Results of an Amazon Ebook Giveaway

As I mentioned in my last post, last week I had a giveaway for my ebook Warpath into Sonora, a Western from the Apache point of view. This book came out last September and while it moved a couple of hundred units in its first two months, after that sales plummeted. It seemed that no one was much interested in Westerns. Sales got so bad that novellas I wrote five years ago were outselling it.

I decided to do one of Amazon's five-day giveaways to try to drum up some readership. I took an ad out on the Fussy Librarian's newsletter for free ebooks, which set me back five bucks. The ad went live on Thursday, July 27, the first day of the giveaway. Here are the numbers, broken down by country:

Thursday, July 27: US (296) UK (10) Germany (1) Total: 307

Friday, July 28: US (281) UK (4) Canada (4) Australia (1) Total: 290

Saturday, July 29: US (49) UK (3) Australia (5) Total: 57

Sunday, July 30: US (46) UK (3) Australia (1) Total: 50

Monday, July 31: US (41) UK (3) Canada (1) Total: 45

Grand Total by Country:  US (713) UK (23) Canada (5) Australia (7) Germany (1)

Grand Total: 749

What's most apparent is the big jump the newsletter gave me. It put Warpath into Sonora into the top five in free Native American (at times it was number one) and top 20 in free Western, where it remained for the rest of the giveaway. This, of course, added visibility and led to more downloads after the initial rush from the newsletter faded. I'll be using Fussy Librarian again.

One thing that annoyed me about those lists were the number of off-topic titles. In Native American, the Collected Stories of Conan vied for position with my book. The Western section was dominated by Western Romance, which is a different category. For a time there was also a romance featuring a muscular fellow with a kilt on the cover. I didn't realize my Scottish ancestors were actually Native American! 

What is also noticeable is the weak showing in the UK and other countries, lower than giveaways and discounts and even my regular full price sales figures. Generally the UK makes up about 10 percent of my overall sales, with the rest of the world being another five percent. This was not the case with this title.

So was the $5 expenditure worth it to give away so many books? I would say yes. First off, it got my book (and ads for my other books) in front of 749 sets of eyeballs. Also, it put my book into the Amazon algorithms so that it would show up in the "customers also bought" section. Since my sales had faded so many months ago, I was slipping out of that.

There was also an unforseen benefit. My Kindle Lending Library units went way up for that title, from almost nothing to the low hundreds of pages in the last couple of days of the giveaway and from then on. I suppose this was because people on Kindle Prime saw it and downloaded it. With these customers, while they get it for free like the regular customers who donated it, I get paid for page views. My ad has already paid for itself in real dollar terms. 

Results of an Amazon Kindle Giveaway One Month Later

A month ago, I posted my numbers from an Amazon Kindle giveaway. If you haven't read that post, click on the link and check it out. Now let's look at the numbers on month on. Has the giveaway, which moved 1684 copies of Radio Hope in nine countries, shown a significant increase in sales?

Radio Hope is the first book in my Toxic World post-apocalyptic series, which includes two more volumes plus a novelette set in the same world.

So in the four weeks since the giveaway ended, I've sold three copies of Radio Hope, seven copies of Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book Two), seven copies of We Had Flags (Toxic World Book Three), and four copies of The Scavenger (a standalone novelette). This is disappointing as it is not a significant rise over a usual four-week period.

The picture looks very different when you look at read pages from the Kindle Online Lending Library. This is a service for Kindle Prime members. For a fee they get unlimited access to ebooks in the Kindle Select program, which includes my entire Toxic World series. While it's free for them, we still get paid for every page view, called a KOLL unit. A KOLL unit changes in value every month but is generally about half a cent. Thus is someone in the program read Radio Hope, a 268 page book on the Kindle Lending Library, I'd get $1.34.

