Category Archives: Websites for writers

How to Sell your Book, No Matter Who Published It (5)

February 19, 2017 By in Book Marketing and Promotion, How to Sell Your Book No Matter Who Published It, Promoting published books, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers, You wrote it? You sell it! Tags: , , , , 4 Comments

Using your Website to Promote your Book

(Let’s get visible, Part II)

You do have a website, right?

An author website is essential to your promotional efforts. Even if you have a page on your publisher’s website, you should have one of your own as well. Remember that no one is more interested in the well being of you and your books than you are: not your agent, not your editor, not your publisher’s promotion department. They all have other horses in their stables. Their interest in you grows and wanes, depending on the season. Your interest in your career remains, by contrast, consistently high. You are the only one who will make it your priority to update your website with the latest news and the most recent publications.

It goes without saying that you should own the domain that is your name (for example in my case, marywwalters.com), and once you own it, you might as well use it.

A website is a static element of book promotion. This means, on the negative side, that it’s not going reach out and grab anyone: people who want to see it need to come to it intentionally. You can invite them, but they aren’t going to come unless they have a good reason to do so. Therefore, with a website, you are investing time and money in something that is just going to sit there like some 18th-century society hostess, waiting for visitors to come to her. This is a good reason not to break the bank when it comes to website construction.

On the other hand, a website serves many purposes once someone does land on it (as did the salons of the aforementioned hostesses, I’m sure). In addition, once you’ve created it, you don’t have to update it very often. The only changes I make semi-regularly to my website are the upcoming and recent events, although occasionally (when I’m procrastinating on something else I should be doing) I will add a new photo or a new quote from a particularly nice review.

What Does A Writer’s Website Need to Include?

Back in the day (i.e., when I was working as editor in chief at Lone Pine Publishing, and during the years when I was reviewing books), publishers used to create “media packages” to send out with the review copies of the books they published.

Books editors at magazines and newspapers (remember them?) would receive a copy of the newly published book (or an advance copy, if the author was well known) with photocopied pages tucked inside. These pages of promo and background materials might include:

  • a bio of the author along with information on other books or stories or articles that person had published;
  • a brief summary of the book itself (the kind of thing that was usually also found on the flaps of the book or the back cover);
  • blurbs (a sentence or two each) about the book that had been solicited from other writers, or excerpts of reviews of the author’s previous books;
  • contact information for the publisher, and the author’s agent or the author;
  • upcoming author appearances on radio, tv, or in person; and
  • (sometimes) an excerpt from the book

These are the same elements you should make available on your website to help promote your book. If you have more than one book, you can have a page for each.

When I reviewed books, I was very happy to receive a raft of print materials as the information contained in them allowed me to include background on the author and the book, and directed me to other resources I might want to check out before starting my review. This was in the days before online searches were available, s0 the more information I was given, the better.

Your website should fulfil a similar purpose for those writing reviews on blogs or in traditional media, and for readers who want to know what else you have written and done. It should also provide contact information for those who want to invite you to do a reading or a workshop.

A website should look professional, but that doesn’t mean that it needs to be created by a professional web designer: most of us can’t afford one. Fortunately, creating a website has become very easy – you don’t need to know html or any other technical language – and most web hosts (e.g., SquareSpace, BlueHost, GoDaddy, etc.), will walk you through the process of creating one, and help you by phone 24-7 if you get stuck. If you Google “Best web hosts for non-techies” or something like that, you’ll get lots of suggestions. If you really don’t want to do it yourself, ask friends and relatives to refer you to someone – perhaps a student – who can help.

While I think it is a good idea to pay for technical help if you need it, there’s no reason to purchase a Cadillac manufacturer. I once paid $2,500 for a website, and I hated it and I had endless problems trying to change the elements that I didn’t like. The sites I have now are very user friendly.

How Many Websites Do You Need?

I used to have a different website for each of my five books, one for my editing and grantwriting businesses, and one for me. That got to be expensive and time-consuming. Now I just have one website for my literary works. (I continue to maintain another one for my grantwriting initiatives, because that one speaks to a different audience, and there’s too much detailed information on it to be suited to my writer website.) On the other hand, for one of my clients whose book is a byproduct of his business rather than the core of it, we did create a website where the book itself was the main focus.

At my own website, where all of my books are listed, all of the information in the bulleted list above is available, no matter which book a reader/reviewer is interested in exploring.

How Much do You Need to Spend?

You need to invest in two components to create a website: a domain name, which is like the sign with your business name on it, and a web-hosting site, which is where you hang your sign.

You own your domain name as long as you maintain your ownership of it, and you can transfer it from web host to web host if you find the hosting unsatisfactory. You can also sell your domain name if someone wants to buy it down the road. A domain name should cost you no more than about $25 (it will probably cost much less), and you will need to renew it annually. Sometimes web hosts offer a free domain name if you purchase a hosting package, but this usually includes only the initial registration. You will need to continue to pay to own it annually.

The web host is where you hang your sign, or park your domain, and you will pay rent to the host for the use of that space for as long as you want to have it. Depending on how much you want to include on your website, you can spend from about $50 to $150 annually for website hosting. If you are not building the website yourself, you will also incur a one-time cost to build the website.

One of the first things people look for when they want to know more about you is your website. I hardly ever think about mine now that it is up, but when I occasionally get around to checking the traffic on it (which you can do through the web host – tracking visitors will be part of the package you purchase – or through a web-wide system like Google Analytics; I use both) I am always surprised to see how many new and returning visitors have been checking out my site each month.

The website is the first step in building your online presence. Next time we’ll talk about creating your Facebook author page, and then about other “static” components of your book promotion plan.

