Audiobooks

By Dale T Phillips

---

Since audiobooks are currently in the fastest growing book format right now, getting your novel out for sale as an audiobook is vital for success. If your book isn’t, you’re losing a lot, and leaving money on the table, as the expression goes. My audiobooks have sold hundreds and hundreds, and I love the continual income stream. Sadly, many writers from traditional publishers don’t have their backlists up as audios, so they’re missing out.

Reasons why you should have audio as part of your overall writing business strategy:

• Discoverability: Get a bigger audience and make it easier to find your work. Many potential fans like audio for a number of reasons, some just enjoying a good listen while walking, driving, running, or biking. You want all the fans you can get! These days, people have less time for reading print books, so audiobooks can be a saving grace. While To Be Read (TBR) piles are so big, chances are many readers won’t get to your print book for a long, long time, if ever, but if you’re on audio, they have a better chance of finding your work. If they like that one, they’ll come back for more. Having your book listed in audio format also gets more hits in internet searches, and is listed in more places, increasing your internet presence and the chances of someone finding your work. With over ten million books in print and electronic format, your book is a drop in the ocean. There are far fewer audiobooks: smaller ocean, bigger chance to make a splash! And it’ll get you into some extra markets. I was speaking with a person from a State Library about my books, and the first question was “Any of your books out on audio? Because we’re investing in those right now.” 

• Sales: As well as finding new fans and watching your sales numbers increase, you can make money. Once the book is produced, all you have to do is promote it whenever you want. But each title is another product in your writer store, and even little trickles of money add up to an income stream. It’s nice to have hundreds of sales in another venue.

• Reviews: While many print book reviewers are overwhelmed, there are many sites doing audio that can still accommodate a review. You have more chances of getting good notice for your work. It all adds up. Listeners can also post reviews and ratings, which help.

• It’ll make you a better writer: When someone else reads your words, it makes the clunky ones stand out, and the good ones sound better. Your ear will develop, especially for dialog.

• Freebies: With some audiobook production, you get free giveaway codes. You can gift these to reviewers, as contest prizes, or simply as rewards to readers. When someone buys a print book in person from me, I’ll offer them the free audiobook as a nice extra.

Audiobook Options

Historically, audiobooks were done by professional companies and were expensive to produce, costing thousands of dollars. So only better-selling books made it. Now there are options.

• Someone ELSE does all the work- (and takes most of the money). While it’s nice to have someone do all the work for you, as with traditional publishing, there’s a danger. They might stick you with a hideous cover, a bad version, a product priced wrong for the market, or take a long time to get it out- or never, while they hold the rights captive. In any case, it may not sell, and you’re stuck. And when someone does the work, they also take most of the profit. 

While you assume that a big publisher would do a professional version, there may be other factors. I got one from a BIG audiobook producer, but the narrator couldn’t pronounce ANY place name in Maine correctly- even easy ones like Bangor and Augusta! Letting someone else do it all means the quality control may not be there, and there’s little you can do about it. And you might tick off some fans. (I know I was!)

And that’s assuming you can get a publisher to produce it. Professional narrators run upwards of $100 an hour, and it takes hours to produce a book. Plus other production costs, and packaging, and distributing, they’re investing a few thousand dollars, at least. Since they expect a good return, they have to estimate the sales will exceed the output. So if you’re a typical mid-lister, with less than ten thousand print/ebook sales per book, they may not even do your book for audio. But they’ll likely still retain the rights, in case you hit it big. Then they can always do one later. But what happens is that you can go for years (or forever) without an audio version. 

So- check your contract to see what provisions there are for audio. Even if you signed them away, and they’re not doing anything with them, maybe you can re-negotiate. They may not give the rights back for free, but maybe you can offer them something for it that will make it worthwhile. 

• Do it all yourself, keep all the money. 

Two factors- Production and Distribution

It’s true you don’t need a studio anymore, so it’s become cost-effective. You can produce high-quality audio files in different formats with free software and inexpensive equipment. I recommend Audacity software for recording, because it’s free and simple to learn and use. 

Are you a professional narrator? If you’re charging money for the book, you want quality. Unless you’re famous, the listeners may not be forgiving of less-than-awesome narrating. Before you start this path, do some voice work (maybe some podcasts), and get comfortable with a microphone and sound editing.