My KOLL units for the past four weeks have been as follows: Radio Hope (8194), Refugees from the Righteous Horde (7735), We Had Flags (6419), The Scavenger (325). This is a huge jump, over ten times my normal numbers. When you consider that my novels run 268, 390, and 341 pages (with The Scavenger only running 72 pages) you can see that's a lot of new readers.

(I'm lumping the numbers from all countries. The majority are from Amazon US, with about 15% from the UK and a small amount from Canada)

So why the disparity? It seems I've captured the attention of those most loyal of Amazon customers, the Prime customers. These are the ones who don't mind paying a monthly fee to have access to lots of free stuff. This is a distinct type of customer we're seeing a lot of in this new world, in publishing, video, and music. They've found my series and are up for reading it for free. What's nice about these figures is that a lot of people have already made it through the third book in the series. I'm also getting a lot of reads of the first book in the series. So people who missed Radio Hope's initial giveaway spotted the book through Amazon's algorithms and are picking it up.

So while Kindle Prime members have found my book, my giveaway did not help earn me more traditional customers who simply plunk down their money to download the ebook. I also did not see a commensurate rise in sales for my other titles. None of them are science fiction, so that may be the problem, or maybe it's just too early to tell. It's only been four weeks, after all, and a large number of the 1,684 people who downloaded Radio Hope will not have read it yet. Some won't read it for weeks or months from now. Others will never read it. So it goes.

I've also gotten half a dozen new reviews on Amazon, critical for indie publishers. All were four or five stars except for one three-star review. I also earned a few four- and five-star reviews on Goodreads plus I got added to many people's "to read" or "reading" list. This sort of thing is great for visibility, so maybe I'll attract some more of those traditional customers in the future.

If you're an indie writer and found this useful, feel free to share your own experiences in the comments section. We can all learn from each other!

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Learning to Market

Sana Sayeeda! That's Happy New Year in Arabic. Even though the Muslim new year was a couple of months ago, I heard this said a lot in Tangier this week. We were on on our fourth annual "let's avoid Christmas" trip to Morocco. Now I'm back and ready for a new year of challenges!

My biggest challenge this year will be learning how to market my work. I've built up an inventory of 13 fiction titles so now that I have something to sell, I need to figure out how to sell it. Marketing is most definitely NOT my strong suit so any advice would be most welcome.

Right now my plans are pretty basic. I'm starting a newsletter with free fiction and travel articles, and of course info on any new releases. The first issue will be out in a couple of weeks. You can sign up here. I'll also be more active on my Twitter and Facebook accounts and of course keeping up this blog. The big project will be some promotions coming up next month, which I'll be sending out to various newsletters and websites that list ebook promos.

There will be plenty of writing this year too, because nothing promotes your work like coming out with more books! There will be new books in both the Toxic World and Trench Raiders series, as well as a couple of novellas, the Tangier novel I've been talking about, and a few more goodies.

Beyond doing those things, I'm pretty much out of marketing ideas. Anyone have any techniques that have worked?

Ramping up my Twitter and Facebook feeds

As I mentioned in an earlier post about Getting More Into Twitter, I've been more active lately on my Twitter account. It's a great way to chitchat with people in my field. I keep in touch with my publishers, talk to other indie writers, and I've even had conversations with the British Museum and Fodors Travel! Being a writer can be a bit lonely, so it's nice to have these interactions, as long as they don't hurt your word count.

It's not without its frustrations, however. A lot of people don't interact on Twitter, they just blare out their advertisements for whatever they're hawking. Indie writers are especially guilty of this. They don't seem to realize that it's social media, not asocial marketing.

I'm also getting more serious about my public Facebook page and trying to post something original there most days. I'm still not sure what's the best way to go forward with FB, though.

Do you use these social media platforms? What works best for you?

Book marketing tips, anyone?

The release of my next novel, Radio Hope, is coming up on February 1 and I've been busy building up a virtual book tour. A big "thank you" to all who have offered to help me out!