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As always I encourage readers to share their experiences and knowledge about book promotion through the comments section below. If your comment isn’t posted immediately, be patient. I review them first, to avoid spammers, and (believe it or not) I’m not always online.

 

Wattpad: Engaging Readers as You Write

January 2, 2015 By in Fiction, Literary Agents, Publishing, Electronic, Reading, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers, Writers Web Sites, Writing Process Tags: , , , , , 4 Comments
Note: This article previously appeared in a slightly different form in Write, The Magazine of The Writers Union of Canada

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Confession: Sometimes I have trouble writing the next page of my new novel. WPNot because I am short of ideas, but because I have a lot of other urgent matters that demand my attention. I have often envied the writers whose editors or literary agents I imagine standing at their sides like midwives, encouraging them throughout their labour, reminding them of the rewards of manuscript delivery, telling them how much the world wants to see their next baby, and finally urging them to “push.”

When I heard about Wattpad, an Internet platform for readers and writers that attracts 27 million unique visitors per month, and 200,000 uploads of writing per day, I thought it might be part of the answer to my problem. And it has been. But it is also other things.

What It Is

Wattpad is a social storytelling platform where writers can register to post all kinds of work – poetry, drama, fiction and nonfiction – and where readers can read that work: all at no charge.

Most writers post short segments of their works in progress (1,000 to 2,000 words at a time, sometimes much less, sometimes much more), adding to it at regular (or irregular) intervals. Some writers are posting whole manuscripts in serial format that they have previously completed. Others (like me) are posting early drafts of longer works one section at a time. Still others slap up writing fragments like ill-mixed paint with hairs in it, and leave it there to dry — perhaps intending to come back and edit later, perhaps not.

Once the piece is up there, the effort to attract readers begins. You can contribute to this process (but probably only once) by emailing all of your friends and inviting them to check your story out, and by posting your Wattpad link to other social media sites (here’s mine). Of course, you also want to encourage visitors to your page whom you don’t already know, and you can do this indirectly by reading and commenting on the writing of others on the site, getting involved in the discussion forums, and entering the informal competitions Wattpad puts on from time to time. The goal is to get people to “follow” you so that they will be notified whenever you post a new installment or an update.

Every time someone takes a look at a segment you have posted, your “read” counter goes up. Readers can also vote for or post a comment on your work. The more reads and votes you get, the greater are your chances of being noticed by even more readers.

Some people use Wattpad as an end in itself – they are not interested in publishing elsewhere. Others are creating works ultimately intended for self- or traditional publication. Many writers have several projects on the go. Some ask for input and guidance from their readers; others just write.

Who’s on Wattpad?

The two Canadians who developed Wattpad (Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen) intended it for readers as much as writers, and Ashleigh Gardner, Head of Content: Publishing, says that “Ninety percent of Wattpad visitors are there to read and comment, not to post stories.”

She also says that regular visitors include publishers and agents who are looking for new talent.

“Some writers use Wattpad to promote their books to publishers,” she says. “Perhaps their novel was rejected when they submitted it directly, but now they can demonstrate that there is significant interest in their work.”

Gardner also tells me that the Wattpad app for smartphones and tablets is downloaded about 400,000 times a day. “Eighty-five percent of our visitors now reach us from mobile devices,” she says.

The advantage of Wattpad’s mobility component is clear: your work is accessible to readers no matter where they are, and your followers will receive “push” notifications whenever you post something new.

Copyright and Other Concerns

Gardner says that the site features a very sophisticated data-checking system that not only protects what is posted, but also works to prevent piracy. “All work on Wattpad of course remains copyright to the author,” she says. “Further, it cannot be copied and pasted, and readers can’t download it.”

A few people have told me they’re reluctant to sign on to Wattpad because they fear it will lead to spam, but so far Wattpad has attracted no more spam to me than have Twitter, Linked In, Goodreads or Facebook (which is, in my case, none).

Wattpad has had a reputation for being a place where teens post stories for one another, but if that were true at one point (and wouldn’t it be great to know that there are millions of teens who are interested in writing and reading?), the demographics are changing. “The majority of visitors are now between the ages of 18 and 30,” Gardner says, “and the subject matter of the content is changing as the average age goes up.”

Making Wattpad Work

The important part of making Wattpad work for you is to remember that it is a social media platform. If you don’t engage with it (read others’ works, respond to comments, participate in forum discussions), you will miss out on the very important reciprocation factor, and your work will languish. Further, thanks to algorithms, the more readers you attract, the more readers who will find you on their own.

Networking is not as painful as you might think. While it’s true that the Wattpad platform sports lots of dabblers and thousands of very bad writers, it doesn’t take long to sort the wheat from the chaff. And there are also some very good writers there, clearly intending to do as I am — get the work written and noticed by intelligent and discerning readers.

I’ve found a few manuscripts on Wattpad whose next installments I am genuinely eager to read and I’ve also found a few very careful and helpful readers who will probably help me get through Seeds and Secrets far more quickly than I would ever have done on my own. There is a definite motivation to keep going when readers start asking when you’re going to post the next installment. (As of Jan 1, 2015, Seeds and Secrets had received 1,500 “reads” and 121 votes. It stands about 450 from the top in the General Fiction category.)

In addition to pieces of my novel, I’ve put up a couple of works of short nonfiction on Wattpad – one previously published, one not yet – and received encouraging – and immediate – responses on them as well. I am also posting blog posts from my 2011 solo trip to India – Watch. Listen. Learn – which seems to be very popular. In fact, the response is making me seriously consider publishing it as a book, which I had not considered doing before.)

For me, Wattpad is like a humungous writing group where no one has to make coffee or serve beer, get dressed before offering feedback on other writers’ works, or pay any attention to comments from readers who don’t get what they’re doing.