Drawbacks- while this can be done, the main cost is time to record and edit. Most of us don’t have enough hours in a day now. And it may take hours of editing to get the sound to a professional level.

Distribution. Even if you do it yourself, how are you going to package, list, and sell the finished product? Tough to arrange this on your own. 

• Work with a Service, and split the money

While there are other services, my current favorite production option right now is ACX.com, which feeds into Audible.com, an Amazon company. They make it easy and profitable for independents to get their books produced, listed, and sold. Better yet, the finished product is on the Audible site, AND on your Amazon book listing, right beside the print and kindle versions. Huge showcase! And they can tie it into Whispersync, which lets you switch between devices and formats.

How to Produce Audiobooks

For ACX, you’ll need an account on the site (includes telling them where to send the money!). 

1. Check your publishing contract first, and beware of issues with anthologies, or other writers listed on your book as authors. 

2. READ YOUR CONTRACT TERMS! Audible gets an exclusive right for years, so make sure you’re comfortable with the terms.

3. Log in to ACX and search for your book, then claim it as yours, with the right to produce an audio.

Various ways to produce your book:

• Do all the narration yourself. ACX distributes the book for you, and you make 40% of the list price. 

• Pay a narrator up front for doing your book. Narrators are expensive. While you can still retain your 40%, consider the cost, and how long it might take to recoup that. You post your project with the offer to pay, and get bids. Decide on who you want. 

• Offer a royalty split, for no up-front money- This is my favorite way. You are hoping that narrators will do all the work on spec, in hopes of making money when the audio sells. You each get 20% of the sale price in this part. They’re putting in time, which to them equals hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, and you have no risk! But of course, you wrote the book, so your time is already invested. 

When you’ve claimed your book, and decided if you want a narrator, you post it up as a project, with a description and notes on what the ideal narrator should sound like- male or female, age, accents, humorous, serious, scary, etc. You post an audition piece, a short segment that will give a good indication if the narrator is right for the work (dialogue with different voices is a good indicator). Add any helpful hints on what the passage should sound like.

This posts the project up for people to audition for, and you wait for replies. You can also search on available narrators, and sample their voices to see if any fit, then send them a message to see if they’re interested in your project.

When auditions come in, listen if they’re right for your work. When you’ve found someone who has the right voice for the job, you then set a schedule and make an official Offer. There’s a date for a 15-minute milestone, which is a guide to see if they’re on the right track, and a date for the project completion. You may need some back-and-forth on pronunciation and tone, and you send messages via ACX. When they’re ready, they send ACX the files, and you give a listen. You can request changes if there’s something amiss, so you have complete quality control. 

When it’s done properly, you Approve the work, which then goes through ACX for their approval, and then gets posted to Audible for sale. You’ll need a cover image modified to their specs, a squared-off version of your book cover. Then it goes up on Amazon as well, linked with your print and Kindle versions. They will set the price of the finished book, based on length.

But there’s more! ACX sends you codes for free downloads of the work. You can use these for reviewers, friends, giveaways, and rewards for your fans- it’s an awesome way of promoting your work- for free! You send instructions and a download code, and someone gets the audio for free.

And the bonus program- if your work is the first someone selects when signing up for Audible, you get a bonus payment- it’s split with your narrator, but is a nice addition.

Why I Hate Self-Publishing

By Steven Womack

---

Some time ago, I gave a talk at the monthly meeting of the Middle Tennessee Chapter of Sisters-In-Crime. A week or so before that, I’d read an installment of Clay Stafford’s writing blog that put forth the proposition that writers should not give their work away. A writer’s work has meaning, Clay wrote. It has value and to give it away for free sends the wrong message to readers and to the world in general.

I’ve known Clay Stafford a good couple of decades now and have always regarded him as a wise and successful friend. When he speaks, I listen—and usually take notes.

This time, however, I had to disagree.

It’s not that I disagree with his notion that a writer’s work has value. It does, even if sometimes it’s only to the writer him/herself. All writers put an enormous amount of work and heart in to getting those words onto a page. But that doesn’t always automatically translate into value, especially value measured in sales/dollars. When there are roughly 2.2 million new books published every year (according to UNESCO), the competition is pretty rough out there and it’s hard to convince an audience that your book has value; in other words, it’s worth reading.

