Create & Wait: An Author’s Worst Marketing Approach

Many authors, filmmakers and artists, work under a strange type of “create and wait” mindset. According to this approach once a work has been created, an artist has completed his or her work and can't be bothered with marketing or promotion.

Some feel that they shouldn’t have to market their art, others are loath to invest in their work. Those are such strange attitudes to hold around something that is so important. When I ask artists what is most important to them, the response is invariably, their art. If it’s not number one on their list, it is assuredly in the top three. Yet when it comes to caring for their art, which by definition involves marketing and promotion, that importance often seems to plummet.

This a strange disconnect. Not that it’s not understandable. We live in a culture where art is generally seen as an avocation or a hobby. We view those artists who have made it as anomalies. We could never be one of those success stories. When young artists tell their peers or families about their dreams, they are generally told to grow up and find a suitable career. Without support, is it any wonder that so many simply give up their art, or do so in secret? What other venture would have people hiding as opposed to promoting their work?

The other trap is when artists believe that marketing is beneath them. They've done their work and shouldn't have to bother themselves with marketing or PR. To those I simply say - join the real world and your chances of success will increase exponentially.

If this describes you, change your mindset – now!

The best book or film in the world needs a bridge built between it and its audience. From my perspective, building that bridge is something that artists owe to their work. It's incumbent on them to give their work the best chance it can to succeed, reach an audience, and touch others.

The trick here is to view promotion as an art.

If you can afford it, hire a professional. If not, don’t wait. There are tools you can learn and implement on your own.

Learn the art of marketing; the art of PR.

Have fun with it, experiment, be bold.

To quote Goethe: “Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

And the truth is if you adhere to the “create and wait” philosophy, chances are you will wait and wait and…
You get the picture.
Writers not only need to be bold in their work, they need to be bold in how they market their work.
One artist told me, he was confident his art would be discovered once he passed on. But, waiting to die in order for one’s art to be discovered doesn’t quite seem like the most effective marketing plan for your work.

Take action.
And, remember Goethe –
Be bold.

PR & Marketing in the Age of Disruption

From music to film, to publishing, to the world of fine art, the internet has forever changed marketing in the creative industries. This shift has been seismic and has turned what had been thought of as set-in-stone business models on their collective heads.

I began as a music journalist and then managed bands in the early ‘90s, but those days are gone.  The music world was the first to be rocked by the changing communication landscape, whereas many were engulfed by the changes and faded, a new breed of musicians learned to take matters into their own hands and create successful careers utilizing PR, social media and guerilla marketing

The publishing world has also been turned upside down.  No longer do traditional publishing houses hold the keys to success.  Self-published authors are taking matters and marketing into their own hands.  Increasingly self-published authors are landing on the best sellers list and on Amazon’s top 20 list.  Amanda Hocking initially became a millionaire by self publishing her work.  It was only after she was established that she signed with St. Martin’s Press.

The shifts came later to the film industry, but it too is experiencing the change.  For example, as with self-published books, CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com) serves entrepreneurs in the music, publishing, and film worlds. As an independent producer you can upload your film as part of a digital DVD along with cover art and information on the film.  Your film is then posted for sale.  The company (which is owned by Amazon.com) takes and fulfills the orders and splits the profits with the filmmaker.  That is just one option.  There are several outlets online that help producers sell their films.  There are also new channels of distribution.  Films are now reaching the public by being shown at churches, organizations, schools, museums, and other non-traditional establishments.  Theatrical distribution is no longer the only name of the game.

That said, the most powerful marketing tool available to artists is a combination of PR and social media.  An effective public relations campaign will land you media coverage that offers you the validation and credibility that no other form of marketing can offer.  You are the news!  You can then begin to share and amplify your media coverage on your site and on your various social media platforms.  Compared to other forms of marketing, this combined approach can be extremely effective and affordable.

Whereas the internet has torn down down some of the traditional walls and allowed artists in all fields to take more control of their careers, doing so is not always easy.  It involves creativity, persistence, and an investment of both time and money.  These changes can initially be daunting.  For years musicians, filmmakers, and authors were reluctant to rock the boat and alienate the powers that be by charting a path of their own.  But more and more artists are realizing that the old models have shifted, bringing different challenges but also opportunities.  The upside?  With tenacity and creativity, artists can now carve out successful careers on their own terms.

I’m a Writer, not a Marketer! (You Still Need PR)

"I’m a writer, not a marketer or promoter!"

That can be a nice sentiment, but it’s also generally the kiss of death. If you write and don’t want to promote your works, you best team up with someone who will.

The fact that successful authors need PR and to market their books is not a new phenomenon:

These three were giants of literature who were also brilliant promoters.

There are more stories than we'll ever know from talented writers who are unknown because they failed to promote, and many accounts of mediocre writers who have successfully marketed their works. A mediocre writer who promotes will generally be more successful than the talented writer who doesn’t.

Talented writers who also market and promote—those are truly ahead of the game.

The trick is not only to become comfortable promoting yourself as a writer, but to do so effectively. Sadly, it’s not enough to decide you’re going to promote, jump on Facebook, Twitter, and maybe Goodreads and then sit back and wait. Nor is cobbling together a media list and sending out a press release going to suffice.

