
It's pretty easy. You enter a comment. One comment per book. Most people have no trouble doing this but it seems every now and then, there's one person somewhere who has some issue. I apologize if these instructions seem incredibly long or ridiculously detailed. It's a result of the issues that have come up. I keep trying to figure out how to explain this so it'll be really, really clear. For everyone, not just "most." It's really not that hard, I promise!

When you enter your comment on this post, first thing (so you don't forget) please be sure to tick the checkbox that subscribes you to the comment thread (to be notified of followup comments). I stress this so that I can be sure to have a means of reaching you should there be any questions about your entry. I will not hunt you down or chase after you to be featured on my blog. Trust me, there are better things for me to do with my time.

I will post a comment on the thread and give you a second shot at getting in if your initial entry has some problem/issue. If you don't come back to reply before someone else gets a correct submission in or if the deadline passes, you lose. The deadline for submissions is always the preceding Thurs. @ 1700hrs Eastern Time (USA). Please enter as early as possible - first come, first serve!

Option A - Smashers
Just give me your Smashwords book page URL and if applicable, Smashwords coupon code. That's it. I'll get everything I need from the book's page myself. Note, as I said, you can follow @webbiegrrl and after you're accepted on the comment thread, DM me the coupon code.

I will click through to confirm your deets, to confirm your book has a picture, to test click the links before I post the blog and I'll test out using the coupon code Friday morning at oh-dark-thirty. I might even keep a copy of the book for myself! ^_^ No promises but fair warning. Everything must work or I'll use a different free book. There are tons of free books out there.

Option B - Everyone Else (EE)
In your comment, put:

your book's title and your author/pen name
your book's genre and approximate word count
a URL to the book's page (please test it to be sure it works!)
Your book cover image location. The image must match the book. You must be the copyright owner of the image and the book. Please do not provide me with images for which you do not have the copyrights.
If your book requires a coupon or other method to make it be free, please provide the "free key" here.

To add multiple books, please use multple comments.
If you post multiple links in one comment, and they're clickable, you'll be considered to be spamming me. If Blogger doesn't filter you, I will. One book, one comment. Easy enough, right?

What else do I have to do?
Since "strength in numbers" is only an effective marketing tool when we all participate, firstly, I would ask that you immediately follow @webbiegrrl on Twitter as soon as you submit your book. Don't wait, you might forget to do it. I'll follow you back so it's not a hardship on you, is it?

One of the things I've started doing in September is including @mentions of the featured authors' Twitter IDs in the blog title which Networked Blogs will then auto-tweet immediately after the blog is posted. If you don't follow me and/or tell me your Twitter ID, I can't really help you with the tweeting effort, can I?

The Twitter RT chain seems to really help drive higher traffic levels, more than any other marketing method I've been using so it's probably a good idea for you to get onto Twitter now if you're not already.

How else does this get exposure?
I use Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads and Amazon's Kindleblogs to reach readers. I would love to have new avenues (wouldn't we all?) but those seem to be the best and busiest paths.

Facebook
Personally, I try to post the blog link to as many groups as I have joined on Facebook, including the Smashwords FB Page, and I post in a few other reader groups that I belong to for added reach on Facebook.

If you "like" the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Fan Page, or subscribe to this blog via Networked Blogs, you'll get the link in your newsfeed as though the blog is one of your FB friends. When you see the post, please click to "Share" it with your own Facebook friends (be sure to choose the thumbnail of your own book so it's noticeable to your peeps).

You can also post it to any Facebook groups you belong to that welcome Indie Author links or are interested in hearing about new books to read.

Twitter + Tweeting protocols
Around 10am Eastern Time/USA, Networked blogs will pull the feed and auto-tweet the post. That posts it to my Facebook Fan Page and tweets through to @webbiegrrl. I try to do a manual tweet with better wording and an (ow.ly) link. Please RT.

In addition, I've just recently discovered Hootsuite's scheduler feature so I've started scheduling tweets throughout the day and evening, every couple of hours, featuring one title per auto-tweet. I'll @mention all of you if I can. Please RT not only your own but all of the webbiegrrl mentions of the free reads on Fridays. Helping to market your co-authors helps to market yourself since it's all going to link to the same blog post where your book is featured. Collective power only works when the Collective works together. About 45-50% of the traffic to the blog comes from Twitter'ed links (according to Hootsuite's ow.ly report anyway).

Also try to do a little advance promo. Tweet a day or two ahead of time and mention the fact you're going to be featured--give your Tweeps advance notice by doing a #WorthWatching Wednesday and ask your followers to help you out by RT'ing the blog link tweets on Friday. If you tell people ahead of time to watch for it, more people respond. Plus if you @mention me on #WW I'll be sure to RT that and get the tweet even more exposure -- in advance. Everytime someone hits RT on any of it, everyone featured gets a new mention on Twitter with everyone else's followers. It's exponential marketing power. That's why they call it viral. Use it.