So I put forth the notion—based on my own experience—that the best way to get attention for your book was to give it away. In February, I had my first BookBub Featured Deal and in a four-day period gave away 24,897 eBook copies of the latest installment in my Music City Murders Harry James Denton series, Fade Up From Black. Through the rest of the month, that resulted in over 200,000 page reads. And since Amazon’s policy is to pay page reads on book giveaways if the book’s enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, I made money giving stuff away.

Enough to pay for the BookBub Featured Deal, anyway.

While I’ve given up predicting the future, I feel confident that at least a few of the people who downloaded those nearly 25,000 copies will like the book well enough to actually go out and buy the other installments.

It’s a whole new world out there, marketing-wise. Marketing in the internet age has a  very long tail, and to riff on my old pal Larry Beinhart, sometimes the tail wags the dog.

***

After my talk, Clay wrote me a very complimentary note and asked if I’d be interested in writing a monthly column for Killer Nashville Magazine on self-publishing. I was very flattered, but the first obstacle to overcome was my loathing of the term self-publishing. Loathing? Seems kind of harsh. Why would anyone loathe a term like self-publishing, especially since some of the greatest writers in history published their own work? 

Disgusted with his usual publisher, Mark Twain formed a publishing company to publish The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Charles Dickens’s regular publisher showed little interest in A Christmas Carol, so Dickens hired artists and editors and paid for the printing himself. Beatrix Potter literally couldn’t interest anyone in publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit, so she borrowed the money to print 250 copies. At latest count, there are some 45 million copies of THE TALE OF PETER RABBIT in print. Walt Whitman self-published Leaves of Grass. The rest, as they say, is history.

In our lifetimes, the stories of self-published books that sold gazillions are apocryphal. Amanda Hocking, Andy Weir, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham, Scott Adams… all have, at some point in their careers, published their own work. And let’s not forget that whole Fifty Shades of Grey thing.

So why such distaste for the term?

I confess here that I’m an old guy. I began seriously writing in 1970, fresh out of boarding school and working on my first novel. There was no Internet then, no such thing as an eBook, and everything was old school; no respectable publisher would consider an unrepresented book, so you queried one agent at a time and if they took six months or a year to get back to you, tough noogies. They were the gatekeepers and they made the rules.

Then, like now, it seemed that every sumbitch who knew how to type thought they could be an arthur (a term coined by the wonderful Molly Ivins, when someone introduced me to her as a mystery writer—Great to meet you, we arthurs gotta stick together…)

Then, as now, there were dozens of predators out there preying on the hopes and dreams of aspiring writers. Self-publishing then was a synonym for vanity publishing, and the vanity presses were raking it in from the naïve rubes. Vantage Press, Pageant Press, and Exposition were three leading vanity presses that were, by the 1950s, “publishing” over 100 titles a year each. 

Even I got roped in myself when I paid $400 to have the legendary Scott Meredith Agency read a novel of mine. Meredith, being one smart cookie, had created a whole separate company to sucker in aspiring writers like moi. I got notes back from some office drone, supposedly signed by Meredith, who needless to say, didn’t take me on as a client.

Not one of those books published by a vanity press had a chance of being reviewed by anybody, let alone a respectable press like the New York Times. No bookstore would carry them.

Writers have always been easy pickings for predators. The most egregious case in history was The Famous Writer’s School, founded in 1961 by Bennett Cerf, a Random House editor and regular panelist on the TV show What’s My Line? There isn’t enough space here to go into that con job, but it made millions by paying writers as diverse as Mignon Eberhart, Rod Serling, Bruce Catton, and Faith Baldwin to join their “faculty.” The suckers thought their stuff was being read and critiqued by Rod Serling, when in reality the work was being done by unknown copy editors. There’s not room enough here to really relate the history of this scam, but Google it. It’s an object lesson for us all.

If not self-publishing, then what?

The world of publishing today bears no resemblance to the publishing world I came of age in, and that’s a good thing. I’m already over my word allotment that Clay gave me for this column, so over the next few months (or however long this little adventure goes on), I’m going to talk about these changes and how my own experience in This Crazy Writing Life have shaped me and my career. To me, it’s not self-publishing. Self-publishing means your stuff’s so bad, you’re the only who’ll touch it.

I prefer the term independent publishing. Going forward, I’m going to talk about how we, as writers, can take control of our work and careers, take back the power from the gatekeepers, and become the kinds of writers we want to be, with the kinds of careers and lives we want to have.