The secret? Effective PR is effective storytelling.

Perfect you say, you’re a writer, storytelling is your stock-in-trade. True, but when it comes to PR you need to know what stories to tell, how to tell them, when to deliver them, and to whom you should tell them.

If all of those pieces aren’t in place, chances are not much is going to come of your efforts.

So, if PR and marketing aren't your strong suit—delegate.

Find a PR team that understands how to promote books and authors, have worked in the field and who you feel comfortable with. Bring them on board and, together, move forward.

Effective PR and marketing can spell the difference between success and failure of a book and a career.

Give yourself the best shot to succeed.

Publishing & PR

You’ve written a book. Better yet, it’s getting published! (Congratulations).

Fact: Your journey is just beginning.

Many authors, particularly those new to the industry, make the mistake of conflating their publisher with a public relations team. Unfortunately, those two roles have key differences, and misunderstanding the distinction can lead to frustration and missed opportunities. Let’s clarify some of this!

Your publisher will likely assign a rep to your book, someone who is responsible for sending out an initial press release and ARCs (advanced reading copies) to potentially interested parties. Your publisher will also keep track of performance and sales, and handle inquiries as they come in.

What you can’t expect your publisher to do, however, is proactively and consistently seek out media opportunities for you, promote you as an author outside of this particular book, and consider the paths you could take as a burgeoning creative professional. It’s not that PR isn’t part of publishers’ job description--it is, particularly with the larger houses. But the reality is that books, particularly those by new authors, don’t get the push authors are expecting, or that they deserve. It’s often not the publisher’s fault--they generally just don’t have the wo/man power to do the work.  

If you want exposure and continued promotion as an author beyond the launch date of a book, you need PR.

In PR we use your work to promote you as a professional--the scope of your success and media magnetism extends well beyond one book, and we help you identify what makes you unique as a news piece--your story--and we share that with maximum effectiveness with the public.

We aren’t necessarily pitching your book to TV networks for adaptations, or handling second printings when you have a smash hit, but we do make everyone aware of those potentials so that they’re interested in your book now, and what you’re doing next.

Many authors think they’re getting a personal PR agent in a publisher, someone who will advocate for them and seek out interviews and reviews, but in fact the publisher’s role is largely diminished once the book is out--a few review copies, and pre-release coverage and then it’s up to you to keep that momentum going, and that’s when you’ll want a PR team in place.

The last thing you want to do is lose that momentum: if you’re getting close to publishing, or have published a book--you need PR. Give us a call, we’ll walk you through the next steps.

Write on, writers!

Interview with the Vampire...Book Author

When author Thomas Hewlett and I began working together, one of the first things he told me was that he took his first drink at age seventeen and promptly blacked out for thirteen years, coming out of a haze at rock bottom with the early idea for a novel—the one that would kick-start his career—scrawled across a mess of notes.

He had my attention. But it wasn’t the shock factor of that surprising opening that kept me, it was the next part: writing saved his life. Writing not only gave Thomas a career, it gave him an outlet into which to pour his struggles and triumphs, and a purpose in helping others who might be facing similar challenges he did. His personal journey is as remarkable as his Twelve Stakes series.

He and I sat down to talk about both.

On your site you state that you took your first drink when you were seventeen, blacked out and woke up thirteen years later, with little to show for your life besides a notebook full of unwritten books. Did those unwritten book help point you to your current path?

Twelve Stakes - Corrected - High Resolution - Book 1Looking back over that trail of unfinished books—and I use “books” loosely, because they’re mostly piles of disjointed paragraphs and hastily scrawled character sketches—I see an active imagination and a lot of scattered potential. But all that writing kept me anchored in the dream-reality that stories come from. It was a way to keep the fires of my creativity burning when the drink and the drugs threatened to snuff it out completely.

And oddly enough, those scribblings were leading me somewhere, though I didn’t know it at the time. The book ideas and the characters in search of stories got more fantastical the further I went, and it kept my mind limber. Those notebooks were laying the foundation for what came later. The vampires, the magic, the darkness. It’s all there in embryo form.

I’ve heard authors say that writing has saved their life. In your case, that seems to be quite literally true. Tell me a bit about that journey.

Not to sound mythic, but it was a journey to Hell and back. I started losing the plot of my life when getting drunk and high became more important than anything else. The jobs I worked got more menial, the apartments I lived in got smaller and shabbier, everything in my life got small and bleak. I kept scribbling ideas for stories here and there as a kind of lifeline (my wife read one my journals from that period and said, “Well at least your writing was improving…”). When I finally had a breakdown and ended up in the mental hospital on suicide watch, stories were the thing that I held on to. I watched and listened to every crazy person I saw in there. I went from the hospital to rehab and that’s where I started writing again. I learned in rehab that we’re all here to pursue a passion or a dream and nothing is stopping any of us from doing that except a decision. A decision to choose ourselves. I decided I was finally going to write a book, no matter what. It became a central part of my recovery, a reason to get clean and stay clean. Finishing a book became a reason to choose my life. Working on that first draft was a struggle but it helped me stay focused on getting better and getting my life together.