Wattpad is not for everyone, of course, but if it sounds like a tool you could use to stimulate your writing and find new readers for your existing work, check it out. I’ll be happy to read the writing that you post – as long as you read mine. :)

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Update: You can check out Wattpad’s 2014 Year in Review here. According to Nazia Khan, Wattpad’s Director of Communications, the company has noted some interesting trends this year:

  • People are writing novels on their phones
  • Episodic/serial reading is back (Dickens would be so pleased)
  • Everyone is a fan of something as evidenced by the growing number of fanfiction stories
  • Teens are reading. Yes, really.

Book Promotion Tip of The Week #16: Get serious about Goodreads

November 5, 2013 By in Book reviews, Promoting published books, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers Tags: , , 5 Comments

Screen Shot 2013-11-05 at 7.54.20 PM

Update Nov. 8: I’ve signed on to read and discuss three works of fiction in two different groups on Goodreads. (Because I have so much time to read… )/(Because I’m wasting too much time on Netflix.) The books are Gilead OR Atonement (I’ve read those two and hope they pick Gilead, which is brilliant), Olive Kitteridge (interconnected short stories. I’d never heard of the author, Elizabeth Strout, but I’ve read two stories so far and they’re great) and The Blue Notebook by James Levine. The groups I’ve joined (if anyone else is interested in reading/discussing those books) are Bound Together (1,502 members; women’s group), and Literary Award Winners Fiction Book Club (83 members).

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I have been inspired to get more active on Goodreads, thanks to a six-months-old article on The Huffington Post that I just recently discovered.

There are so many blog posts and articles out there offering promotional advice for authors that it’s hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. But the information contained in “How to Become a Goodreads Power User (and why you’d want to)” by Penny C. Sansevieri sounds practical and viable.

Sansevieri points out that “the average demographic” of Goodreads “is adult female, many with college age kids and surprisingly, a whopping 81% of them are Caucasian. They are avid readers, though many are less affluent than the average Internet user so low-priced books and free books do very well on this site.” Sounds like a healthy portion of my audience – at least for The Woman Upstairs and The Whole Clove Diet – although it also sounds like the reading demographic in general. And I have seen many young and middle-aged adults (and lots of men) in Goodreads’ book discussions.

Sansevieri offers some concrete guidelines on how to increase your visibility on Goodreads and I intend to test drive several of them. I’ve already found that the giveaways are a great way to attract attention, although I’m not sure they translate into sales. But then I haven’t been a very consistent presence over there, so I the fault is no doubt mine.  You can’t just post a new book and then go away and expect it to attract attention to itself.

Sansevieri also suggests subscribing to two Goodreads newsletters: the Goodreads Author Newsletter, and the main Goodreads newsletter.

I have occasionally heard some grumbling from other writers about Goodreads, but I’m not sure if this came from people who were active on the site, or were only drop-in visitors as I have been. Since I am normally an avid reader (although not so much since I got hooked on Breaking Bad), I can’t see a downside to getting more involved in Goodreads. Even if it just means I end up finding more people to talk with about other people’s books, it’s a win.

If you have more experience than I do as a writer on Goodreads, I would be interested to know your thoughts about the Sansevieri article. Is it as useful as it sounds?

And if you’re on the Goodreads site, make contact. This is me.

Book Promotion Tip of the Week #11: Don’t Give Up

April 2, 2013 By in Fellowship of writers, Independent publishing, Promoting published books, Publishing, Relationships with writers, Self publishing, Self-publishing, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers, Writers Web Sites Tags: , , , , , , 24 Comments

Mary W. Walters Militant Writer(With a special P.S. for fiction writers)

This can be a very discouraging undertaking, this book promotion business.

Most of us didn’t set out to be book publishers, business managers, and self promoters – we set out to be writers. We wanted to communicate with readers, to tell a story, to express our dreams, hopes and nightmares. But however well or poorly we have done in the writing of our books, these days it is only the beginning. Even getting what we’ve written published is only the beginning. It’s the promotion that is the long, long haul and it can wear down the most determined and self-reliant among us, and devastate those of us who are lacking in confidence already.

For some of us, the writing is what sustains us: it is what we are meant to do. It is what gives the rest of our lives meaning. (I am one of those.) But a work of art (or wanna-be art) is only complete when it reaches its audience, as far as I’m concerned. And nowadays whether we are self- or traditionally published, the need to promote ourselves and our work eats up way too much of our writing time (such as it is in the first place, for most of us). And when it doesn’t eat up the time, it eats up our morale.

The Courage to Write

It has long been my conviction (like for 20 years or so) that it is necessary to have a whole lot of self-confidence in order to write a book. It takes gumption to complete any book, and as much courage as vision to complete it with any élan. When our self-confidence is eroded, we run into writer’s blocks, procrastination and all the other impediments that (in addition to our jobs and families and friends) can prevent us from writing well – or indeed from writing at all.

The problem, we are discovering as we put on all these new hats (publisher, publicity person, agent, bookseller), is that it also requires courage to promote a book or to promote oneself, and that our courage is threatened at every turn. Every time we check the sales stats on our books, or peek at the visitor-counters on our websites, our morale is likely to take a hit. Those hits affect not only our desire to keep promoting our books, but also whatever confidence we might have had stored up for writing the next book.

Some people probably decide to give up on promotion, but they are shooting themselves in their heads to spite their faces (or however the expression goes).  (Those who publicly announce that they are “giving up” or that they have been defeated are really only taking a new promotional tack. Check out this bit of self-promotion written under the guise of “being a failure” that recently appeared on the Salon website. Clever marketing.) To stop promoting means to disappear completely off the promo circuit, and the only result of that is  . . .  nothing. You sell even fewer books. And no one really cares but you. (The result is similar – or even worse, if that is possible – when you allow yourself to whine in public.)