By a bit of good timing, there was a blogfest on Monday called the Online Marketing Symposium. Lots of different writers gave their two cents about what works and what doesn't. Although I knew some of these tips already (like Goodreads ads being worthless while being a part of Goodreads itself is valuable) these dedicated bloggers gave me much food for thought.

Roland Yeomans made the good point that you have to identify your audience and target them. Not only does this make for more efficient marketing, but it gives you insights into what your audience wants. I've been hanging around on various post-apocalyptic reading groups, both on Goodreads and other places, and I've noticed there's a hunger for PA books that don't involve zombies or aliens. That might stand me in good stead because in Radio Hope, the survivors are dealing with very human mistakes and consequences.

Master blogger Alex Cavanaugh has some good tips about virtual book tours. He's said it all before, but good advice bears repeating.

Sandra Almazan has an interesting post on price pulsing--temporarily lowering the price of your book and advertising the hell out of it. Her post is well worth reading in its entirety.
The Insecure Writers Support Group was one of the few blogs to mention conventions. In this Internet marketing age many writers forget how valuable face-to-face marketing can be. Luckily for me, Worldcon is in London this year so I'm attending! I'll be on some panels and will be sure to have plenty of my books on hand.

Another important piece of advice that most bloggers gave--write the next novel! If your readers like one of your books, make sure there's something else of yours for them to read.

So, my blogging friends, what do you think I should do to market Radio Hope? I'm participating in a bunch of post-apocalyptic boards, doing a virtual book tour, will do the usual Twitter/Facebook/rally-my-friends stuff, and am busy writing the next in the Toxic World series. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

My new author's website

After way too long with my old, never completed website, I've finally knuckled down and gotten a proper homepage. It still needs some tweaks, but the website for Sean McLachlan is now up and running! I even bought my own name for the domain. Drop by to learn more about yours truly, the Midlist Author, and feel free to tell me what you think in the comments section here. I'm open to suggestions!

One great thing about being a writer is nobody thinks you're being self indulgent for buying your personal name as a domain name and dedicating a website to yourself.

I've reached 500 followers on Twitter

Today my Twitter feed reached 500 followers. I started in January and have kept it up regularly since, except for the two months I was in Ethiopia and Somaliland.

I've already talked about my first impressions of using Twitter for writers. After only a week on the service I posted saying it was a great help with my travel writing and not much good for anything else.

Eight months later, I still feel the same. Most of my activity on Twitter is travel related. I retweet my Gadling posts and pick up some good leads from other travel writers that inspire stories. Retweeting my stories nudges up my hits a bit, and it helps with this blog too. Otherwise Twitter hasn't done much. Sure, I hear about interesting news and keep tabs on the horror fiction and history markets, but these have yet to materialize into real advantages. If it wasn't for the help for my travel writing, Twitter would be a waste of my time and I'd ditch it.

Writers need to budget their time carefully. Too often writers feel they have to take on every new social networking tool to help their exposure. We don't. We need to find what works for us and ignore the rest so we can spend the maximize amount of time and energy on writing.

So who is my 500th follower? Kristin Martin, who describes herself as a writing mom. She's new at Twitter so I don't really know much else about her. Welcome anyway, Kristin, and good luck in this crazy world of writing.

Interview with Missouri author Dianna Graveman

As my regular readers know, I've written a fair amount of Missouri history. In fact, one of my current projects for Osprey Publishing is about Jo Shelby's 1863 raid around Missouri.

So I've been very happy to make the online acquaintance of Dianna and Don Graveman, a husband and wife team who have done four books on Missouri history for Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series--wonderfully produced photo histories of local areas. If you're looking to publish local history, they're one of the best in the business.

The Gravemans' titles are: St. Charles: Les Petites Cotes; Missouri Wine Country: St. Charles to Hermann; Washington; and Hermann (scheduled for release September 2010). They also maintain an interesting blog called Write in the Midwest. Dianna agreed to talk to me about their projects.