This’ll be a journey we’ll share. After all, as Molly Ivins once said: We arthurs gotta stick together…

Agents- You Don’t Need Them

By Dale T. Phillips

---

In the past, literary agents were sometimes useful and necessary for selling a manuscript to a publisher, and as an author representative, negotiating a better deal for the author for the sale of the book rights. Unsolicited, un-agented manuscripts were often sent to the publishing house. These were called over the transom (the crossbar above a door), because in the olden days, some were literally pushed through the window portion over the transom in the hopes that someone would read them. They would be dumped into a slush pile, and good luck to anything that broke out of that oubliette. Once in a great while, somebody would scan some of the manuscripts in the pile and find a pearl in that mountain of clamshells (not even oyster), and a miracle occurred, and the book got published. Extremely low odds, but it didn’t stop the flow. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of writers. 

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the publishing houses churned in a frenzy of consolidation and mergers. The people taking them over were interested in profits more than literature, and things changed dramatically. Many people who had been in the business for the love of books went away (voluntarily or just cut), and the ones remaining had to do more with much less. One thing that got outsourced was the discovery of buyable manuscripts. Many publishers announced they would not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Some still did, even though they advertised the opposite. They just didn’t want to deal with what they considered were piles of junk. So they pushed the work of editors and screeners onto literary agents, who would take on the burden of sifting through submissions for the needle in the haystack, the sellable manuscript. Agents became the gatekeepers to the Big Leagues- if you didn’t have an agent, you couldn’t even get someone to read your work. Agents were convenient for traditional publishing, because they’d recommend manuscripts that had some merit. If an agent sent nothing but duds, they wouldn’t be around long.

Generalization follows. Agents screen by what they think will sell to the handful of editors they have contact with. And instead of reading actual manuscripts to start, they rely on the query letter from hopeful authors. A (usually) one-page letter is a summary of what the book is about. It can be scanned rapidly, and usually discarded. Their reasoning is that if a writer cannot write a good query, the manuscript isn’t likely to be good. So now New Author must spend a lot of time composing the Perfect Query, all to hunt for the elusive Great Agent, who will take them on, to find the Perfect Publisher. Trouble is, the Great Agents are all booked up, and few are taking on new clients. Guess where that leaves New Author? Going through listing of potential agents to query, studying what kind of book they prefer to represent, and firing off a batch of queries to the selected group. Why in batches? Because the agents then usually take their sweet time about responding, if they respond at all. It can be days, but is more often weeks or months before the author hears back. And the response is usually “Thanks, but it’s not for us.”

How does one find a good agent that will take them on? At this point, it’s a matter of rare good fortune. While there are excellent agents, there are some who are just awful, and a portion who are downright toxic or even criminal. Some famous authors have struck deals with well-bespoken top agents, only to discover horrendous abuses. See the horror stories of Laura Resnick and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Sometimes the agents wouldn’t bother notifying the author of additional potential deals. A bad decision by an agent can be costly. And that’s just the honest ones! But new writers are so desperate to get an agent (a process that can often take years) that they’ll sign with the first one who indicates interest. It can be a catastrophic mistake. 

The problem is that anyone can say they’re an agent, hang out an agent shingle tomorrow, run an ad or two, and within a few weeks, probably have hundreds of submissions, because there are so many people hungry for traditional publishing that they’ll sign with anyone who’ll take them. They’ll be taken, all right, usually to the cleaners. 

Agents need no certification or education, no degree, no proof of ability, no license, no standards. It’s all voluntary. In many cases, they give legal advice on complex contracts (which benefit themselves)- in other words, practicing law without a law license, which is actually a crime. Thousands of authors hand over their careers and money to absolute strangers, with little or no vetting other than they saw a listing somewhere. And then a few emails and a phone call or two. “They seemed nice, and eager to work with me.”

The publishing houses mostly send the money due the author for advances and royalties to the agent/agency. When does the author get paid? At the whim of the person holding the money. Imagine if your employer sent your paycheck to your bank, who then decided when and how much to give you of the money you’d earned! 

It’s always a good practice to be in charge of your own finances. If you do decide to sign with an agent, try to work it so the payments from the publishing house go to you first, or to each their share. After all, the agent is supposed to be working for you. Then you pay the agent. Unusual, but not unheard of. 

