Post 3 in the series Mari Christie and I are writing on marketing in a bazillion book marketplace.
In the bazillion book marketplace…
So you’ve written a book. You’ve done all the right things. You’ve learned your craft. The book has been edited, copyedited, proofread. It has a marvellous cover.
Now all you have to do is stick it up on Amazon, and wait to grow rich?
Right?
If only it were that easy.
…those who fail to plan, plan to fail
You need a good book. You need persistence. You need a healthy dose of luck. Above all, you need a plan.
In this post (and the next) in the Bazillion Book Marketplace series, Mari and I are going to talk about what needs to be in a marketing plan for a book. (You might also want a marketing plan for Brand You, but that’s another post.)
To write a plan, you need to know who you want to sell to, what they want to buy, how much they’re prepared to pay, and where they expect to find it. (In marketing parlance, the 4 Ps–Product, Place, Price, and Promotion.)
This week’s post looks at your reader, your book, and your price. Next week, we’ll talk about where books are sold, where they are promoted, and what marketing materials you might need.
Know your reader
Your marketing plan should start with your reader. Can you describe your typical reader? Do you know how old they are? What sort of education they have? What they do when they’re not reading? What other genres they read?
Do you know what they like about the kind of book you write? What they don’t like? What will make them keep reading and what will cause them to shut the book and hurl it across the room?
What are their hobbies, interests, passions?
Where can you meet them (online or in person or both)?
The better you can describe your typical readers, the better you can put yourself (and your book) in front of them.
Know your book
No one knows your book better than you do, right? But can you capture the essence of your book in a couple of compelling sentences that grab that typical reader by the imagination and drag them to the bookstore?
In your marketing plan, describe what about your book will appeal to your reader, then write your compelling description–your story’s tagline (some call it a logline).
Know your price
What do your readers think they should pay for a book like yours? What are they prepared to pay? Do some research. Also think about the best price points to give you a good return. Pricing ebooks is a contentious topic, and a post I wrote on this several weeks ago has been the most viewed and commented on more than any I’ve written since I started this blog.
Should you give one or more of your books away free (permanently or for a short period)? Should you put the book on a special price for a limited time? Will pricing low help you sell more books, or will it make them less valued? How does your genre affect your price? (For instance, novels are most often seen in the $2.99 – 3.99 price range, but self-help averages about $7.99.)
Next steps
Knowing who you want to sell to, what they want to buy, and how much they will spend is a good start. In our next road to a better mouse trap post, we’ll talk about putting that knowledge to good use when deciding where and how to promote your book.
Originally posted at 10 Minute Novelists. Mari Christie and I will be posting our thoughts on marketing in a bazillion book marketplace each week at this time. This week, it’s my turn.
I’ve spent a large part of my career as a commercial writer in my own small business. Small business owners are responsible for everything. I was writer, peer reviewer, company book-keeper, chief executive, project manager, strategic planner, stores manager, cleaner of toilets, sales person and, of course, the big ‘M’ word. The one I feared. Marketing. So I learnt how to promote my business by non-marketing; marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing. Marketing that an introvert like me could do just by being myself.
It was good preparation for being a self-published writer. Again, I am running my own business. And again, I’m out in the world vigorously non-marketing.
Non-marketing is about being present
The first rule of non-marketing is to spend time with people who might want to read your book. Get to know them. Talk to them about the things that interest you. Find out what interests them. Be present.
In traditional non-marketing, writers joined Toastmasters, and Rotary, and the local bowling club. They went to book fairs and gardening clubs; talked at schools and writers’ workshops; went to dinner with agents and editors and book clubs. And we can still do all of those things.
Today, we can also spend time with people all over the world, using the Internet. You don’t have to be everywhere; choose two or more from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Pinterest, blogging and all the others. Then go and meet people. Be present.
Non-marketing is about being genuine
If you want a friend, the old saying goes, you have to be a friend. The second rule of non-marketing is to offer others a helping hand. One of the things I really love about the romance writing community is the open-hearted, open-handed and genuine approach to helping others.
This isn’t about reciprocal arrangements: like my page and I’ll like yours, review my book and I’ll review yours. It isn’t about sucking up, either. Being genuine means giving because I can, because I know the answer to your question, or have the contact you need, or have a blog and would love you to be my guest.
The flashy insincere marketers might also be helpful, but always there’s an agenda. Sponsorships are often this kind of marketing. The support comes with strings attached, in the form of opportunities to sell their service or product. Sponsored by [insert name of famous soda drink here].