What got you and your husband interested in writing books about Missouri?

Don and I have always been the type to stop at every historical marker or point of interest we encounter along the road. Don is in sales, and his territory includes part of the American West. When I taught elementary school, I looked at every opportunity to travel with him during the summer as a way to gather more information, stories, and even materials (like small-town newspapers or brochures from historical sites) for my class. I kept a travel journal and wrote down everything. Some of the people we met and places we visited ended up in articles or short stories I wrote that were later published. At some point, we became aware of Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series, and it just seemed a natural next step for us to propose a book on our hometown, St. Charles. One contract turned into four pretty quickly.

What's been your most interesting surprise find while rummaging through old archives? (I don't have to ask if you've had a surprising find, because archives always yield surprises!)

There have been a lot of little surprises, but the biggest was not really a "Missouri history" find. While combing through boxes of old, unlabeled and not-yet-archived photos at a historical society in a small Missouri town, we came upon a plain white envelope. Inside were several very clear black and white photos of what appeared to be the aftermath of World War II battles! Some of the photos looked like they may have been from Okinawa or Corregidor. One was taken at Pearl Harbor, possibly on V-J Day. They were startlingly clear and comprised a sort of unbound pictorial journal.

Talking with the organization's archivist, we learned that the photos were snapped by a soldier who returned to town after the war. Some years later, he donated the photos to the historical society. It is not known if the soldier also kept a written account of his experiences, or if he felt the pictures would simply speak for themselves--which, of course, they do.


What advice would you give someone wanting to get started in local history?

Make connections with the curators and archivists at local historical societies and museums. Spend as much time with them as you can. In many small towns, these historians have lived in the town all their lives, as have their parents and grandparents. If they haven't, they can put you in touch with people who have. Folks who have lived and worked in a town for several decades can give you information about a place that you can't find in books.

You and your husband are very active in promoting your work. Can you give some advice to writers about how best to market their books?

Developing and marketing four books in such a short period of time was definitely a challenge--especially since we both hold regular jobs--but Arcadia Publishing is great to work with. We were assigned a publicist and regional sales rep, but of course, these folks are working with many authors, so we also need to promote our books.

We do as many talks and book signings as possible, and we try to structure our presentations around a particular group's focus. For example, writing groups want to hear about how we secured the book contracts and obtained permission to use old photos. Library guests want to hear about the history of a town.

We maintain a web presence with posts about upcoming book releases or events on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a blog, and a website. We set up Google alerts, so we instantly know if one of our books has been reviewed or mentioned. That way, we can thank the reviewer or blogger -- but also link to that review from our own website or blog and post the link on social networking sites.

We carry copies of our business cards and at least one copy of each of our books with us everywhere; you never know when someone will express interest. We always see a spike in activity on our website the day after an event, since that URL is on our business card. We gave a large stack of promotional postcards to the curator at a museum. He, in turn, sent them to everyone on his organization's mailing list.

Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming projects?

Our fourth book focuses on Hermann, Missouri, and will be in bookstores the week of September 27. With four books released in approximately 18 months, our focus in the short term is to continue marketing them. We have been invited to give a presentation in Jefferson City at the Missouri State Archives in October, and we also want to devote adequate time to developing that presentation. However, we're already kicking around a few ideas for future books. In the meantime, I'm doing some research for a solo project--nonfiction, but not historical.

Your website mentions that you also write fiction. Tell us a bit about that.
When I was pursuing my MFA, I began a collection of realistic fiction set in the contemporary American West. It had become clear to me that nature and the preservation of nature is a strong influence in my writing, especially in the ways it can be expressed through relationships of human beings to wilderness and to each other. With the stories in that collection, I intended to blend the presence of ruggedly beautiful landscapes with the real lives of people who struggle--and sometimes fail--to uphold the courageous spirit of the American West. Lucky for me, seven of those stories have been published, and six have won one or more awards. The collection continues to evolve, and I have not yet sought a publisher. I may be getting close to that now.