Other problems with agents are that if you decide to part ways, you might still have to pay them forever for any of your books they represented, or even any you sold elsewhere while you were signed with them. Yup, you could wind up forking over your 15%, even twenty years after you got rid of them. Worse than alimony. And if they sold anything of a series, they may try to get a cut of any future things you sell from that series, even after you’re no longer working together. Dean Wesley Smith (with over 40 years of experience) says writers don’t need agents anymore. He says it’s like giving fifteen percent of your house value to the person who cuts your lawn. 

Many authors say they love their agent. Some authors don’t want to talk about bad experiences with agents, for fear they’ll be blacklisted, because the Manhattan book world is a tiny bubble. And it’s possible an author might not even know for a long time they’re being badmouthed in the industry, and why doors are closed in their face. But many more will tell of the hell they went through with agents. One well-known example had an author finding out only years later that their agent had died! 

If you want to work with an agent, be careful. Have any contract with the agent and with a publisher additionally vetted by qualified, licensed Intellectual Property attorneys, not just agents who say they know what they’re doing. In the new world of publishing, agents are far less useful than they used to be. With all the changes, it’s getting tougher for them to make a decent living as well. Not having an agent means not having to give up a good chunk of profits, which are slim enough. 

However, if you want to meet agents, writer conferences are the best places, because many agents go there to find new clients, and expect to get pitched. Some agents even schedule pitch sessions at these conferences, where a prospective writer has a few minutes to pitch the agent on a book proposal. Many writers get asked for part or all of a manuscript, based on those few minutes. At least the agent will give it a chance. 

If you do this, have a killer tagline to catch their interest. Follow with a few sentences similar to a description of other books the agent has done, or top-sellers. Think high-concept: for example, Gone Girl crossed with Silence of the Lambs, that sort of thing. Keep it simple, exciting, and show you know the marketplace and what type of book that agent represents. Most have their likes and dislikes available on their website, so do your homework first. Some give precise guidelines for how to pitch them. Don’t think your manuscript is so wonderful that a strictly children’s author representative will suddenly want your adult science fiction novel (yes, this kind of idiocy still happens). But if your book is like others the agent has represented, say so. 

Your pitch could go something like this: 

“Hello. I’m [author name], and my novel, A Time for Tea, is an eighty-thousand-word cozy mystery about a blind librarian who solves crimes in her small Welsh village. It’s similar in tone to Murder by the Sea, which I see from your website you represented. This is my first novel, although I’ve had mystery stories published in [credits].” 

This pitch shows the author has done their homework, and in many cases, the agent would want to hear more. The conversation might end with the agent asking for a partial manuscript, maybe the first fifty pages or so. I’ve seen this happen so many times at conferences, and the writer comes out of the session stunned, starry-eyed, and grinning from ear-to-ear. It’s wonderful to see dreams come true, so give them the moment and don’t harangue them with lectures about what other paths they might want to think about. If they’re happy, let them live their dreams. Of course, if someone asks for your advice, wait a bit and then give them the truth as you see it. Just don’t volunteer to be a buzzkill or dream-crusher, and remember that timing is everything. 

Remember that you don’t need anyone’s permission to publish, nor do you have to wait years to be chosen by gatekeepers. You can publish independently while you pursue a traditional path if you want, becoming a hybrid author, or any way that makes you happy. And if you achieve outstanding success as an independent, the traditional publishers will then want you even more.

---

Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime. 

Timing is Your Time’s Best Friend: Calendar Management for the Soon-To-Be-Published Author

By Roger Johns and Kim Conrey

---

If you’ve been through the book publication process, you know the demands of publication and promotion can be ferocious time eaters. If you’re a soon-to-be-published author, about to go through this process for the first time, the magnitude of these time demands can be difficult to anticipate. So, it’s important to know what this process will look like, ahead of time, so you can manage your time and your calendar more effectively. The last thing you want is for the joyous occasion of your book’s upcoming emergence into the world to be plagued by stress and anxiety because you’ve gotten stuck in the mire of constantly playing catchup, or because things aren’t happening at the pace you expected them to.

An important set of tactics to keep this from happening is to make it a priority to acquire advance knowledge of: (1) the demands the book production process will place upon you, (2) the opportunities publication will make available to you, (3) how to properly plan for what’s coming so you can stay ahead of the game, and (4) when you should begin the various tasks that contribute to your book’s success.