Other Social Media Blasts
I don't really use my LinkedIn profile but if you do, please do 2 things:
1 - Create a "position" for the upcoming blog appearance and
2 - Please tweet me a note with your profile on #LI and I'll try to "recommend" you in that new "position." This will show up in your LI newsfeed as though it's a paying gig, like an Author Appearance or Book Signing event.

Please do not make stuff up but getting your LI tweeps informed is always a good thing. Plus it'll be there for posterity's sake as part of your authorial career experience. Good content for your future PR page (don't have one of these? start one now)

Goodreads
On Goodreads, I belong to several Kindle and book-review related groups (and I'm joining more all the time). I've either created a thread where I post the link every week or will post a note if the group doesn't like to have us Indie Authors "camping out to promo books" in the group. I think about 30% of the traffic to the blog on Fridays comes from Goodreads.

There are a lot of book blogs out there, and many invite Indie Authors to post notes about their books. Nearly all of them love to get free reads--who doesn't? Use them.

I don't tend to post the Friday feature to too many of the review sites, as the books are not my own titles and I don't want to get into conversations with reviewers about other people's books. I'm not your agent; I'm just giving you some free advertising in exchange for the free content of your book on my blog which hopefully will get me some new followers on the blog and/or on Twitter. I don't usually see much of an increase on Fridays (more on Mondays and Tuesdays when I do my author-how-to- blogs)

Other Ideas?
If you have marketing ideas, please share them in a comment on this Submissions thread to let us all know we can do to get the word out further. Until the day that one appearance here makes a best-seller overnight, I know I can always improve my process! For now, I'm syndicated onto Facebook, Twitter and the Kindleblogs store at Amazon. Thanks for playing!

Now let's give away some books!

MONDAY MARKETING Law 12: Line Extension #marketing #pubtip #myWANA #indie #publishing

2011-11-14T09:56:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the Monday Marketing series on branding yourself as an Indie Author and designing the Company you want to keep. Like any other business, your career in Indie Publishing requires you to define a brand and market yourself in the most effective way.

If you're just joining us, we're halfway through the best little book on marketing ever written: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by two of the smartest guys Madison Avenue ever saw. If you've never read this book, it's only about a 1/4" thick in paperback. Take 5 minutes to read it now. I'll wait. ^_^

All done? Great. Let's back up to Law 12: Line Extension. In the Indie Publishing field the concept of a "line" most-easily translates into a "genre" and line extension becomes cross-genre marketing. In terms of the publishing industry, the gist of Law 12 states that despite the pressure to expand outside your genre, the cross-marketing efforts will effectively weaken your brand. Click through the jump break to read more.

In publishing, you have the unique opportunity to "extend your line" without actually altering your brand at all. Instead you can create a new brand under a new name--a pen name. Authors are tracked, our sales numbers tied to, an exact name, so for instance, my sales as "Sarah R. Yoffa" are going to be a totally different record than my sales as "Sarah Yoffa." Simply removing my middle initial (which I'd never ever do!) is as though I'm two different people. In fact, I am but my SciFi self has a totally different name (Marjorie F. Baldwin).

A lot of Indie Authors hear how they "should" write in many different genres or write cross-genre work so as to get more readers (more sales). Although you "should" expand your writing capabilities, the reality is, using just one name will only weaken your brand, not strengthen it. If you want to write in a different genre, create a new brand and use it with a new pen name. Don't weaken your existing brand.

Here's a great example. Nora Roberts is about the most financially-successful romance author out there. She's certainly one of the most (if not the most) prolific ones. She has over 300 million contemporary romance and category romance books in print. Three Hundred. Million. That does not include any of the romantic suspense / paranormal / futuristic books she has published under the pen name, J. D. Robb. The fact that I can't even pin down what J.D. Robb writes is probably why I'm not as drawn to Nora's writing under that name. I've tried 3 or 4 of the In Death series and found them so boring not one of them has yet to hold my attention to the The End.

It's not as though the author can't write. Obviously! It's that she's writing in a different voice, selling a different brand--and although I can't get enough of her Nora Roberts brand, I'm not her customer under the J.D. Robb brand. They definitely completely different books for different audiences. J.D. Robb is pretty famous in her own right and not everyone who reads Robb even knows the author is one and the same as Roberts. Some customers, of course, do and love both brands. I'm just not one of them--and her branding in each is so strong, there's no way I'd confuse one for the other.

The fact that the publishing industry records our sales separately for different names is a unique--and convenient--facet of our industry. Use it to your advantage. If you want to spin off into a new genre, do it with a new pen name and apply every last rule of marketing to the new brand the way you (hopefully) did to the first.

Don't Cross That Line!
Some of you may have already learned that getting yourself categorized by Amazon or other sites where there are genre categories is not always a method of self-identification. It should be but when computerized scripts start running, all kinds of strange things can happen.