Keep on Truckin’

In short, the only options are to a) move forward, and b) to sink without a trace. Which leaves only option a. And the only way to move forward is to “keep on keepin’ on.”

It helps to stay in touch with other writers who are doing the same thing we are, in places like this and other sites where people go to commiserate and encourage and share tips, rather than to promote themselves. (One might argue that I established this blog to promote myself, but I assure you that the strategy is not working. I have noticed no sales resulting from the blog, not even any clicks through to my books despite the 50,000 hits The Militant Writer has received, and therefore I claim innocence – albeit inadvertent – in the blog-as-marketing department.)

Ironically perhaps, I think it helps to be a writer in this strange new digital world of book sales – by disposition, writers are better equipped than most to take on solitary uphill battles where we slip backwards more often than we move forwards, where no one cares but us if we get anywhere, where giving up is really not an option: we do what we must do. It could therefore be argued that those who give up on book promotion are not real writers. :) (I am prepared to hear arguments that contradict this point of view. In fact, one of this blog’s regular readers, Kim Velk aka Woolfoot, is going to write a guest post on that very subject one of these days.)

It also helps to get enough sleep. Sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of evaporating self-confidence as well as care, and everything looks more do-able in the morning.

A Special Note to Fiction Writers

I have followed down link after link of tips on book promotion, as I am sure you have as well, only to find myself reading lists of strategies that relate primarily to non-fiction. Certainly some of the suggestions can be applied to fiction as well, but most non-fiction (with the exception of some creative non-fiction) is easier to promote than is most fiction: there is no doubt of it. Whether it is how-to, biography, history, memoir, even philosophy or psychology or economics, non-fiction always has an obvious hook that is more likely to interest the media – both social and traditional – than is a “made-up story.”

Because of this, perhaps, I was particularly disappointed to have wasted an hour of my life on a webinar entitled  “Create a Marketing Plan to Sell More Books” put on by CreateSpace, of all companies. (For the uninitiated, CreateSpace is the publisher of choice of most of us self-published authors who choose to create a paperback version of our books. You’d think they’d know that most of their customers are small-time authors, primarily of fiction.)

I was going to save you an hour of your life by telling you all the reasons why there is no point in listening to the replay of the webinar if you are a) a fiction writer and/or b) on a small or nonexistent promotional budget. However, another blogger saved ME another hour of MY time by writing a most eloquent explanation of why Brian Jud’s message is irrelevant to most of us. (Hint: Jud has been selling non-fiction, how-to books for decades and has built up a critical mass and a bank account to support the promotional tactics he suggests: most of them are far beyond the resources of most of us and irrelevant to any book with a literary bent. Take this suggestion of his for example: you should hire an accountant and a lawyer before you go to the bank to apply for a loan for the funding of your next book. All I can say to that is Hah!) Thank you, Ellen Larson, aka The Constant Pen and author of the sci-fi mystery In Retrospect, for an excellent summary and critique.

As Ellen does on hers, I have been making an effort, based on my own self-interests, to make the tips I present here on this blog specifically relevant to fiction writers—even if the majority are also relevant to writers of non-fiction – and I will continue to do that. If anyone finds other sites that are specifically directed at promoting novels and short stories, please let us know. Thank you.

Book Promotion Tip of the Week #4: December 26, 2012

December 26, 2012 By in Independent publishing, Promoting published books, Publishing, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers, Writers Web Sites Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Gold starCheck out the competition

Go to amazon.com, Indigo Books or Barnes and Noble (or all three) and track down the top ten books in your literary category (or categories). Analyze what their authors or publishers are doing to promote their books — e.g., do they have websites, giveaways, videos?  Are they on GoodReads? LibraryThing? Shelfari? Which of their techniques are ones that you have not yet put to use, that you might consider?

Don’t be a snob or a know-it-all, as I was when I started on this exercise – which I found online in a couple of places in slightly different versions (one said, “Check out the top 100 books in your category.” Who has time for that?)

The Whole Clove Diet is listed under “domestic fiction,” “humorous fiction,” and “literary fiction,” among other topics. When I checked out the leading ten sellers in the first category, first I came across a series of books for which I have no explanation for the unbelievable sales figures (that would be Fifty Shades of Grey and its progeny and their boxed sets. I tried to read the first one in the series, but found it too badly written to hold my interest — even in the allegedly “erotic” parts. People should check out some actual erotic literature, by Anaïs Nin and others). I thought I could learn nothing from E.L. James as she obviously knows something I do not know about the universe.

Another of my top competitors is Alice Munro, who could write even a very bad book (which I am sure she hasn’t) at this point in her career and still be in the top-ten list: how could I learn anything about book promotion from her?

Yet another was an author named Garth Stein who has apparently written a book from the point of view of a dog. Hmm. Maybe not him, either.

Besides having written books nothing like mine, all of these authors had been published by traditional presses (granted after self-publishing first, in the case of James). I was sure part of their rise to the top of the bestseller lists had to do with promotions departments and reviews in major media.

But when I bit the bullet and investigated more closely, I found that each of these authors did have something that I don’t have — that I could get quite easily — and that is a listing on Wikipedia. In addition, Stein has a video on amazon, and on his website and on YouTube. I guess I could create one of those. The more I looked, the more ideas I found.

One promotional idea I just loved came from another top seller in the “humour” category — Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. She has a map on her website where readers can “pin” their locations in order to be part of the map of readers who have “seen” Harold. Very clever. And adaptable, no doubt, to many other books.

So with an open mind, and keeping my envy in check, I have come up with three promotional activities that I could pursue with little effort, simply by checking out what the competition is doing to promote their books and themselves.