As with all complex endeavors that are not completely under your control, the schedules and demands of others will have to be considered and, to some extent, catered to. This means you will need to know who and what you will encounter on the road ahead, what their role is, and how they view your role in the process. Experience tells us that what you do, and when you do it—especially during the busy months preceding launch—can have an outsized impact on the success of your promotional efforts in the critical months immediately following publication. So, it pays to understand the timeframes during which certain undertakings need to be started, because when you begin can be as or more important than what you begin. In this context, timing is your time’s best friend.

Demands of the Book Production Process

If you have just signed your first contract to become a traditionally published author, you should expect your manuscript to undergo a fairly rigorous, multi-part editing process—a process in which you will play a significant part. Depending on your publisher, the condition of your manuscript, and your editor’s inclinations, this can include story edits, copy edits, and proofing edits. All of these must be done with care, and completed and returned on time. So, ask your publishing house editor what’s coming and how much time you’ll have to complete and return your responses. If your editor wants a lot of story edits, this can take quite a while to do properly because changes to one part of a manuscript often require changes to other parts. And, obviously, the longer your book, the longer all phases of the editing process can take. Knowing, ahead of time, what’s expected of you, will allow you to plan these tasks into your personal and professional life.

In addition to the editing process, you will need to provide input on cover images, gather blurbs from other authors, produce some of what’s known as front matter and back matter (i.e., dedication and acknowledgements), and provide an adequate headshot, and you may be asked to weigh in on (or craft entirely) the jacket/flap copy. All of these tasks can be loads of fun, but they all take time, and they all come with deadlines, so they need to be planned for. Missing an editing or production deadline is not a recipe for success in the publishing world. And starting late in the process of soliciting blurbs from other authors can leave you with less than you had hoped for, in terms of quality and quantity. Authors who agree to furnish a blurb will need a copy early enough to do a good job for you. This is especially true if you are self-publishing your book. Publishing houses have established timelines for prompting authors to solicit blurbs. If you’re self-publishing, you’ll need to initiate this process yourself.

If you have just made the decision to self-publish, you’ll need to plan other activities even further ahead, as well. The fantastic editor you’ve hired who took only weeks to get edits back before, may be playing catch up when your manuscript hits their inbox, and the same goes for your cover designer. A mantra for any author, especially the self-published author, is, everything takes longer than you think it will. If this is your first attempt at self-publishing, you may be shocked to find that it can take Ingram Book Company, the largest book wholesale distributor in the world, several weeks to load your book’s meta data onto Amazon and other retailers. So, if your goal was to get as many print preorders as possible, you’ll need to have your book ready to go months before your official publication date. Take it from droves of authors who’ve checked book retailer websites every morning for weeks looking for their book’s cover only to find the dreaded “No Image Available” icon. This can be heartbreaking for an author who was planning a huge preorder push, and there will be nothing you can do but wait for the data to load. No amount of begging customer service will help. You are one of thousands of authors waiting on the same thing. If eBook sales are your only goal, you will have more time, but if you do not have your eBook loaded in time for preorders to be delivered, Amazon can suspend you from selling an eBook on their site for a solid year. It is crucial to plan for the unexpected. Whatever you think your timeline is, double it at the very least.

And…while all this is going on—whichever way you choose to publish—you’ll need to do your part in the increasingly challenging process of book promotion. It’s tempting to think that, if you’ve signed with a traditional publisher, especially a big one, that all of that “promo stuff” will be taken care of by the sales and marketing and publicity folks at your publishing house. Sorry, unless you’re one of the biggest of the bigtime authors, things are unlikely to work out that way. Regardless of whether you’re about to be traditionally- or self-published, you’re going to have to do your part. And, unless you’re a celebrity author, with high brand recognition, “doing your part” means building demand for your book before it becomes available for purchase, by: (1) establishing a social media presence, (2) lining up appearances at bookstores, local author-oriented events, conferences, conventions, book clubs, and other venues, (3) developing or joining a blog or a podcast, (4) creating posts for blogs hosted by others, and (5) becoming involved in professional organizations dedicated to the type of book you’ve written. 

And…while all this is going on, you’ll need to be writing your next book.