What was the genesis for your Twelve Stakes series?

When I was newly sober, I had dinner with a friend of mine one night, a writer named Khanh Ho. He and I were joking about different ways to write about my time in the nuthouse and were spitballing story ideas. Khanh kept suggesting wilder and wilder ideas, like heroin-addicted angels in rehab, and he finally said, “You should write about vampires in A.A.!” I immediately latched onto the idea, knowing instinctively there was a kickass story in there somewhere. Sure enough, when I started unpacking it, the story, the world, and all the characters spilled out almost fully written. The idea of monsters as addicts and blood as addictive as booze seemed perfectly made to tell a noir-style detective story, which is exactly what I was looking for.

Do you think writing was always in the cards for you?

I don’t like to romanticize writing but in this case I do think I couldn’t have been anything other than a writer. It’s what I love and it’s how I look at the world. I see stories and see characters everywhere I go. And the writer’s life has appealed to me since I was a kid. The freedom to let my imagination run wild really put a hook in me. It’s why I when I was young, I rewrote the endings of books I read when I didn’t like the final scene or how the characters ended up.

Some writers plot and outline their book, others jump in and see where their writing lead them. How would you describe your writing process?

I outline for practical purposes, because it makes the writing process faster and smoother. But I keep my outlines vague so I can leave room for surprises. The outline is a map to a place I’ve never been before. So if I make it too rigid, it cuts me off from discovering new plot points or character motivations along the way. And at some point, I have to be willing to let the outline go altogether. No outline survives contact with the story without changing. So I start with a basic thread of the storyline to get it shaped into a rough three-act structure and I give myself a page count to hit every day. After that, it’s just faith. I trust that if I show up and start writing every day, the characters will show up too and show me the way to the final scene.

How important is reading to you as a writer?

All the reading I did before I started writing was extremely important. It gave me a solid education in how stories work. How do you build tension and suspense? How do you show emotion and pain? What makes a reader keep turning pages, desperate to find out what happens next? Reading as much as possible is important because at some point, all of it sinks into your subconscious like groundwater and that’s where your personal stories spring from. I don’t have as much time to read for fun when I’m writing, so when I do I try to read non-fiction so I can absorb more data that might inspire and influence future stories.

Who are some of the writers you feel have most influenced you?

At the top of the list are the mystery and fantasy writers that have melded into my style. Writers like Raymond Chandler, Anne Rice, Michael Connelly, NK Jemisin, Richard Kadrey, Nalo Hopkinson, Charlie Huston have been my guides and inspiration…and are now my competition.
What would you like readers to take away from your writings?

Most of all I want them to strap in and enjoy the ride. I want them to get lost in the world of Twelve Stakes and get so close to the characters they shout and cry along with them. I want my readers to wonder what kind of monster they’d be in my world—are they Werewolves, Vamps, Fae or Witches? The same way people sort themselves into Hogwarts houses. (That’s right, I just compared my books to Harry Potter!) But most of all, I want my readers to see hope in all the darkness and be inspired to keep fighting, addicts or not.

Twelve Stakes is a book series, but are you also thinking beyond books as a way to express your work?

IMG_9307 (1)Yes, I’m going to take Twelve Stakes across a bunch of different platforms. Jack Strayhorn, my Vampire detective character, hints in book one about the 60 or so years he traveled around solving supernatural cases. I’m turning those into a series of graphic novels. I’m also adapting the main series story into a television pilot. Netflix and Amazon are doing some amazing storytelling right now, dark and sexy stuff. My Vamps and Weres will fit right in. On the far horizon is an immersive video game set in the world of Twelves Stakes, especially if virtual reality tech catches up to my imagination.

Having gone through the process a few times now, what advice would you give to writers who are just starting their journey?

The two things I would pass along are commitment and permission. You have to commit to sitting down every day and banging out pages, no matter. Don’t feel inspired? Don’t feel like writing? Too bad. Suck it up and get to work. But while you’re writing every day, give yourself permission to suck at it. Give yourself permission to write a shitty first draft, have days where you hate every sentence you put down, and want to throw the book out the window. Those feelings will pass—as long as you keep showing up every day to write.

Check out the Twelve Stakes series at twelvestakes.com, and pick up Book 1 at The Last Bookstore today. Book 3, "A Devil of Your Own," comes out on August 1.

PRFW Summer Internship Program

Want to learn the nuts and bolts of the industry?

No filing, getting coffee, or answering phones: learn how to develop and implement PR campaigns, and to maximize impact across social media platforms through compelling content and advertising. There are also three industry events at which you’ll be a guest, not counting optional partner events.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Requirements:
Must have excellent written and verbal communication skills, be able to work effectively under minimal supervision, and be comfortable with social media (principally Facebook and Twitter).

This is a part-time, unpaid summer internship. Mostly remote work, with meetings at the office twice a week. You'll build a network of industry connections and receive career coaching for your next steps as a professional. This position reports to Senior Account Executive Analise Electra Smith-Hinkley.

To apply, please send cover letter and resume to [email protected] by July 1.