Book Promotion Tip of the Week #3: December 16, 2012

December 16, 2012 By in Promoting published books, Publishing, Self publishing, Selling Your Book, Websites for writers, Writers Web Sites Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Gold starBe Everywhere You Can

Take advantage of free on-line exposure.

In addition to keeping your profile information updated on your website(s) and your blog(s), find locations where you can copy and paste (and/or refine) your biography. For example,

  • Get yourself an author page (in addition to your reader page) on Goodreads;
  • On Amazon.com, make sure you have a photo and a profile on Author Central and  Shelfari;
  • If you belong to a writers’ organization (as I do to The Writers’ Union of Canada) or some other professional association, take advantage of the opportunities for promotion on its site;
  • Post a profile on Google+.

I am not talking here about social media–Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and the like–where it is important to engage with other subscribers on a regular basis. I’m talking about places where your bio will simply reside, like wallpaper, where readers who are interested can easily find out more about you and find a link to your website(s) or your book(s). And btw, if you stop visiting a website that you used to frequent, as I have authonomy, for example, there is no reason to remove your profile.

Keep the bios interesting, brief, to the point, and professional. For example, I don’t see much reason to post personal details in an online bio, such as my marital status or the number of children I have: this information has nothing to do with my writing.

Make sure you keep track of where you’ve posted these bios and diarize a visit to each of them every three months or so, in order to keep them (and your photo) updated.

As always, I welcome your comments on this post. Specifically, I invite you to add other suggestions of places where you have posted author information about yourself –at no cost to you — for interested readers and book purchasers.

Mary’s Writing and Publishing Browsery for June 14 2011

June 14, 2011 By in Independent publishing, Odds and Ends, Publishing, Self publishing, Websites for writers, Writing Process Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Here is an (annotated, of course: I rarely keep my opinions to myself) accumulation of interesting items about writing and publishing that I’ve come across (or been referred to by others) in the past few weeks:

  • For the inside track on the appalling impact of previous sales figures on book-publishing decisions, check out Steven Henighan’s amazing article “The BookNet Dictatorship” in Geist. If you’re a mid-list writer who can’t get an agent or publisher to read your manuscript, maybe this is why. And this happens everywhere – in the UK and US, for example, as well as in Canada;
  • In this YouTube video, Margaret Atwood displays her drawing talents in a presentation to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference in New York in February. I love her “Change Isn’t Good For Everyone” slide in particular (it is so Atwoodesque), but I think the half-empty glass she sees may also be viewed as half full it. Many of the problems she raises re: technology and books are caused by publishers, not by technology, and imho the structure that links writers (and editors!) inextricably with publishers and agents is already outdated. The United Artists model she suggests is relevant, and many groups of “indie-minded” writers are now banding together to apply that model to books;
  • Unbound is an independent publishing initiative where interested readers can pledge financial support to bring a writer’s work to press, helping to support the writing process of specific books in exchange for rewards such as lunch with the author and a mention in the acknowledgements (Kickstarter is a similar initiative that encompasses the range of creative projects.);
  • An item in Business Insider, “This 26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle,” profiles Amanda Hocking, the young author who is fulfilling the wildest dreams of legions of self-published writers by selling hundreds of thousands of her books and keeping 70% of the profits;
  • Another Business Insider article, “Suddenly, Amazon Starts Competing With Its Biggest Suppliers,” introduces Amazon’s latest initiative: its own publishing division. As fellow Writers Union member Art Slade pointed out, perhaps this will encourage other publishers to pay their authors more of (their own) money on electronic books. Otherwise, to me—an author who is looking with interest at the stripped-down model of getting good books to readers in which publishers are superfluous—this move by Amazon makes no sense.  Why not add an editing imprint, rather than a publishing imprint??
  • Finally, to mid-list author Neal Pollack’s article in the New York Times, “The Case for Self-Publishing,” I can only say “amen.”

For those who are not familiar with The Militant Writer blog, I direct your attention to two of my own recent articles: “As Publishers, Agents and Booksellers (unfortunately) (for them) Go The Way of the Dodo, Writers Learn To Fly” and “The Author as Publisher.” More articles in this series will follow as I have time to write them.

In the meantime, I encourage you to let me know if you see items on book publishing and writing that might be of interest for future Browsery columns. You can email me at marywwalters at marywwalters.com

Thanks for leads to the articles in this edition of The Browsery from Larry Anderson, Dwight Okita, Gerry Riskin, Marion Stein and a panelist at a Writers Union forum whose name eludes me.

authonomy: One writer’s experience

August 1, 2009 By in authonomy, Publishing, Websites for writers Tags: , , , , 66 Comments

by Mary W. Walters

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Update Sept 8, 2012: Four years after this post was written, it appears that very little has changed on autonomy. A reader of this blog recently wrote me to ask if things had improved, and since I rarely go over to authonomy any more, I decided I would ask the people who still did. Click on this paragraph to read the responses and watch me get sucked into yet another authonomy flame war.

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In theory, authonomy is a perfect way for writers to get their book manuscripts read by editors at a major publishing house without the intercession of an agent.

After reading about what authonomy is intended to do and why, a writer might decide that if her manuscript isn’t good enough to get the kind of positive reception from the other writers on the site that it needs to rise through the ranks to the top five (aka the Editor’s Desk)—where it will at least receive professional feedback from one of the finest editors in the English-speaking world, and at best be snatched up for publication—perhaps it isn’t as good as she’s been thinking that it is.

But is that a logical conclusion for her to draw when after several months on the site she does not, in fact, reach the Editor’s Desk and realizes that she probably never will?

For the benefit of other writers who may be weighing the same questions that I considered six months ago when I decided to post my novel, The Whole Clove Diet, on authonomy, I here offer a summary of my experiences and observations so that others may be better equipped than I was to assess the potential value to their writing careers of participation in the site.