Opportunities Publication Will Make Available to You

Being a published author is a big deal. It’s true that millions of books are published in this country every year, but it’s also true that hundreds of millions of people live here. By publishing a book you have accomplished an amazingly rare feat. And a fascinating one, as well. The reading public shows a strong interest in knowing about the writers of the books they read. Because of this, there are dozens of regularly scheduled (and undoubtedly thousands of individually arranged) events around the country, every year, at which authors and their readers gather for the purposes of getting to know each other and finding new authors to read. This means published authors will have opportunities to get in front of the reading public in ways that are generally unavailable to others—including appearances at conventions, conferences, bookstores, local author events, blogs, podcasts, libraries, and book clubs.

Availing yourself of these opportunities takes time, research, and determination and can require special knowledge. For instance, if you’re interested in lining up bookstore or local author event appearances on, or shortly after, your launch date, you’ll need to know how far in advance their schedule is booked, and approach them early enough to be considered for a spot. The most desirable venues often have crowded event calendars that are fully booked long into the future, so you’ll need to give them plenty of lead time. The same goes for blogs and podcasts hosted by others. And conferences, conventions, and book and literary fairs and festivals have specified registration periods that must be adhered to. And because not all venues will be receptive to your pitch, it’s possible you’ll need to over-develop your list of target opportunities, and make contact with enough of them early on to have a useful understanding of what’s going to work out and what’s not.

If you intend to create your own blog or podcast, you will need to start long before launch day, so you can establish your presence and build a readership or listenership. These activities can be difficult and time-consuming, and the more tech-challenged you are, the more difficult and time-consuming they become. However, there are lots of good books and web resources that can advise you on how to set these projects in motion.

Planning (to Stay Ahead of the Game), and Knowing When to Begin

It bears repeating that all of these tasks take time—sometimes lots of it. Many of them will need to be in process or fully in place well before launch day, so that a steady stream of promotional efforts is bearing fruit in the critical weeks and months immediately following publication. To make this work, it’s helpful to view your publication day as the midpoint on a timeline that begins the day you either sign your publication contract or decide to self-publish and continues for several months after your book becomes available.

The critical take-away is to develop a list of the obligations you will need to fulfill and the dates by which you will need to fulfill them, as well as a list of the opportunities you wish to pursue, along with the dates you’d like to avail yourself of them, and then place all of these on a timeline so you can literally see what the future will look like.

So you can have a clear understanding of when to begin each of the obligations and opportunities on your timeline, think of them in terms of lead time—the period between when you begin a process and when its purpose is achieved, and mark the start dates on your timeline as well. Then develop checklists for the specific tasks associated with each item on your calendar, indicating what needs to be done, by when, and by whom. This will allow you to measure your progress and to avoid getting blindsided by matters you should have or could have known about. In other words, give your book and your writing career every chance for success by creating a detailed map of the road ahead, so you can handle things like a pro.

---

ROGER JOHNS is the author of Dark River Rising and River of Secrets, from St. Martin’s Press, as well as numerous short stories published by, among others, Saturday Evening Post, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, and Black Beacon Books. He is the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year for mystery, and a two-time finalist for the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award. Since 2016, Roger has made over 140 live appearances across the country, at conferences, conventions, bookstores, libraries, book clubs, corporate events, writing clubs, continuing education classes and other writing-oriented venues, as well as on podcasts, web radio, and broadcast radio. He has also made, and continues to make, frequent invited presentations on writing and career management for new authors, and his articles and essays on these topics have appeared in, among other publications, Southern Writers Magazine, Career Authors, and Southern Literary Review. 

KIM CONREY is the Georgia Author of the Year recipient in the romance category for Stealing Ares, traditionally published by Black Rose Writing and Losing Ares, the follow up. Her urban fantasy Nicholas Eternal was published in June 2023, and her memoir You’re Not a Murderer: You Just Have Harm OCD, which she co-wrote with her adult child, was released in October of 2023. Her work has also been published by numerous magazines and literary journals and received awards. She serves as VP of Operations for the Atlanta Writers Club and podcasts about writing with the Wild Women Who Write. She gives book marketing talks and speaks on various topics relating to writing at local and regional writing conferences and literary festivals.

TOGETHER, Kim and Roger co-author “If You Only Have An Hour: Time-Saving Tips & Tricks For Managing Your Writing Career” the quarterly advice column in "Page Turner", the magazine of the Georgia Writers Museum and the Atlanta Writers Club.