Thanks for stopping by Dianna, and best of luck with your collection and future Missouri books!

SEO for writers

Being a writer, I Google myself a lot. Every Sunday, in fact. One thing I've noticed is that I come right at the top in the search terms "midlist writer" and number five for "midlist." Since I'm proud of the term midlist, I'm pretty happy to be so publicly associated with it. Until recently, however, I was many pages down the list for the term "midlist author".

I decided to experiment. On the sidebar of this blog is a list of my books. It used to be titled simply "My Books." I changed it to "Books by yours truly, the Midlist Author."

A week later I Googled the term midlist author and I came up as number three. Strangely, if you put quotes around it, I only come up on page 8 of the Google search. Using or not using quotes around "Midlist Writer" doesn't affect the standings for that term. Not sure why, but then again I'm pretty computer illiterate. Anyone know why this is so?

An interesting post over the fine blog The Feckless Goblin states that SEO is a waste of time for writers. The main points are (A) there's too much competition for common terms such as "creative writing" or "horror author" and (B) SEO is a boring waste of time for authors who should be producing something worth reading. I can't argue with that in general, but if quick, simple little tweaks on your blog can up your rating in specialist search terms, I say go for it.

Learning from losing

Aw crap.

I just heard from one of the judges at the Fresh Blood Contest that my Civil War novel didn't make the cut this round. I lost by five votes!

The contest has been an interesting ride, and while I'm bummed about losing I did learn a lot and am proud not only to have made the top ten finalists, but to have made it to top five before the public votes favored the other books.

When the voting was up to the judges, what mattered was my writing and I did fine. But the later rounds are by public vote, and it is essentially about how well you market yourself. I started a fanpage on Facebook and hit up people for votes on various newsgroups on Facebook and Yahoo. I also promoted it on my Twitter account.

The problem was, I went on assignment to Ethiopia and Somaliland for two months just when I needed to raise my public profile. With all of Ethiopia still on dialup, I was at a major disadvantage, and learned firsthand about one of the troubles facing writers in developing countries. But of course that was only part of the problem. I'm sure there was more I could have done to promote my book in the early stages when I was in Europe. Should I have been a bit pushier? Joined more newsgroups? Started a MySpace page? There are probably several things I'm not even thinking of here. Feel free to share them in the comments section because they may come in handy one day.

I believe A Fine Likeness will get published, and that it deserves to be published. It's a good story based on detailed historical research, and is now being peddled by an author who is a little wiser about the need for self-marketing.

Thanks to everyone who voted, especially those friends who bugged their own friends to vote, and to those who only know me through the Internet but had faith in my writing. I'm extremely grateful and proud to know you. If you're still interested in the contest even though I'm out of it, I suggest you vote for Heart of the City by Lisa A. Koosis. From a writer's point of view I think it's the finest submission (besides mine, ahem) and the one I was most worried about. I'll be voting for it now that I'm not voting for myself.

The image is by Alexander Gardner of a dead Confederate sniper at Gettysburg, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Yeah, it's probably disrespectful to this poor bastard to be using this, but it's topical and reflects how I feel.

Self-publishing silliness

I've been posting about my experiences at Eastercon, from the people I met to a lecture on swordplay for writers. The con was tons of fun, but an incident in the bathroom made me sigh and shake my head.

Get your mind out of the gutter! What happened was that as I sidled up to the urinal I was confronted with an ad. Not the usual ad for a TV show or safe drinking, but one for an obviously self-published fantasy novel. I looked across the row of urinals and saw one stuck to the wall above each one. A desperate self-publisher did the same thing at last year's London Book Fair.

