Children's Book Tip: Define Your Buyer.

Step Three: After defining your core reader, you need to define your core buyer. In the case of a children's book, your targeted reader is unlikely to be the same as your targeted buyer. Your buyer is going to be an adult, but what kind of an adult? Will your buyer be ...

• a he or a she?
• someone in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s?
• a professional or a member of the family?
• a grandparent, parent, relative, or unrelated caretaker?
• buying a book to read herself to the child or to give to the child's parent or guardian?
• associated with an institution (a school, a hospital, a daycare center, a church, a therapist's office)?

Again, you might paint a picture in your mind of the typical buyer. Your book, at least on its outer edges, will need to appeal to your buyer, or it will never find your reader. The Publishing Pro

Children's Book Tip: Define Your Audience.

Step Two: After settling on your concept, you should define your audience. Ask yourself these questions:

• What age group am I writing for?
• What gender am I writing for?
• What race or ethnic group am I writing for?
• What is my reader's family situation?
• What is my reader's school situation?
• What is my reader's economic situation?

You should almost certainly determine your targeted reader's age—this detail will have the most impact on how you write and the kind of illustrations you use.

The other questions may not seem as relevant. However, if you are writing for boys and girls, make a note of that. And if you are trying to reach across racial and ethnic lines, make a note of that as well. And so on. 

Finally, as you answer these questions, you might use a writer's trick and let the picture of a specific child come into your mind. Give this child a life. Give him or her parents or guardians, pets, a home and school life, friends, and preferred activities. Thinking about this child will make your creative efforts more personal and powerful. The Publishing Pro.

Children's Book Tip: Define Your Concept.

First things first: Before you even start writing (or drawing) your children's book, you need to think it through. This begins with the concept. Answer these questions:

• What is your book about? (e.g., dinosaurs, bananas,
  angels)
• What is its purpose? (e.g., to teach reading skills, to
  change behavior, to support children, to have fun)
• Who is the main character? (e.g., a greyhound, a third-grader)
• What is the tone? (e.g., funny, gentle, crude)
• What is its message? (e.g., you're not alone, do the right
  thing)

Note: Generally, I've switched to advising all book authors to begin the publishing process by deciding on their core reader. (See previous post on memoir writing.) This exception is from my book, How to Publish Your Own Children's Book, which I'm in the process of revising. On review, the exception makes sense. —The Publishing Pro

Memoir Tip: Decide on Your Core Reader.

First things first: I always advise the authors I work with to begin the process of writing a book by defining their core readers.

I do this because I want them to have marketing in mind from the get-go.  Defining their core readers gets everything going in the right direction. To be honest, I was not sure I should apply this principle to the memoir writer. That’s because there are two kinds of memoir writers: those who are writing principally for their families and those who have a wider market in mind. Clearly, the scope will be different in each of these cases. The author writing for her grandchildren is less likely to get her work professionally edited, designed, produced, and printed than the author writing about struggling with a muscular dystrophy. The latter can imagine that his readers will consist of hundreds who either share his condition or who love someone who does. Nevertheless, the principle applies to both types of authors. By defining their core readers, authors of both types begin to see what lies ahead—even before they begin to write! And that’s the point—or at least one of the points. 

One of the other benefits of defining your core reader—and again this applies whether you are writing for your family or a larger audience—is that it gives you someone to write to. This is not foolproof, but having a specific audience in your head should help you write more clearly. In addition, it turns the process of writing from a self-absorbed activity into one where your relationship with your readers is very much the point. Real authors care about their readers. 

Notice that my title is “Decide on Your Core Reader” (singular). I believe it helps if you imagine your reader as a specific individual, who could be real or imaginary. It is easier to write to a specific individual than it is to an abstract and amorphous group. This is not an absolute rule. For example, I am working with an author who is writing a book for married couples. His core “reader” is, surprise, a couple. Okay, couple is a collective noun, in which case it can be treated either as singular or a plural entity. 

A similar example comes from U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer, who inspired me in this way of thinking. His core “constituent” is a family of four. He knows where the family lives, where everyone works or has worked, where everyone goes to school or has gone to school, and so on. Focusing on this imaginary family helps him do his work. 

As a memoir writer, you can do worse than imitating him.—The Publishing Pro

Why Most Novels Don't Sell

Their writing is, um, flawed: Thanks to Russell Urquhart for sending me this blog post from Kas Thomas, who describes himself as a "writer and technology evangelist." Bad writing isn't the only problem plaguing amateur novelists, but it's high on the list. If you don't like Thomas' cheeky style, read on anyway. If you're guilty of the literary sins he describes in useful detail—and you admit it—you can repent and become a better writer.

Not long ago (April 2013), Mike Cooper tried to calculate the average amount of royalties earned per year by self-publishers of novels, and he came up with the appallingly low (but probably accurate) figure of $297.

Why so low? Well, there's a tremendous oversupply of titles, for one thing. With around 2 million titles available (growing by 5% or more a year), you can't expect that the average book will be terribly lucrative. But there's also the fact that most novels are not particularly well written (to put it kindly). Let's be blunt. Most self-published novels (and a large percentage of traditionally published ones) are irredeemable junk. And thanks to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, most authors of said novels don't have any idea how bad their work is.