As non-marketers you’ll be helpful because you are genuinely interested. You want to know about the birth of a friend’s grandchild. You celebrate your friend’s acceptance letter from a publisher because you’re genuinely happy for them. You hunt your research database for an obscure fact someone has asked for. You send you a condolence message because someone’s troubles touch your heart.
Non-marketing is about offering a unique experience
If you’re present in a community who love the kind of books you write, one way you can be genuinely helpful is to offer them your book. Not in a ‘buy, buy, buy; me, me, me’ used car salesman way, but gently, as part of the conversation.
Let’s say people are talking about the kinds of protagonist they prefer. You may, if it fits in the conversation, use a description of your own protagonist to illustrate your point. Keep it short. Make it interesting.
It helps to be very clear about what you do that is different, and to have a few lines you can use. If someone asks what I write, I say ‘historical fiction with strong heroines, heroes who can appreciate them, and complex plots full of mystery and suspense’. It’s a tagline I’m working on, and constantly changing, but it’s getting there. My hero Rede is “a man driven by revenge who needs to move beyond his past before he can have a future”.
And there you have it. I’ve used my work to give two illustrations of my point. And I don’t need to belabour it until you’re bored, or sell you something today. Today, we have more important things to talk about, such as how you can turn a friend into a long-term reader.
Non-marketing is about being good at what you do
Insincere marketers rely on lots of noise to keep driving new customers to their product. Non-marketers know that the best customers of all are the ones who love your product so much that they will sell it for you, by telling all their friends.
So write a good book. No. Cancel that. Write the best book you can. And when you’ve finished, write a better one. Never stop learning; never stop improving. Your best marketing tool is your library of successful publications.
Non-marketing is about building long-term relationships
I don’t want readers. Or, at least, I don’t want just readers. I want to make friends who will stay with me for the journey.
Readers, yes. People who find I offer them a reading experience they can’t get from anyone else, so they wait for my next book and pounce on it as soon as it goes on preorder. People who will contact me and tell me what they like, discuss my characters, adopt my heroes as book boyfriends and my heroines as bff, argue about the motivations of my villains, pick up some of my subtle jokes and codes.
And fellow writers. People who will laugh at the things I laugh at, tell stories about their craft that inspire, amuse, or dismay, help me out and accept my help, understand the journey — its costs and its rewards.
Above all, I want friends who care about books and about story telling, and who are happy to talk about them. And the heart of non-marketing is making friends.
In a recent post on a Facebook group, someone complained about paying 99c for a book that was advertised for sale, then finding it only had 185 pages. “I don’t think I should have to pay more than that for 185 pages,” she said.
I was a bit taken aback. 185 pages. That’s around 50,000 words, maybe more.
The discussion ranged widely and came to no conclusions, but it sent me back to the perennial question we self-published writers need to solve on their own. What price is a good price for an ebook?
(Note: all the prices below are in US dollars)
Average price for an indie published book
Author earnings says that indie books averaged $3.87 in May.
This is an increase of 5% in the past 15 months. By contrast, ebooks on Amazon from big-5 publishers have increased in price from $8.29 to $9.53.
Average price for a bestseller
According to Digital Book World, the average price for a bestseller in the first week of April was $6.14, and it’s been hovering around $6 for some time. Most of these are by big name authors, and traditionally published. When you buy a big name author, you know exactly what you’re going to get. When you buy a book from one of the big name publishers, you can assume a certain level of copy editing and professional publications values.
Indie books might be well written and professionally published, or they might not. It’s up to readers to decide whether they’re willing to pay 50% more for a ‘name’.
So what is a fair price for 50,000 words?
Third Scribe has written an interesting article on book pricing. They’ve based their assessment on 50,000 words (the same figure, I’ll remind you, as our Facebook friend’s 99c book). I’m not going to quote at length, but here’s the summary table – and it doesn’t include the cost of all the stuff that goes in behind, such as websites, newsletters, accountants, and so on.
Tallying these up…
Editing: $1,200
Cover Art: $400
Formatting: $100
Promotion: $400 Grand total: $2,100 ($12,100 if you count the author’s time).
That is a real, no bullshit, actual, honest to God cost of what it takes to produce a quality book in the digital age.
How many books does an author sell?
It’s hard to get the figures, but best estimates seem to be that 50 to 100 sales in the first year is average, and 250 sales in the lifetime of the book is pretty good.
And remember that, for books sold on Amazon, the author gets 35c of the list price of a book priced under $2.99.