What authonomy is

authonomy (the “th” is pronounced as in “author”) is an on-line community of writers that was established in 2008 by HarperCollins Publishers. Although the site is based in the U.K., HarperCollins offices around the world participate in evaluating manuscripts, and the site is open to writers, published or unpublished, living anywhere—as long as their manuscripts are in English.

On authonomy, participants read excerpts from books by other writers on the site, and they “shelve” or “back” the ones they find of merit. They are also encouraged to provide the authors of the books they read with some feedback in the form of comments. Those with the most backings (subject to an algorithm that recognizes users’ reviewing experience on the site) rise to the top and when they reach the top five, they are read and provided with an evaluation by a HarperCollins editor.

The authonomy site is still in beta format, but as of this writing it has more than 3,000 users–each with at least one and sometimes as many as three books posted on the site. Some users are very active (a recent forum question was “How many people spend more than five hours a day on authonomy?” and several people actually raised their virtual hands, albeit a little sheepishly). Many writers spend at least an hour or two a day on authonomy, reading, critiquing, commenting and sometimes contributing to the forum. Other writers show up only occasionally, and still others have not been on the site in months.

HarperCollins (HC) states that the purpose of authonomy is to “flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around” and on the last day of each month, authonomites gather around to see which five books will be whisked away for review by the HC editors. Approximately one month after starring them for selection, HC editors deliver critiques of the five top manuscripts to their respective authors. These evaluations ideally include suggestions for revision and some indication as to whether HC might be interested in seeing the manuscript again after the author has worked on it.

A word or two about the Golden Goose

The hope of almost all of those who officially join the site and post a book is that that HC will recognize their work of fiction, non-fiction or (less frequently) poetry for the masterpiece it is and want to publish it. Subsidiary hopes include that, as it is rising to the top but before it actually reaches the top five, the manuscript will be discovered by an agent, another publisher or even HC itself. This has, in fact, happened once or twice–although it hasn’t happened very often. Nor, to my knowledge, have any books that have actually reached the top five yet been selected for publication by HC.

Since getting an agent or a publisher is pretty much a crapshoot in this day and age no matter how you go about it, a more significant problem than the dearth of publications from the site is one that anyone can see who reads the HC editorial responses to books that have reached the Editor’s Desk in the past. (This feedback is almost always posted by the authors who’ve received it, although they are not required to make it public.) The problem is that while some of the editorial feedback is constructive and helpful, even insightful and brilliant, some is next to useless. The site administrators have said that HC editors for each book in the top five each month are selected on the basis of its genre or subgenre (young adult, for example, historical romance, or literary) and the location of the writer—but clearly, some HC editors are better readers and feedback-writers than are others.

I have read HC evaluations on authonomy that were little more than summaries of the excerpt. Others have contained errors that could only have been made if the editor had not read the submission very carefully, or had not consulted the “pitch” which is also a required part of the submission. Several comments from HC editors have been marred by typos and even grammatical errors, which seriously undermined their credibility.

After waiting months and months to obtain feedback from the powerhouse publishing giant that is HarperCollins—which is one big dream of a lifetime for many—to  receive a less than professional evaluation on one’s excerpt is more than discouraging. The recipients of such evaluations are upset when this happens, and so are the other authonomy community members who have also read the excerpt. Contributors to forum threads disgustedly point out the flaws in various HC reviews every month, sometimes out of loyalty, but often also on the basis of solid evidence.

My authonomy history

I joined authonomy in February of 2009, posting my novel in its entirety (at the outset) on the site. The Whole Clove Diet rose steadily albeit slowly toward the Editor’s Desk, garnering many positive reviews along the way. In the first few weeks I learned from comments left on the forum by site administrators and other users that by the time I reached number 50, particularly if I also maintained some visibility on the forum, I could feel fairly well assured that HC had seen my novel. If they had not by that point contacted me by email, I could assume they were not interested in it.

By then I had begun to appreciate how hard it was to reach the Editor’s Desk/top five and how small the advantages might actually be to getting there. I decided that if HC and other publishers and agents were trawling the top 50 on a regular basis, I would set my sights on reaching the top 45 or so.

In fact, I only made it to about 110 before I quit. Although I developed some rewarding on-line friendships at authonomy in the four months or so that I was a regular participant, and received some useful input that was helpful in the revision of my novel, and discovered a few writers who I really think are going to make strong literary contributions in the future, the experience of being on the site nearly drove me crazy—several times. And so I removed my novel, although I am still a member of the community and enjoy popping in from time to time to exchange comments on the forum with my friends and colleagues (and fellow-sufferers) over there.

authonomy intention vs. authonomy reality

authonomy has been described as a “do-it-yourself slush pile” in which readers (mainly other writers) do all the work for HarperCollins by finding the best books on the site and pushing them toward the top. This is fine: times are changing and most writers are willing to do a little work in order to attract professional attention to their manuscripts.

The only problem is that the way the authonomy system works does not contribute to finding the “best” books, no matter how you define that term.  It appeared to me that at least 90% of the writers on the site have joined with one goal in mind, which is getting themselves to the Editor’s Desk. (The others insist they are there only to receive feedback from other writers that will help them improve their work.) This means that the primary motivation for most people who will read and back other people’s manuscripts on authonomy is not to find good books for HC to publish—but rather to find other people to read and back their own books.

If a writer who joins the site decides to stick to the stated guidelines and her own ethical principles, refusing to back other people’s books if she feels they are not very interesting or well written (or worse, if she points out such major defects in her comments on those books), the writers of those other books are not likely to be inclined to back her book in return (are they? Remember that we are dealing with human beings here). The new writer quickly learns that in order to get a backing on your book from someone else, you really need to give that other writer a backing first.