When you first upload your book to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) system, Amazon asks you to select the genre (and KDP forces you to select down to one level of sub-categorization) you believe is correct or in which you want to be listed.

Unfortunately, as you begin to sell books, you might get relabeled by various means with a number of unpredictable--and you might believe, inapplicable--categories. That is, unless your brand is strong enough to make it unquestionably clear into what genre your book falls, you may get some surprise assignments.

As a result, you might see your reviews starting to become negative for strange and inappropriate reasons. For example, if a ChickLit about a woman who chooses to have a career and becomes one of the most-powerful women on Earth--a corporate success!--somehow slips over into the romance genre category, you might see a review like: This book isn't much of a romance since the Hero dies and the Heroine decides her job is more important than having children. That's because for romance readers, the HEA (Happily Ever After ending) is the crux of the "Contract with the Reader" -- and violating it is verboten.

In fact, you might get a similar problem going the other way: a romance novel that slips over into ChickLit might offend those readers by alleging that a woman cannot be happy unless there is a romance with a man in the center of her existence. Don't even get me started on the fact that mainstream romance assumes heterosexual romance is the one and only kind that matters.

There are all kinds of fuzzy grey lines in publishing. Don't edge up to the line. Either go over it or stay away from it. Choose, definitively, what you want to say and then say it. Strongly, boldly, unquestionably. Make your message--your branding--clear. Yes, your book's content is part of your brand (and your brand is part of your book's content). They are not one and the same, but they are inextricably linked. If you brand yourself as a romance author, don't write ChickLit. Likewise, if you brand yourself as a mystery/suspense writer, don't write literary fiction, ad infinitum (or ad nauseum). The permutations are endless.

If you want to launch yourself into a new category, position your new brand as the alternative to the current leader (Law 9: Opposites) or as the first in a newly-created genre (Law 1: Leadership). You might think you're leveraging the success of your first brand to launch the second one, but time and time again, history has shown that this backfires and kills both brands. Ries & Trout give a long list of failed companies that attempted line-extension and thereby met their demise. Have you heard of Heinz baby food or Heinz ketchup? Did you even know that Heinz had launched a (failed) baby food line to compete with Gerber? I didn't until I read this book. Heinz makes lots of products nowadays, but they are best known for condiments--ketchup and mustard. Less is more and more will definitely lead to less. The more you dilute your brand with new extensions (genres), the less strength the original brand has in the long run (Law 11: Perspective).

Factors You Can Control
What if you thought you were branded correctly for the kind of book you'd written and "somehow" you ended up being mis-categorized by Amazon? There are two methods Amazon uses to determine your category assignment which you can rally people to help you "doctor" into the results you want. There may be other factors Amazon uses and other online sellers may have other systems, but the idea is for you to consider the fact that how you brand your book actually does influence how your customers see you--and you can control how you present yourself.

I'm sure that anyone who's joined author groups on Facebook or Goodreads knows about the "liking chains" and "tag exchanges" that go on. The idea behind these click-exchanges is that authors will click to endorse each other's public appearances. Be it reviews, tags, just clicking the "Like" on a book's page everywhere, exchanging your clicks on a colleague's book for theirs on yours seems easy enough.

The danger of this, of course, is some over-zealous colleague clicking everything or clicking the wrong things, but generally, these click-exchanges work as a means to "doctor" the system--a method of making it say what you want instead of what some heartless script algorithm suggests.

Why bother? Simple. The scripts are not always right. Sometimes you have to "guide" the computer program to make it come out with the "right" result. The click-exchanges are just that guidance. Stronger branding would be better!

Another Amazon weighting method is lists. When Amazon customers add your book to their book lists (attached to their personal Amazon customer account), the Amazon script that automatically categorizes (or changes categorizations) of books will weight your book one click more heavily into that direction. If a customer deliberately miscategorizes your book (for instance, the above example where a romance reader might categorize your ChickLit as a romance and rate it poorly because--as a romance--it's not a very good fulfillment of the Contract with the Reader), then the Amazon script will add that bad data to its weighting system. This is why click-exchanges between authors, who can specify to each other how to click, really work.

Another, related "list" concept in use by Amazon is "Customers who bought this also bought..." and if you want to spend money, agreeing to buy a colleague's book if they'll buy yours, you can even "doctor" that linkage. Sometimes this works, sometimes it backfires. The fewer sales you have, the more likely it is to work but definitely be careful of this one--and not just because you have to spend money and trust the other person will as well.

Tags are ultimately the easiest thing attached to a book on Amazon that you can "doctor" by doing click-exchanges. If you get the right tags clicked often enough, you can end up in a totally different category than you started in when you uploaded your book to KDP. It's not a perfect system, but understanding how it works means you can do two things to influence the outcome.

2 Things to Do

1. Join a Group for Professional/Industry Support

One of the things you'll want to do when just starting out is to join some writer's groups on Facebook and Goodreads and participate in some of the click-exchange activities. Give other Indie Authors a list of tags you'd like them to click for you and participate in creating lists on Amazon or Goodreads (or both). See what impact these activities have on your book's categorization before deciding it has or has not worked. Give it a few days or a week. Amazon often takes up to a week to update some of the lower-ranking books' categorizations and database entries.