To make back those basic costs – not your time, just your production expenses – at a cover price of 99c, you’d need to sell 6,000 books. That’s 24 times the average.
So people cut corners. They skip the editor and do their own cover art. Which impacts quality and disappoints readers. That’s not a path I’m prepared to go down.
How do readers feel about price?
Of course, the costs to the supplier are not the only factor. We’ve also got to consider demand.
1) 99c = I’ll buy you but I’m in no hurry to read you. There’s no question that 99c will result in sales but how many people are reading it?
2) $1.99 is a dead zone.
3) $2.99 – $4.99 is the “I’ll try you even though I’m unsure whether I’ll love it.” I think this is the discovery price range.
4) $5.00 to $7.99 is the “I’ve read you before and enjoyed what I’ve read.” This price range is reserved for authors you’ve enjoyed in the past and figure you’ll be entertained for a few hours.
5) $8.99 and up is the “I’ve read you before and I love you.” At this price, you are foregoing purchasing at least one other book, if not more.
And Mark Coker of Smashwords has the figures to show that a 99c book may sell more copies, but a book priced between $3 and $3.99 will generate more income.
I have no conclusions
I don’t know the answer. I’m learning as I go, and trying new things. I’ve given away one book, a novella of 24,000 words, to show my writing style to prospective readers. I’ve priced a long novel at $3.49. And I’m thinking of putting A Baron for Becky – a long novella of nearly 50,000 words – on the market at $2.49. (It is currently for preorder at 99c.)
One lesson I did take from the discussion is to be very clear about labelling. So I’m going to change my book descriptions to say how long the books are. Beyond that, it’s all experimentation.
Originally posted at 10 Minute Novelists. Mari and I will be posting our thoughts on marketing in a bazillion book marketplace each week at this time.
“Pick a Little, Talk a Little, Pick a Little, Talk a Little, Cheep, Cheep, Cheep, Talk a Lot, Pick a Little More…”
I date myself with this reference to The Music Man (and finally publicly admit my long-time love of musical theatre), but I find it inexplicably accurate when discussing word-of-mouth marketing.
Most readers will not tell their friends how great you are. Sadly, your book is not their primary topic of conversation. However, word-of-mouth marketing is the best, and least expensive, tool you have.
Always has been. Always will be.
Further, this is the way people make buying decisions now—recommendations from friends and respected experts—which is why social media campaigns sell. Static advertising is no longer effective. (Let me say that again: Advertising no longer works.)
Now, the most effective forms of promotion involve conversation. This means review sites, blogs, co- and cross-promotion with other authors, book clubs, signings, and most important, two concepts with more meaning than you think: “Buzz” and “viral” marketing.
Buzz Marketing, as the name implies, is about people talking about your product. However, its specific meaning in the marketing world moves beyond organic discussion. In marketing parlance, buzz is generated by designing the conversations you want people to have. A great example is drug commercials: “talk to your doctor about [insert medication].” If you think lovers of Gone with the Wind will buy your book, tell them why your hero is like Rhett Butler. If they agree, they will tell friends who also love Southern historical fiction. (If they don’t agree, the strategy will backfire, so design your conversations carefully.)
Viral Marketing, like a cat video shared ten million times on YouTube, is created by giving someone an item to pass along. This might be a video trailer or coupon or a sample book or a rack card, but should always be designed to bring people back to your product. A bookmark is lovely, but without an easy link to a buy site (not just your website), its usefulness is limited. Likewise, a pass-along no one passes along is irrelevant.
To achieve these all-but-magical forms of promotion, back to my third-favorite musical of all time (before you ask, Camelot and My Fair Lady).
Pick a Little
Loglines, elevator speeches, and blurbs aren’t just for the back cover (or pitching an agent) anymore. Today, you are pitching everyone who might be interested, including people you will never meet.
Identify thought leaders: Since customers take their advice from friends and experts, pick your targets carefully. Street teams work because their friends probably have similar tastes and are more likely to listen to a friend’s recommendation than yours. Similarly, if a noted authority (like a bestselling author or well-known reviewer) supports your product, buyers will listen.
Keep it short: Loglines work better than blurbs for verbal and social media exchange. “[Book Title] is about [if you have to take a breath, your conversation is too long].”
Start smart: Choose a limited number of outlets and messages until you know what works, and track your results. Indiscriminate efforts are wasted. Begin small and only escalate what sells.