Being curious, I took the urinal ad and checked the URL. Yep, self-published, and according to the Amazon rankings the second and third books in the series hadn't sold anything, at least on Amazon. The first book had a ranking of six million, meaning it had sold one copy, (probably to the author's mother) a few years ago. Even my London guidebook, which has been out of print for almost a year, has a ranking of 1.5 million. My book on medieval handgonnes, which doesn't come out from Osprey until October, has a ranking of 142,000 thanks to preorders. That's what a good publisher can do for you.

I've written before about how self-publishing is more often than not a pitfall for writers. It almost never leads to fame or big sales. And with the kind of associative advertising these jokers engage in, it only leads to ridicule.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. I tend not to take photos in public restrooms.

My writing year: a look back and a look forward

It's the last day of 2009 and almost exactly ten years since I began to shift my career away from archaeology and into writing. Each year has been slightly more successful than the last, a steady progression that I'm striving to continue and hasten.

So how did I do in 2009? Two of my books were published, Outlaw Tales of Missouri and American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, and one of my books, Moon Handbooks London, went out of print.

I had two significant steps forward. I saw my first book published by Osprey Publishing, who are very professional and make a great product. They even (GASP!) pay on time. I also finished a second book for them on medieval handgonnes. I also started working for Gadling, the world's most popular travel blog. It's teaching me to write timely, breezy, catchy articles, something history writing doesn't generally encourage. It's also a thrill to have millions (yes, millions) of readers every month. Gadling pays on time too!

Another potential success was getting my Missouri Civil War novel into the finals of Dorchester Publishing's Fresh Blood contest. The grand prize is publication. I'm now trying to teach myself online promotion, something that doesn't come naturally to me. I've already set up a Facebook fan page and am planning more outlets to get people to know my work.

Of course every year has its ups and downs. With all the travel and nonfiction commitments my fiction languished. I wrote only one short story and only got 25,000 words into my next novel. I'm planning on pushing my fiction a lot more in 2010. Not sure where the time is going to come from. . .

So what's ahead? Well, I'm negotiating some more books with Osprey and trying to win that contest. Gadling should be happy with my upcoming Ethiopia series. I'll also be writing more fiction and trying to become better at selling myself while not overselling myself. I think 2010 is going to be a good year for me.

Check out my other blog to read about my travel year.

New Year's resolutions: eight months on

At the beginning of the year I posted my New Year’s writing resolutions in order to pressure myself to keep on track. Let's see how I did in August. Yeah, it's a bit late to be blogging about this. More on that later.

Write 7,000 words per week minimum, 10,000 preferred.
I've been keeping up the word count this month, helped by my job at Gadling. Today I wrote my 100th post for them. My nonfiction books keep me busy too.


Get through that huge list of magazine article ideas I'm going to pitch. As I send them out, the list will be added to, so this is a perpetual goal. Same goes for several book proposals I have.
I sent only one magazine pitch this month, but I got a yes from a magazine I'd never written for, so that's nice.

Search for another paid blogging job.

This is no longer a goal now that I'm blogging for Gadling.

Finish a how-to book on writing that a publisher is interested in.
This project has been put on the back burner since I'm in crunch time for one of my Osprey military history books.


Try to get an agent for my fiction and nonfiction.
Working on it. Still no luck.


Do another round of edits on all three of my novels.
I've already done this. Right now I'm working on a summary for my Civil War novel, which I'm submitting to a contest.


Write my next novel, set in London and Oxford.
I did some writing this month, although not nearly as much as I like. I've been struggling with this one and having a lot of nonfiction work doesn't help.


Finish two short stories and two novellas I've been fiddling with.
I haven't done anything with these.


Write and send out "Willoughby: England's First Great Explorer", a book proposal I was supposed to write last year (whoops!).
Still haven't done anything with this proposal.


Increase my online presence.
I've been slacking off on my blogs, as you can see, but my work with Gadling is gaining ground. Several of my posts have made it to the front page of AOL, which gets me lots of hits and tweets.

All in all, a pretty good month. I'm especially happy about breaking into a new magazine market.