Be sure you know where you want things to go before you start. If you don't tell your fellow Indie Authors what you want them to do, you open yourself up to their just "clicking anything" to fulfill their part of the exchange. Be specific in your requests.

2. Strengthen Your Brand

You're never done strengthening your brand. If you haven't really defined your brand, do it now. If you think you already have defined your brand, take a second look to be sure. Consider how your book's product description and/or tagging make its brand clear at a glance. A reader should know, before reading your book, what your genre is, what your book's going to deliver. Is it an escape? A non-stop emotional rollercoaster ride? A taut suspenseful tale that will keep them up at night? Your brand should communicate, in a single thought--or better, in a single word--what you're delivering with this book.

Your book cover can visually communicate your genre by virtue of the style of artwork, in addition to the content. Thrillers won't have a couple holding each other in an embrace. Well, not unless one of them is hold a knife to the other's back but still, that could be a Romantic Suspense novel (grin)

Readers shouldn't feel they have to guess what your book's about and saying it's "a lot of new and different things" isn't a strong branding, it's a mealy-mouthed way of saying "I don't know how to describe my own book!" If you don't know, how can anyone else?

If you want to create a new concept--like Stephanie Meyer did with her shiny high-school vamps--then be firm about it (Law 5: Focus). State it boldly. Define it. Own it. This is your unique and special snowflake, the category in which you are going to be first (Law 2: Category) and you are going to lead the market (Law 1: Leadership).

Make sure your prospects know what that is before they buy your book--because that will become why they buy your book...and the one after that, and the one after that. Not to mention that your branding will be how customers think of you (Law 4: Perception), determining how they describe you and your book to their friends when they recommend they purchase a copy, too!

If your brand is not yet defined, that's where you have to start. Read through the earlier entries of this series, get the Ries/Trout book and read that, repeatedly, and refine your book's marketing materials until you know your brand is as strong as it can be. How will you know? You'll be leading the new genre you've just created!

What's Next....
Tomorrow I'll try again to provide some Nanowrimo inspiration and tips for success in the second half of this month-long race.

Later today I'll be releasing the new submissions thread for the November 18th Freebie Friday feature but that will be the last book giveaway feature until December. That's right, I'm taking the long, holiday weekend off. Let's see what books we can give away this weekend to keep everyone in reading material for the holiday weekend travels (not to mention needing free eBooks to try out on Black Friday, November 25th, the biggest shopping day of the year!)

If you're not in the US (and therefore, not celebrating Thanksgiving on November 24th) the Webbiegrrl blog will reopen with the next marketing feature on Monday, November 28th. We'll go over Law 13, the Law of Sacrifice.

SATURDAY SURPRISE #SciFi Snippet #ConditionedResponse Coming New Year's Eve!

2011-11-12T17:53:00.003-05:00

I'm still working on Conditioned Response, Book 2 of the Phoenician Series, my SciFi Thriller series under the pen name Marjorie F. Baldwin (the "F" stands for "Friday"; yes, just like the Heinlein character!)

I'm getting really close to the end of the easy edits, which culminate in the death of a major character (which is also the climax of this book of the Phoenician Series) so it's getting to the point where I have to combine half of the next book with about 30,000 words at the end of this book.

Oh, and I only have about 20,000 words left in which to do it unless or until I can delete more words to make more room for newer, better words! ^_^ I definitely want to kill about 10,000-15,000 from the first third of the book anyway so that might work out--just need more time to do it!

Oh and on that subject, just to keep life interesting, I only have about 3 weeks left in which to do it, which really amounts to only 4-6 days between now and mid-December since I only get 1-2 days a week (part of Friday and most of Saturday) when I can write. The rest of the time I'm either creating these blogs for you or working the day job. Or trying to keep the email and Twitter and Goodreads and Facebook and everything else under control through daily maintenance.

I'm not complaining just explaining why I haven't been cartooning Dicky (he still lacks a proper left hand or any right hand, proper or otherwise); and haven't been posting much of anything else but SciFi snippets on Saturdays. Nor will I again until after New Year's.

The release date for Conditioned Response is December 31, 2011. I don't know if I'll make it but I'm going to try. Until around Thanksgiving weekend (about 2 weeks from now) you can read sample chapters of the book on the Authonomy web site. If you'd like to give comments, you need to register. If you just want to read the pre-release edition of the book, you can do so free of charge and without registering. Click here to get started.

Enjoy!

Nov 29 Update: Just had to note I had 2 days off over Thanksgiving to devote to the cover art and through a thread or three on Goodreads, and posting the artwork on DeviantArt, I managed to update the image to near-final form. I like the new version and can use it, in a pinch, but might have to change the foreground into less "cloned rocky mesa" and more "hot, sandy plains." But I think the latest image is starting to look nicely-professional--thanks to all the fans and colleagues who chimed in on the various threads for helping to make it the best it could be!