Create Meaningful Messages: Make much of milestones, like bestseller lists, publication anniversaries, or selling a certain number of copies, because these tidbits are easily shared by loyal fans. Promote great reviews, especially ones by thought leaders.
Talk a Little
Begin with human interaction, not calculated conversation starters. Get to know your audience—and let them get to know you—by joining and participating in:
Writers’ groups. While the “author water cooler” is, in some ways, counter-intuitive, authors help each other and classes in craft will never hurt your chances of success. To make this most effective, remember that turnabout is fair play; giving back to the community is imperative, not optional.
Social groups related to your interest, online and otherwise, for instance, online research-sharing groups, a gardening society, or a historical reenactment troupe.
Relevant associations, like historical preservation societies, religious study groups, or scientific research consortiums.
When you have found a niche or two where you feel comfortable, attend meetings, volunteer, speak up in online forums, and generally make yourself known, not just as an author, but as a contributor. The chance to talk about your book will occur naturally, and your audience will be more receptive.
Cheep (or Rather, Cheap)
Word-of-mouth is the least expensive marketing option. When it begins to move on its own, it costs you nothing, and before it does, most of your outlay is in time, not cash. A couple of ideas to stimulate buzz and viral messaging:
Cheap
Giveaways: Sending an e-copy of your book to a potential reader is a great investment. That said, give away the book or directly related items, not “anything someone might want,” and don’t spend more than your sale is worth. Also, target your giveaway. It makes no sense to give a novel to someone who only reads nonfiction. Copies to reviewers are great, but don’t send a historical romance novel to Suspense Magazine.
Cheap
Sales: Judiciously lowering the price on your book is great way to get word-of mouth moving. If you watch social media, you will see that “This book I loved is only 99?!” is shared far more often than, “I loved this book.” If you combine sales with similar authors, so much the better, because then you are sharing a larger pool of readers interested in your genre.
Talk a Lot
Once you know which conversations to have and with whom, spread them around! Every sentence can’t start with, “My book,” or the pass-along will be “boring and self-centered.” But as you find the balance between normal interaction and sales, you will naturally find opportunities for both.
Pick a Little More
As time goes on, expand your conversation starters, extend your reach to new thought leaders, and find new outlets for your message. But always—always—make sure the words you are putting in other people’s mouths are ones you want repeated.
Mari Christie is a professional writer, editor, and designer with almost twenty-five years’ experience in marketing and business communications. She holds a BA in Writing from the University of Colorado Denver, summa cum laude, and is a member of the Bluestocking Belles and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Under the pseudonym Mariana Gabrielle, her first Regency romance, Royal Regard, was released in November 2014 and her second, La Déesse Noire: The Black Goddess will be available in June 2015.
I’ve been doing all sorts of things with the grandpeople today. We’ve practiced spelling, made cupcakes, and washed windows. And in between I’ve been writing the Teatime Tattler column for EST Saturday 23rd May, playing in the Bluestocking Bookshop, contacting my beta readers to see who wants to read A Baron for Becky, writing a publications plan, and creating a spreadsheet with key deadlines for the next six publications.
So here we go:
A Baron for Becky is my next release. I’ll send it to beta readers next Wednesday, but I need to give them enough time for feedback, and fit in with the proofreader; publishing on 23 July, as I’d hoped, is just too tight to achieve the level of quality you deserve. So publication date will be 5 August. All going well, I’ll have ARC copies by late June, and reviewable final copies by 19 July.
Next job for me is the novella for the Bluestocking Belles’ Christmas project. We’re publishing an anthology, with eight Christmas novellas. It’ll be launched on 1 November, but I have to have my edited draft ready by 1 June.
Once that’s gone, I’m back into Encouraging Prudence, and I hope to have that ready for beta readers by 9 July. I’m not having my online launch till late October (I’m thinking 23 October), but I need to be finished early enough to order hard copies for BookTown here in my hometown on 17 and 18 October. So it has to be finished and ready to format by 30 August.
I plan to start writing A Raging Madness on 10 July, and release it on 29 January.
And I have two short stories that I wrote as party prizes. With more parties to go, I might have a book of short stories out for Christmas!
All of that, and the day job hasn’t ever been busier. No wonder I’m doing barely any reading!
I’m perhaps halfway through the first draft of A Baron for Becky, which is proving to be a short novel rather than a novella. Once the first draft is done, I’ll firm up the publication date and put up a preorder. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with the cover.
I’ve experimented with colour and text weight, and moved the tagline away from the image’s neck, but otherwise they’re all the same. I’d welcome your thoughts.