Read more ...

Readable Memoirs Are Novels ...

Just Not Fiction: I've been telling my memoir-writing students that memoirs are like novels, except they are true. Well, mostly true, but that's another issue. Thanks to Molly Wingate, a writing coach, for making the same point and, in the process, tipping me off about this advice for memoir writers from Kathy Brandt, who wrote a book with her son about his life with a mental illness:

Remember the story arc.

What is the story arc?  It’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. In his book Screenplay, Syd Field calls it the dramatic structure “a linear arrangement of related incidents, episodes, or events leading to a dramatic resolution.” When I write fiction, I eventually diagram the book on a long sheet of paper—a time line with each incident or plot point rising to the final climax and resolution. It becomes a visual roadmap and a way to identify places I’ve gone wrong. Once we’d written several drafts, Max and I realized we needed to do the same. We diagrammed our roadmap or story arc and began rewriting.

Read more.

And don't miss Brandt's "Eight Questions to Consider As You Draft Your Memoir" further down in her article.—The Publishing Pro

Testimonials and Reviews Are Gold

Hit the motherlode: All authors want to know how to market their books. One of the best things you can do is cheap, effective, and easy—at least for some people. And that is: Solicit testimonials and reviews.

Testimonials (or endorsements) are blurbs used for promoting your book—on the back cover of your book, on the inside in the front or back, on your blog, in ads, wherever you can.

Reviews are similar, but they tend to be longer, more substantial, and appear in places that you don't control.

However, even though you don't control the published result, you should solicit reviews. This is part of the traditional publicity process. While it is difficult to get magazines and newspapers to publish reviews about self-published books, today you can solicit friends, colleagues, and supporters to publish their reviews on Amazon.com next to your book. Reviews, especially in quantity, affect how easily it is to find your book and give it the appearance of success, which often translates into genuine success. Amazon reviews, especially if they are well written and specific, convince browsers to buy your book on the spot. Amazon encourages reviewers to be helpful by allowing buyers to tick whether reviews are helpful or not.

You do control where and how testimonials or endorsements are published. You can—and should—begin acquiring them as soon as you have a publishable draft to share with desirable endorsers. But who makes a good endorser?

In general, you want all the testimonials you can get. The more the merrier. However, endorsements for your back cover have the highest value. In fact, most of the time I prefer three to five endorsements to my own punchy sales copy on a back cover. Here are some rules of thumb for back-cover testimonials.

• You have room for only three to five testimonials on a back cover. Assume there will be some editing involved. Promise to show endorsers the back cover before publication.
• You have flexibility in terms of how you identify endorsers, ranging from anonymous to detailed references that include full names, title and position, accomplishment, and locality.
• Endorsements from identified experts familiar to your potential buyer have the highest value.
• Endorsements from people in different professions have more value than endorsements from people in the same professions. 
• Endorsements from experts based in different locations suggest that your own network is equally broad. 
• Children's books benefit from endorsements from children (who can be anonymous) as well as adults, who can represent buyers or experts.

Of course, these rules can be broken. One of my authors recently requested endorsements from five of her proofreaders. In so doing, she broke a couple of my recommendations. One is that I don't like asking proofreaders for testimonials, on the theory that thinking about testimonials interferes with their job as proofreaders. Another is that endorsements from friends, which was the case for all of her proofreaders, are not usually strong. However, in so doing, the author got five early testimonials. All were sincere, substantive, and strong—making her book look successful out of the gate. This leads to my last and perhaps most important guideline.

• Good testimonials should be substantive. On the back cover, it is most helpful if endorsers make different points. 

The Publishing Pro

Radio Interview 101

Which stations to choose? Many of my customers want to promote their books and ask me if I know someone who can help them. I usually tell them "No, you have to promote your book yourself." Paying someone to do your publicity is an easy way to squander your funds. An exception, sometimes, is finding someone who can get you interviews on radio stations. Why? Because doing radio interviews, once you know how, is one of the few publicity gambits that has a direct impact on book sales. Bryan Farrish Radio Promotion specializes in this task and is worth a look. If you want to spend money on marketing, this is one area where you might not be wasting it.

In the meantime, you can read one of Mr. Farrish's articles:

What elements affect the choice of radio stations when approaching them for interviews? There are over 13,000 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada... you can't target them all, so how do you narrow the list?

First, let's make clear that there are two separate schools of radio publicity... First is the "shotgun" campaign, whereby you fax/mail/email every station in existence and then wait for replies. 

 Read more ...

An Entrepeneur's Most Important Tool

Self-Delusion: This surprising article from A.J. Jacobs (author, lecturer, and editor-at-large of Esquire) came to me via LinkedIn:

It’s one of the greatest inventions in human history. Right up there with the wheel, the steam engine and the waffle maker. I’m talking about self-delusion.

I don’t mean damaging self-delusion (and certainly, too much can lead to disaster). I’m talking about constructive, healthy self-delusion, which is absolutely crucial to building a business.

As an author, I rely on self-delusion ..."

Read more ...

5 Ways to Fix Book Publishing

Worth a look: Is there any way to reverse the industry’s demise? Anis Shivani says the system dominated by executives, publicists, and agents needs to be torn down—to give control to readers. More from The Daily Beast.