FREEBIE FRIDAY (Nov 11) Veterans Day Special #weekendgoodreads @fridayreads what r u #reading #WAYR? @ruby_barnes

2011-11-11T06:34:00.002-05:00

Welcome to the Veterans Day Special Edition of Webbiegrrl's Freebie Friday feature. I wanted to showcase veterans stories this week and have a few "war stories" to recommend.

The first one is by an award-winning author who's been writing about war for over 25 years. Lois McMaster Bujold has written 17 books in a military science fiction (milSF or space opera) series called the "Vorkosigan Saga." She started with the premise of a planet colonized by humans, then cut off from the rest of humanity, left to fend for themselves in a frontier-like manner. She gave this planet, Barrayar, a class system that sets the nobility into a warrior caste (called "Vor") who are responsible not only for running the government, but also for defending the planet against various and sundry aliens.

The Vor (indicated by the syllable before their family name) have evolved into the biggest, strongest, most able-bodied of men (and most delicate of women), so the first thing Lois does to the Vor's most-decorated Hero, Aral Vorkosigan, and his long line of Vorkosigan Admirals who've single-handedly turned the tides of more than one war, is give Aral a crippled son. Overcoming this barrier to glory is the warrior's son, Miles's, lifetime goal--and ultimately, Miles's greatest achievement is that he stops overcoming his limitations and instead, embraces them. After all, "Miles" does mean soldier and he does "soldier on" for 17 or 18 stories spanning nearly 40 years (as of the last book in the series--so far).

The Warrior's Apprentice is an early work--both the introduction of Miles to the series and only the second book Lois ever wrote. Lois proves she already had it down pat by the time she wrote this book. It's designed to be a comedy of errors, a parody of the parody (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) so a lot of the plot might be regarded as AuthorConvenient. I wasn't bothered by how "conveniently" things worked out for Miles, as I saw a lot of the "convenience" to be plain and simple human nature at work and Miles just exploited opportunities. Sometimes, some people just do have all the luck. And sometimes, a plot about people doesn't have to be complex.

Lois's stories are definitely about people not things or places or events--but the events spin out of control in a side-splitting LOL way that definitely does tribute to the 19th century Goethe tale (though my favorite version remains Disney's segment in the 1962 animation, Fantasia). The places are so richly textured and vibrantly described that sometimes I feel as though the universe Lois created in this series is a character unto itself. And when it comes to "things" Lois has some of the best gadgets subtly placed into her stories without any hooplah.

The Vorkosigan Saga is, above all else, a soldier's story. The harsh realities of war are driven home--repeatedly--in the opening duology, Cordelia's Honor (includes Shards of Honor and Barrayar), where Miles suffers his in utero cellular damage) and Miles, being the right little soldier that he is despite flunking out of the Academy, will carry the weight of many wars on his bent little back for the rest of his life. The Warrior's Apprentice sets the stage and cuts out the heart of the star soldier's courage, leaving him with survivor's guilt and blood on his hands for the remainder of his life (and the series). Like some great Shakespearian Hero, Miles will never get the blood shed in The Warrior's Apprentice to ever leave his hands. Twenty years later, though I can tell you he's started to live with the stain.

The Warrior's Apprentice is available FREE through the Baen Free Library. Download it by clicking HERE (then tell all your friends).

There are other war stories and series available free in the Baen Free Library (such as Lt. Leary Commanding by David Drake or the Honor Harrington series by David Weber not to mention the prolific assortment by John Ringo) so if you like milSF, be sure to browse around.

All books in the Baen Free Library are available through the Webscriptions service. Although there is a price listed, you do not have to pay for these books. You can just download the file (or email it to your Kindle device). The price is a suggested donation to keep the Baen Free Library running.

The second book I want to offer today is one I have not read but have heard a lot about--from its author, anyway. Michael Hicks has broken into the SciFi genre with his series, In Her Name, and he's made the first book of the series, Empire, free. I cannot personally speak to this book but since it's gotten a bazillion 5-star reviews on Amazon, I suspect it's a pretty good read. Its description reminds me of a cross between Haldeman's Forever War and some of David Weber's alien invasion war stories (see the Baen Free Library).

In the first book of an epic futuristic fantasy trilogy, this is the coming-of-age story of Reza Gard, a young boy of the Human Confederation who is swept up in the century-long war with the alien Kreelan Empire. Nightmarish female warriors with blue skin, fangs, and razor sharp talons, the Kreelans have technology that is millennia beyond that of the Confederation, yet they seek out close combat with sword and claw, fighting and dying to honor their god-like Empress. Captured and enslaved, Reza must live like his enemies in a grand experiment to see if humans have souls, and if one may be the key to unlocking an ages old curse upon the Kreelan race. Enduring the brutal conditions of Kreelan life, Reza and a young warrior named Esah-Zhurah find themselves bound together by fate and a prophecy foretold millennia before they were born.