One of the made-to-order stories I gave away last month needed a bit of research. The winner asked for a buccaneer. So what, I wondered, was the difference between a pirate, a buccaneer, a corsair, a privateer, or any other ship-going bandit?
Thieves with ships
Pirates, I found, were fundamentally outlaws. ‘Thieves with ships’ one website I found called them. They ransack towns and capture ships looking for loot and people to sell or hold for ransom. They answer to no-one except their own appointed leaders, and recognise no law outside of themselves. Leaving aside the romantic image from books and movies, they were and are a ruthless lot of men and women, loyal only to one another and a danger to everyone else.
Not that I don’t find something to admire in the way that the pirates of the Caribbean ran a democratic society based on ability, where every man and woman of the crew had a say in how it ran and who should be captain, and a share of the loot. But I’d find it a challenge to make a hero of any of them. It could be fun, mind you, but I’d need a novel, not a short story.
Buccaneers, it turns out, were privateers and pirates in the West Indies in the 17th Century. The word comes from the French boucan, meaning smoked meat. The buccaneers started by selling meat gained from hunting, then found there was more money to be made by attacking towns on behalf of the French and the English, who were at war with Spain at the time.
And corsair is a word the English applied to foreign pirates, particularly Muslim pirates operating out of North Africa. They also applied it to the French and even the Spanish when at war with them, which was most of the time. They intended that as an insult, and it was certainly taken that way. Corsairs were also keen to find loot, but they were particularly interested in capturing slaves. Muslims being forbidden to enslave (or even rob) other Muslims, the corsairs attacked any underprotected European or American ship that strayed into their path, thus combining the religious duty of harrying the infidel with the economic pleasure of making a profit.
Thieves with a licence
Which brings us to privateers. In times of war, governments would issue letters of marque and reprisal — commissions to entrepreneurs with boats. The licence or commission would give the ship the right to attack ships belonging to whoever the country was at war with. In the 1812 war between the United Kingdom and the United States, which is in the background of my short story Kidnapped to Freedom, both countries commissioned privateers. The US had a very small navy but a large merchant fleet, and the UK navy was heavily committed to the war against Napoleon.
The commission specified what they were allowed to do, and any prisoners were treated as prisoners-of-war. But the prize — the ship and the cargo — paid for the enterprise.
All-out privateers often sailed with multiple teams headed by ship masters, who could take over a prize ship and bring it back to port. They were essentially pirates, but with a single focus on their nation’s enemy. They would never dream of attacking a neutral or allied nation’s ships or ports.
Many cargo ships also carried letters of marque authorising them to seize enemy ships. This also made them privateers, but part-time privateers rather than full-time.
When the war was over, those cargo ships would carry on with their usual business. The problem with privateers, though, was that the end of the war destroyed their livelihood, and history records many pirates who began their lives as privateers but branched out at the end of the war they were commissioned for.
I made my short-story’s hero a merchant captain from the Maritime States of Canada, with letters of marque from the United Kingdom. I hope my winner thinks I’ve got close enough to a buccaneer.
As we explored further, we found some peculiar things.
First, every book we looked at had been downloaded 600 and something times, and had 40 something reviews.
Second, this included books that had never been published, some of which we haven’t finished writing.
Third, the text describing the books, the cover images, and the reviews (where there are reviews) are identical to those available on Goodreads.
And when we clicked on the links to go to the sites for downloading and for reading on line – both supposedly separate sites from the front-end listing site – we found identical text, complete with grammatical errors, on all three sites.
When we tried to go further and were asked for our credit card details, we stopped.
So here’s the thing. Don’t try to read free books from an internet site.
Many of them are virus traps or fronts for scammers who want to steal your money, your identity or both.
Even if you don’t nuke your computer or lose your life savings, you’re likely to get a substandard product, particularly if it has been scanned in a hurry by someone who needs to get the book through the OCR software before they have to get it back to the library.
And let’s not even talk about the writer, who has put in months, maybe years, to write the book and who is lucky if they get $1 in the hand for each sold copy. Figures for average number of books sold vary depending who you’re talking to, but 100, 250, and 500 are the numbers I hear most often. A week, you say? A year? No, good reader, ever. In the book’s entire life. If you don’t feel bad about taking a dollar off someone who gets paid $500 for a year’s work, then drop me a line. I have a url for you, and all they’ll want in return is your credit card information.
