Children's Book Tip: Write Your Business Plan.

If you are going to publish your own children's book, you should do a business plan. But this is not the first thing you should do. If you have been following my previous posts on the subject of children's books, you have answered some preliminary questions.

You know what you want to write about, what you want to say, what message you want to deliver, and what tone you want to strike. You know who your book is for. You know who is going to buy it. And most important, you know how your book is going to change lives.

Surprise! You are almost done with your business plan. All you have to do is answer three more questions. And yes, it is a good idea to answer these questions before you start to put your book together.

•    How will I reach my buyers?
•    What will it cost per book?
•    How much will I charge for it?

[This post is adapted from the forthcoming second edition of How to Publish Your Own Children's Book.]—The Publishing Pro

7 Top eBook Blog Tour Sites

Thanks to Anne Flint, author of Fettigrew Hall, for this link: A blog tour as many of you know, is a marketing strategy frequently used by self-published authors when launching new books. Although they can be quite effective as a promotional tool, it can be very time consuming for authors to reach out to other bloggers and organize a blog tour. Today, Greg Strandberg tells us about blog tour sites that can assist authors with organizing their blog tours.

Read more.

Children's Book Tip: Clarify Your Life-Changing Message.

The  key to marketing your book: Once you have determined your message, your core reader, and your core buyer, I want you to use this information to answer this question. 

• How will you change the lives of your readers and your buyers?

This may sound like an ambitious goal, and it is meant to be. Think about it. If you are not out to change lives by writing and publishing this book, why are you doing it? If you are doing it for yourself, that's fine. If crossing off an item on your bucket list is your main motivation, why should anyone else care?

On the other hand, suppose you can say with confidence that your book is going to change a child's life, and here's how. And suppose you can say that your book is going to change your buyer's life, and here's how. You have just determined that your book is important—even necessary—to others. This is your version of the "elevator speech," your thirty-second explanation of what you are all about.—The Publishing Pro.

Marketing Tip: Start Yesterday.

This blog headline from Guy Kawasaki got my attention: "10 Social Media Tips for Authors." Below is the first of the tips. Follow the link to see the others. Also worth noting is his reference in the introduction to "artisanal publishers" (aka self-publishers).

You must make progress along two fronts at the same time: writing your book and building your marketing platform. You cannot wait until you’re done writing, because a platform takes nine months to a year to build. Ideally, you started building your platform before you even began to write your book.

—The Publishing Pro

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