This book is priced at FREE so no coupon is required.

Technically, I've already mentioned way more than 3 free reads but there is one more book I'd like to recommend to you today. It's a slightly different milfic by John Ringo titled Unto the Breach. You can read the first few chapters free online but the book, itself, is not free.

It is, however, possibly the best book John has ever written. The series (Paladin of Shadows, but we all just call it the "Ghost" or "Kildar" series) is not a scifi series but a sort of alternate reality. The series was written to be a sort of wish fulfillment for the author--not to be taken seriously. Then he created these make-believe people, the Keldara, in Book 2 and somehow the series took off. They are a warrior people and since John's a big fan of Lois's Vor Series, it's no surprise if you see similarities.

I reviewed Unto the Breach here, for the 4th of July weekend (with some spoilers mentioned). If you really want to get a copy of this book for free--and really love scifi or milSF--you'll have to do a little bit of work but it can be done.

First, follow me on Twitter (@webbiegrrl) then ask me for a link (@mention me). I'll follow you back and then via DM I'll send you to the location of the Holy Grail (or at least somewhere you can find a bunchaton of great books by Ringo and other Baen authors). It's totally legal (and okay with the Baen Books folks) but I cannot in good conscience advertise the link here since it's only shared by word of mouth....and we like it that way. Keeps the server running quickly.

BONUS READ

Even though you've already got way more than 3 books here, they are all somewhat serious soldier stories--which was the point, given it's Veterans Day--but there's one book I featured over Labor Day weekend that has risen to #31 on the Amazon Kindle Store's Top 100 Free Books list (Edited to say it's risen #30 just in the last hour!! Go, Ruby!!) I just had to give a shoutout to Ruby Barnes for this great achievement. Plus Peril is a bit of comic relief you might appreciate right about now (and the bookending of comic relief for this blog post is a symmetry I cannot resist!)

Peril is priced at FREE on Smashwords so no coupon code is required. I'm sure it's still FREE on the American side of the Amazon Kindle Store but since I'm in the US, I cannot check the price status for the UK Kindle Store. If it's not free in the UK Kindle Store, European and other non-American readers can just stop by Smashwords to get your free copy.

What's Next....

Tomorrow I'll have more SciFi edits done but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to snippet. Some serious stuff is going on in Conditioned Response right now and giving away all those spoilers might ruin someone's fun. I'll have chapters up for commenting until about Thanksgiving weekend so tomorrow, if you'd like to get another free read, visit the Authonomy site to read Conditioned Response through my current state of repair. If my editing keeps progressing as nicely as it has been this past week or two, I should be able to get the book finished by mid-December but then it'll be a serious scramble to get it formatted and released by December 31st! As Emperor Gregor (in the Vorkosigan series) always says, Let's see what happens.

TUESDAY TIP 4 CRAP Rules to Design ur #Nanowrimo #novel #iamwriting r u #reading ? #pubtip

2011-11-08T06:13:00.001-05:00

Some writers are great at description, others do better with plotting and yet others--such as, myself--find their forte is characters and dialog. So what do writers like myself do when faced with a plot that's plodding or a description I need to write but can't force myself to do unless I "speak" it to the reader through some character's voice?

The key I've found that works is to use a basic rule of design I learned years ago when doing graphics design. It's a cute little acronym that's easy to remember: CRAP. Apply the rules of CRAP or a crap design is what you'll get. So what's this crap all about? :) The 4 elements of design are:

C = contrast
R = repetition
A = alignment
P = proximity

I've discussed the idea previously, back when I was discussing book covers. It works for designing images and amazingly, it works for designing your writing, as well! You have to think in terms of your book being a whole thing, not individual pieces. Make the entire work operate in synchronicity by applying unifying design rules.

Most importantly for Nanowrimo participants, while you're writing, whenever you get to a spot where you're not sure what to do, go through these 4 rules in your head to see if one or more of them might be the answer to getting those words churning out again. Click through the jump-break to read about each rule in turn.

1. Contrast
In writing terms, this usually equates with conflict: adding a conflict, resolving a conflict, augmenting a conflict, but it could also be just as effective a method for describing a room. When you deliberately think of how this contrasts with that, suddenly it's not so boring to write a description of a room. Best of all, your readers won't be bored reading it if you're interested and excited to write it. Suddenly boring prose takes on a life with meaning and your white room description has texture and dimension. Contrast makes everything in life richer because contrast provides context.