We authors understand that budgets aren’t infinitely flexible, and that – while food and housing come before books – books are a life necessity. We understand because nearly all of us have lived on constrained budgets, most of us still do, and few of us make more from writing than the writing habit costs us.
The world is full of ways to get cheap good books: libraries, subscription schemes, legitimately free books or books for 99c. Join a few readers’ groups on Facebook or sign up for an eretailers newsletter to find out when books are on sale. Come to book parties and join in the games. If you’re a keen reader, why not write reviews? Many people who have set up a book review site have more books than they can handle given to them, because writers need honest reviews like babies need milk, and for many of the same reasons.
In the end, I can’t stop people pirating my books, and I wouldn’t if I could. At least they’re being read. And maybe the people who read them will go on to buy other books from me later. If they survive the shark-infested waters of pirate land, that is.
Stop trying to fit in when you were born to stand out.
I write the type of historical romance that I like to read, with strong determined heroines, heroes that almost deserve them, and villains who are more than paper cut-outs. I like complex plots with real issues at stake, and I enjoy a sense of the rich tapestry of life, with characters galore. I especially like writers who create fictional worlds that they revisit time and again, where each book stands alone as a story, but where we meet characters we’ve known before from other books.
Quite early on while writing Farewell to Kindness, I had a few critiques from book industry people that suggested I was skirting too near to the edges of the historical romance genre. I should remove the villains’ POV chapters. I should simplify the plot. I should soften the heroine, who starts the book by threatening to shoot someone. I should remove some of the action and add in more about the romance. I should move the meeting of the hero and heroine closer to the front of the book. I should remove the two secondary romances, the heroine’s older sister, and a number of other characters.
These critiques were kindly meant. My advisers wanted me to write a book that would sell. Writers need readers. The story isn’t just the one I tell; it’s the one you hear, and until you hear it, it doesn’t live.
I didn’t ignore them. I tightened my writing a lot. I did remove some characters and ‘unnamed’ others to make them less distracting. But I didn’t completely rewrite my book, either. The book these advisers wanted me to tell could have been written by any competent writer. It wasn’t one I could throw a year of my life at.
I launched Farewell to Kindness last week, with over a hundred books presold and the reassurance that prereaders had enjoyed it. And I am finding readers, and I love that they’ve enjoyed the book, and cried in the right places, and argued over whether the hero’s cousin is an arrogant so-and-so, and written me some wonderful reviews. Maybe my audience will be small, and a different book may have reached more readers. But this is my book, and I love it.
Yesterday, a couple of things happened that prompted the following private message conversation with fellow Bluestocking Belle Mariana Gabrielle. The trigger was a series of comments from another writer about how we need someone experienced in the industry to comment on our books so that we can tailor them for the market.
Mariana: This laying down the law about writing for the market just bugs me. Silly, really, but true nonetheless.
Jude: It must be nice to know everything.
Mariana: LOL. Exactly. LOL really is one of those days!
Jude: Short weeks are always crazy. And I got a 3 star review on Amazon that pointed out the ways I don’t comply with industry norms. (Not a bad review — quite a fair one – but just a reminder of why I went indie.)
Mariana: I hate the fair ones.
Jude: This review started “This book is pretty good, but it’s not a good match for my tastes,” and went on to suggest cutting out a lot of the plot twists and spending more time on the romance. Which is fine, but this was not that book.
Mariana: ‘Not a good match’ says it all. At least that was acknowledged.
Jude: I get cross with those who pontificate about the one right way.
Mariana: Me, too; about anything, not just writing.
Jude: Yep. Makes my skin crawl. I’m fine with ‘right for me’; just not ‘my way or no way’.
Mariana: That’s why I trained myself to talk about what works for me. Much more palatable.
Jude: If I’d responded [on the post that triggered this conversation] it would have kept the point off topic. But I’m tempted to do a new post on how ‘the industry’ inevitably plays it safe by doing what has worked, and therefore is doomed to playing catch up when readers follow something new and different.
Mariana: That sounds like a good point, and I have opinions on that. Trying to be “the next XXXXX” is incredibly stupid. By the time you think it, you are too late.
Jude: If I let others shape my writing I might be mildly successful but dissatisfied.
Mariana: Many of my friends say, “You could write the next 50 Shades…” They don’t get that there is no next 50 Shades. No next Twilight or Harry Potter. Trying is a fool’s game.
Jude: If I write what I want to write, I will be satisfied, and if people like it they’ll need to come to me to get it.
In the bazillion book marketplace…