As a result, on authonomy you can almost never trust a backing to mean that someone likes your book, since almost everyone on the site backs almost everything. The books that rise most quickly to the top are not those that are the best or the most fun to read, but rather those whose authors spend most time on the site, networking with other people, raving over everyone else’s books, backing everyone in sight, and thereby attracting hundreds of backings in return. The more quickly the determined writers can read and back an excerpt, the more they can read a day, and these speed demons may sometimes be accused (and sometimes are) of skimming only a few paragraphs before passing judgement. And the judgement is almost always favourable.

authonomy is not about excellence in writing. It is about becoming as popular as possible as quickly as possible. As a result, and ironically, rather than a supportive writing community authonomy can often seem to be a dog-eat-dog arena where you can’t trust a soul. Those who aren’t showering you with false praise are slamming you for your reviewing tactics.

Getting to the top 120 is the easy part. After that it gets much harder—mainly due to those algorithms I mentioned earlier. Trying to get to the top five requires hours and hours of commitment every day. On average, to get into the top fifty or so and not fall back again within a reasonable period of time (four months, let us say), you have to start by reading about three or four excerpts a day, commenting on them, and backing them. (I read about two excerpts a day, three chapters each, almost every day. After three months, I had not yet reached the top 100.) Those who have risen higher than I ever did have reported that when you get into the top ten you have to read eight or ten excerpts every day to get into the top five and stay there. At about 45 minutes per excerpt, this means that for at least a month out of your life, and probably more, you are doing little else but authonomy readings. If you happen to go away for a week, you start sliding backwards. Before long, rather than looking for the best books, you reach a point where if you find a book you think is terrible you are heartbroken because it means you are either going to have to lie your head off or give up the possibility of getting a backing in return.

In the race for the top, honesty flies out the window.

Nasty, nasty

In order to be visible and attract readers on authonomy, most participants find it useful not only to read and comment on other people’s excerpts but also to participate in the forum. As is true of most writers’ websites, there are several very witty and knowledgeable people there, and the forums can be great fun. (I found myself inclined to read the books of those who impressed me on the forum—they didn’t need to plug their actual books to me; their forum comments made it clear that I would be interested in what they’d written. I was rarely disappointed by such hunches. By contrast, some people never do anything on the forum beside promote their own books: the number and character of some of the “shameless self-promotion” threads grew so nauseating that I put several of these authors on a mental blacklist and never did read their excerpts.)

Unfortunately, the forums are not always fun. People can be nasty, small-minded, offensive, arrogant, self-serving—even racist. If you begin to work very hard on getting to or staying in the top five, you are likely to start attracting verbal abuse on the forum. As Ambrose Bierce once said, “Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.” Some people have found the comments against them so demoralizing that they’ve left the site even as the summit came within their sights.

There are also huge multi-participant battles—mainly at the end of the month when tensions start to run high and those who don’t like the tactics of the writers who have made it to the top five start trying to overthrow them. At other times, writers have what has come to be known as “authonomy meltdowns” from all the stress of trying to get to the top five and stay there: they go verbally ballistic.

While I was there, it seemed to me that most of the battles (and there were several) concerned how the authonomy site itself either works or does not work. Almost always you can find at least one active thread discussing the mechanics of authonomy and how the operation of the site could be improved. One day one of the forum participants started a “backing” thread that encouraged authonomites to back as many books as possible by people who were also on the thread within a specified period of time. The instigator did this as a protest against “the system,” but many others on the site clearly leapt at the chance to get ahead of others without having to do all the work of reading excerpts. Still others protested loudly about the lack of ethics of those participating in the backing thread (I was, of course, one of those. Taking the ethical high ground, and voicing my opinion when doing so can only be compared to shooting myself in the head? That’s me every time). Mayhem ensued.

Feedback from other writers

You will get some good feedback about your writing from several people on the site. I made hard copies of all the comments I received, and several of them were very useful when I did my final revisions. However you will also receive many comments that are utter drivel. (You can see examples of good comments and totally useless ones by reading any excerpt on the site, and then reading the comments under it.)  In general, many of the compliments are hollow and meaningless, posted only to attract a return read. Some people come up with the equivalent of a boilerplate response and post it with small variations on every excerpt they “review.” Others tailor their remarks more carefully, but still lean heavily toward the positive to ensure their own survival. (Some on the forum insist that they really did love reading almost every book on the entire site and would buy them all in an instant if they had the chance. I think those people are dishonest. Either that or they have no standards and are careless with their money.)

It is certain, at least to me, that those who insist on being honest with their evaluations ultimately pay a heavy price. There are of course many writers on the site who appreciate constructive criticism, but there are many others who do not. The latter group will call down those who have criticized them–usually on the forum rather than privately–and will even occasionally attempt to organize counterattacks and boycotts. (authonomy can be instructive to those who wonder how well meaning human beings ever get involved in wars.)

Once I realized how the authonomy system works, I stopped taking any of the compliments and rave reviews I received seriously, although they were nice to get. I also ignored comments from people who clearly had no idea what I was doing with my fiction (many are reading outside their genres and don’t understand or like what they have to read in order to move ahead. Threads that pose such incisive questions as “Why do writers have to use big words?” and “Conflict… or not?” often make for illuminating and amusing reading.) In short, the people who say they are on authonomy for the great writing advice they get from other writers, and insist they aren’t interested in getting to the Editor’s Desk at all, are for the most part in the wrong place as far as I can see.