You can also apply the rule of Contrast to your characters when you're designing them--and you'd better believe you should be designing your characters not merely writing down names. If you already have three brown haired guys named John, Jim, and Jeff in your story, make one a blond named Sam or be really daring and make him a gingerhead with a Gaelic name. I won't offend my Irish and Scots followers by attempting to pluck a "typical" name out of thin air (though I have several I use often :)

If you feel inclined to make your fiery redhead a sexy vixen in the stereotypical mold, don't. Contrast her with the stereotype. She'll be more memorable for it. Whenever you're designing any aspect of your story, apply the rule of Contrast by creating misunderstandings, conflicting tastes, opposing viewpoints. These aren't merely plotting conflicts; they're contrasts that enrich the scene and help build your world.

2. Repetition
You might think repetition is something you want to avoid--and when it comes to individual words, yes, usually you do--but there are word-level repetitions that work. They're called alliterations. That's when the first letter of each word is the same. She sells seashells by the seashore alliterates the letter "s" (and helps people overcome lisps...so they say). Word-level repetitions can also work if they are deliberately designed into the sentence or paragraph structure. Beyond the paragraph level, repetition just looks like a writer who was too lazy to come up with another way of saying the same thing--or saying something new!

There are sentence-level repetitions that work. That's when you repeat a phrase or concept or thought. For instance, one I just read in my current SciFi thriller went as follows. The male lead character is standing guard at sunrise and reflecting on his life, which his gut has been telling him is about to end. I use the repetition to reinforce his internal resignation to his own death wtihout having him behave in any kind of melodramatic way. For those of you who swear by the rule of "show, don't tell" here I'm "telling," but in a way, I'm also "showing."

He thought about the night before on the steps when he’dalmost kissed her, just because she would have let him. In fact, he was half-convinced,she’d actually wanted him to kiss her. She’d brushed the incident off,saying they could pretend the whole thing had never happened, but there’d beena moment. He knew there’d been a moment. He wanted that moment back now becausehe’d take that moment next time. He’d take her next time.

If there were a next time.

Somewhere deep inside himself, he knew, there’d never be anext time. If he could have nothing else in this world, all he wantedwas a next time with her. A lifetime of next times, but even just one next time with her would be enough for him to die happy.

Maybe you don't like the way that reads. I do (a lot!) and it's one of the scenes I remember more than any other in this book, second only to the upcoming violent death I've foreshadowed here. There's a good reason it sticks with me so much: it's the repetition.

There are two of them, actually, first of the word "moment" and then the phrase "next time." I remember when I first wrote this (in the 1980s) and how I've tweaked it over the years to emphasize the word repetitions. Even more so, the two repetitions work together because they're both time-related. I know that might sound like an awful lot of analysis to put into one little wordy paragraph but the devil is in the details. These things stick with a reader because they stand out without actually jolting the reader out of their "reader's trance." You never want to jolt a reader out of the book, just make the book stick with them with your word choices.

NANOWRIMO CAUTION:
I suggest worrying about alliterations or repetitions during the editing phase and not during Nanowrimo writing. Occasionally, you'll stumble upon one of these gems as you're writing, but generally, it's something you design in as part of that editing process where you "polish" or "wordsmith" your work. It doesn't actually change the content or plotting or characters; it just makes the writing tighter and ... "prettier."

3. Alignment
Okay, I'm sure you understand where the concept of alignment comes into play with graphics design. When two visual elements are misaligned, it automatically draws your eye and your brain says "mistake" but have you ever considered this happening with words? It can and it's even worse when you make an alignment mistake in your writing. Then again, it's actually a really useful design tool to apply when you get stuck and don't know where to go next with a storyline.

When you have a conflict in your story, the design tool of alignment can strengthen your plot's conflict. Align a secondary characters with your Hero and he suddenly has a following which makes him more Heroic. Align characters with the other side of a conflict and your Hero suddenly has flaws--if he didn't, why would his supporting cast be defecting to the other side? Simply aligning characters (making one character share ideas or opinions or desires with another) can change the reader's ideas about them. Aligning characters can be done with or without their knowledge--and in the latter case, the reader is "in on a secret" making them more engaged with your story.

4. Proximity
Like Alignment, the design rule of Proximity can be applied to your story to quickly and easily change the level of complexity. For instance, say your Hero is being targetted by your Villian. By simply placing a tossaway character (often called a Redshirt) next to your Hero, you can create a case of mistaken identity.

This one little detail has now affected 3 characters without your having to do anything else. How? The Villian has missed his target, the Hero now has to figure out who's targetting him and why and, of course, your secondary character has to figure out who's targetting him and make them stop--or die.

Constantly being in the wrong place at the right time--in close proximity to the bad situations, forex--can make for some truly eye-watering comic relief in a taut action story. Why? Contrasting the humor with the tension works better by creating an emotional rollercoaster....and that circles us back to the beginning of this CRAP so I'll stop there for today.

What's Next....

This Friday is Veterans Day and I'd like to be able to feature just soldiers stories or milfic and/or milSF stories but I need YOU to make that happen. If you've published a milfic or milSF eBook and can make it free for a day to offer readers a Veterans Day special, please submit it here to my Freebie Friday feature. Please share the link around with your friends. Let's see what we can give away this Veterans Day!

MONDAY MARKETING Law 11: Perspective #marketing #pubtip #indie #myWANA

2011-11-07T09:49:00.000-05:00

Welcome back to the Monday Marketing series on branding yourself as an Indie Author and designing the Company you want to keep. Remember, you might be writing books for the sheer joy of it, but if you're looking to make money off that joy, you're in business. Like any other business, you need to choose how to brand yourself, how to market yourself and how to present yourself to the public as your Company's #1 spokesperson.

If you're just joining us, we're halfway through the best little book on marketing ever written: The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by the same guys who coined the phrase: Perception is everything. We examined the Law of Perception here. Now we're looking at perspective--related but not the same even if you misspell it (grin)

Short-term gratification can be nice, and Indie Authors tend to use a 99-cent "sale" (limited time only!) as a method of getting short bursts of high numbers of sales. The problem pointed out by the Law of Perspective is that, to maintain volume over the long term, you would need to have one long, continuous sale. Why? Because having had one "sale," your prospective customers are now trained. They'll hold out for the next sale, instead of buying on impulse at the moment when you would otherwise have captured them. In other words, short-term gratification will produce long-term failure more often than not.

Long-term effects are often the exact opposite of the short-term results.

I've seen this problem already with Dicky's Story. I use Dicky's Story as a vehicle for experimentation, a learning process, and I've learned a lot since releasing it in March, 2011, so I don't mind, but it does illustrate the point nicely with cold, hard numbers. Click through the jump-break to find out what the Law of Perspective advises to do instead of going for the "limited time only sale!" tactic.

My numbers: I dislike the whole idea of "devaluing" a book by lowering its price and I would rather just give it away free, but even doing this has kicked in the negative effect noted in the Law of Perspective. Despite having had nearly 1000 downloads since its relesae in March, 2011, I've had less than 50 actual, paid-in-full sales, so those 1000 downloads are definitely not part of my 1000 True Fans. Of course, part of the problem is that I haven't advertised or promoted the book anywhere but on this blog and Twitter. If no one knows about the book, they cannot buy it (grin). Then again, I've successfully gotten nearly 1000 free downloads so something I'm doing is working.

The reason the paid sales are so low, however, is purely Law of Perspective at work. I keep telling my prospects not to buy right now (at full price) and instead, to hold out for the next freebie giveaway. I'm practically applying the Law of Perspective to prevent sales rather than to generate them. Of course, I am getting the predicted behavior, even if I have it reversed, so I've applied the principle correctly, just upsidedown. I would claim my dyslexia as an excuse but I did kind of do this on purpose. ^_^ I wanted to learn more than I wanted to make money off Dicky's Story since it's not really like anything else I've ever written--or will write again. I won't reverse things for my first "real" release in December! I've now learned how the principle works and can apply it--or rather, prevent it from applying.

Perspective Changes Paradigms

Back in the 80s, when self-help guru, Stephen Covey, first gained popularity, everyone started talking about changing your paradigms (Covey called it changing the lens on the camera through which you see the world). In casual speech, we all know what it means to get a little perspective on a situation--it's synonymous with getting more realistic about things.

Sometimes numbers help more than words. Here's a great example Ries and Trout offer. A criminal robs a bank and gets $100,000 in just a few scant minutes of easy labor. Then he gets caught, tried and incarcerated for ten years where he struggles daily just to survive. They never find his money and assuming he survives his prison term, he can and will recover it.

As yourself this: Will he have made $100k for one day's easy work or $10k a year for ten years of hard labor? Depends on your perspective, doesn't it? He may not even survive the ten, long years. Will your book still be selling ten years from now?

I know your book is not the same as a bank robber, but I think the example illustrates how being a flash-in-the-pan success isn't always the best answer. In fact, the Law of Perspective states that more often than not, the long-term effects are the exact opposite of the short-term effects. Remember what we discovered in Law 8: Law of Duality?

Knowing you're in a 2-horse race in the long term is the key to choosing your short-term marketing strategies.

If you want to find long-term success, apply the Law of Focus and the Law of the Mind or the Law of the Ladder, not the "law of the land," where you do whatever everyone else is doing. Be your own unique and special snowflake. That's the key to making your blizzard a whiteout.

What's Next...
The next entry in this series will be Law 12: Law of Line-Extension which may or may not apply to some Indie Authors, as in our terms, a "line" is a genre and many authors only write in one particular style or genre. For those of you who do or want to try a cross-over genre piece, tune in next week. Tomorrow's Tuesday Tip will be a #nanowrimo inspirational one, I hope. Tune in for plotting tips.

Veterans Day Freebie Friday (11-11-11)
Remember, if you have a Military Fiction or MilSF book and would like offer it free-for-a-day in honor of our military veterans, this week's Freebie Friday is (hopefully) going to be a Veterans Day special feature. Please submit your book to the comment thread here (and share this link with your friends if they have a milfic or milSF eBook to offer).