How to survive on authonomy – for a while, at least

  1. Set your sights for the top 25 or 50, not the top five. A few writers who have made the top five have said that they were approached by agents once they reached that stage, but if I were a canny agent visiting the site, I’d be scanning the top 50, trawling for the best books on a regular basis—not leaving it until the writers of the best books were on the Editors’ Desk and likely to be scooped up by someone else. Once you reach your initial goal, you can always decide to continue if you want to, but my best guess is that you reach maximum benefit from the site when you reach the top 45. (If you can hang in there that long.)
  2. Read enough of others’ manuscripts before you make a call on them that you’ll still respect yourself in the morning, even if others aren’t playing by those rules. I felt it was only fair to other writers to try to read at least three chapters of their books, or the equivalent. Despite my initial determination to back only books I felt were publishable, ultimately I did find that in order to survive, I had to play the game and back almost everything that was not truly awful. My standard for myself became that I had to be able to find at least one thing in the excerpt on which I could genuinely comment positively; if the writing was so bad that I could not do that, I would not back the book or comment on it. Instead I’d pretend I’d never seen it. (Please note that I admit to having high standards: I have been referred to often as a literary snob.) Sometimes in addition to the positives, my comments included suggestions for a change the author might want to make to improve the first three chapters, always keeping in mind that I was reading only the first few chapters, and that the book could get much worse or much better after the section I had read.
  3. When you really do like an excerpt, say so clearly — or the author won’t be able to tell your kudos from the garden variety he or she receives every day from everyone. When I loved a piece of writing, I really raved about it in my comments—being very specific about the strong points and saying, for example, that the book was sure to find its way into print (I never said that if I didn’t mean it). I also created a thread of my own where I listed my favourite books, which was fun.
  4. Say “thank you” when someone backs you or leaves a comment.
  5. Forget the “friends” option and ignore invitations to become friends with others unless you have a very good reason to accept. This has nothing to do with politics or human kindness, but only practicalities. On authonomy, you get emails from the site administrators if you get a comment on your book, but not if someone backs you. You have to watch your “news feed” for that information. You also see your friends’ activities in your news feed (“Writer X backed Book Y,” “Writer A commented on Book B,” “Writer F revised his book”). If you add too many friends, you will get so many notices in your news feed that you may miss a notice that someone has backed you. You don’t want to miss your backers, because they deserve a thank you message and you may in fact want to consider backing them. So adding friends can cause problems. There is no real advantage to “friending” someone anyway, as you can send everyone messages whether they are friends or not.
  6. Remember that all messages on authonomy are public.
  7. Make a list in a notebook somewhere of who has backed you, and who you have backed or decided not to back. By the time you get to 50 or 100 reads, it gets really really difficult to try to remember whose excerpts you’ve read and whose you haven’t. A lot of people on the forums say, “How I wish I had started keeping track at the beginning!”  By the time you start forgetting who you’ve read and who you haven’t, it is almost impossible to go back and make a list. I recommend keeping track from the outset. (And if someone changes a title of a book you’ve already read, which happens surprisingly often, make a note of that as well.)
  8. When people I didn’t know from the forums sent me a message suggesting we trade reads, I usually ignored them. Some people send out such notices in spam-like quantities. I therefore don’t recommend sending such messages to others. Like the shameless plugs on the forums, requests for reads can rapidly grow tedious and irritating and turn people away from you rather than attracting them.
  9. Don’t post the whole book. I posted my entire manuscript when I first went on. Then a few people on the site warned me that some agents and publishers avoid books that are posted in their entirety on-line, believing (erroneously) that this contravenes copyright or (even more erroneously) that everyone in the universe will read it on authonomy and no one will need to buy it. So I took down most of my novel. However, I made a big mistake when I did this. First I took down all but the first three chapters, and then I added back a few chapters. While I was doing that, my word count fell below 10,000 and when it did, I lost my position on all the shelves and watchlists I’d been on. That set me back a couple of weeks at least. So after you’ve posted your manuscript don’t ever let it drop below 10,000 words again unless you are sure you want to lose your ratings.

Not an entire waste of time

authonomy has its benefits. It is a good way of keeping your manuscript “out there,” building an audience for your book, and getting to know a few more writers. You will get to know some of the authonomy regulars, several of whom are characters as diverting and eccentric as those you’ll meet in their (or anyone’s) fiction. (These include: a writer who appears to deliver intelligent pronouncements from a horizontal position on a couch—he maintains he’s dead, and as under-appreciated as Chatterton, after whose post-mortem portrait he has modeled his own avatar; a man with a blue face who expounds literary theories and criticizes others’ approaches to writing while maintaining that he never reads a book; at least two divas who’ve been on the site forever and pop by with witty or snarly comments from time to time; a hot young lawyer who is swooned after by most of the female writers on the site; and several young women who keep taking more and more clothes off their avatars in an apparent attempt to attract more readers. There are lots of warm and welcoming people on the site who will go out of their way to make you feel at home, and there are several insular cliques. Strangers conjoin on authonomy in unexpected ways: I watched with amusement one evening as a thread involving three apparently quite drunk authonomites devolved into highly graphic cybersex; unfortunately the posts weren’t well-enough written to have made my voyeurism the least bit titilating. Also unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, after about noon the next day I was no longer able to send a link to the thread so that a few of my non-authonomite friends could have a laugh, because it had been taken down. There are also a surprising number of wiccans on the site; be forewarned: you do not want to mess with wiccans. :) )

While you are on authonomy, you may indeed be discovered by an agent or a film company. There is always the possibility that the authonomy system will actually work in your favour–that you will reach the Editor’s Desk and, despite the odds against you even at that point, be offered a contract by HarperCollins. All of those things are possible, if unlikely.

In the meantime, if you are in it for an evaluation as one of the top five, eat your Wheaties, give up either your day job or your family and social life, and prepare for a long, disorienting haul from which it may take you several months to recover.