Why readers preorder books

In a previous post back in April I wondered why people were preordering my American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, which comes out this month from Osprey Publishing. Why preorder something months in advance when doing it a week in advance will get you the book just the same? I've discovered the answer.

I went to The Gameskeeper, the local gaming store here in Oxford, to convince them to stock my book, gamers being big Osprey fans. The owner and I got into a long conversation about publishing and I brought up the subject of my preorders. She said gaming books often get very early preorders too, and it's because fans want to signal to publishers that they like a certain subject or title. They want to support the process. It's kind of like voting with your money. Apparently military history buffs do this as well.

This makes me feel good about my preorders. Some people started preordering my book back in February! :-)

Damnation Books opens its doors

The soon-to-be publisher of my horror story "Dannevirke" have opened their doors. Damnation Books came out with their first catalog of dark fiction novels, novellas, and short stories as the clock struck midnight on September 1. They are being published both as electronic books and in print.

Damnation Books has set itself apart from the usual crop of ebook/POD publishers with a couple of interesting policies. Firstly, for short stories they pay semipro rates of three cents a word. That attracted some rising authors along with the usual horde of amateurs. I'm sure they were inundated with submissions, but they got to sign on writers who had several publications to their name.

The second innovation is variable price books. When a new title is released, it's free. After the first "purchase" the price rises five cents, and continues to rise five cents until it reaches its list price. I took advantage of the time difference between the U.S. and England to make my order at four in the morning U.S. time and scored seven books for 65 cents. I felt a little guilty about that! Hopefully this policy will draw in readers and create buzz for the books. Both this and the payment policy are gambles for a startup company, but I think they are wise moves. They're already getting attention for their first anthology, The Zombie Cookbook. I couldn't resist ordering that one, now could I?

My short story doesn't have a release date yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing it come out, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Damnation Books fares in the rough world of publishing.

Going out of print

At the first of this month I reached a new milestone in my writing career--one of my books went out of print. Strangely, it wasn't my earliest book, but rather a book I only wrote three years ago, Moon Handbooks London. The story is a sad one and a warning for aspiring guidebook writers.

Back in 2005 I saw on a jobs board that Avalon Travel Publishing wanted to expand their Moon series, already popular for Asian and South American destinations, into Western Europe. I applied for the London gig and got it. The advance was good, the royalties generous, and I was really over the moon, as it were.

But if something looks too good to be true in your writing career, it probably is. I wrote the book and it was published, but it received no marketing. None. Zilch. Nada. Moon, a newcomer to a near-saturated market, assumed their name recognition would allow them to compete with the likes of Lonely Planet, Frommer's, and Rough Guide. Problem was, Moon Handbooks didn't HAVE any name recognition in Western Europe.

I complained to my editor about the lack of marketing, and her only reply was, "But we featured you on our website!" Now catch me if I'm wrong, but in advertising you go to the customer, right? You can't expect the customer to come to you. When I asked if any review copies went out, I received evasive replies.

It came as no surprise to me that the book had poor sales. When it came time to do the second edition, I got the runaround for the better part of a year before my editor finally told me there would be no second edition. Most of their writers in Western Europe got the same news, as did several longstanding writers in other regions.

It was a tough lesson, but one I learned well. Now I only work for publishers who have strong marketing plans, or at least publish books that don't have a huge amount of direct competitors with better marketing plans. Something to think about before you sign your next contract.

Now the rights to the content have reverted to me. I'll be updating and reusing the contents for various projects. One of the ways to survive midlist purgatory is to know how to turn disappointments into opportunities.

The ultimate in niche fiction

I've always loved obscure books, and my taste for the obscure has been well satisfied by reading Grand Canyon QSO by Walker A. Tompkins, a prolific author in the mid-twentieth century who specialized in regional history and ham radio mysteries.

Ham radio mysteries? Yep, Tompkins was an avid amateur radio operator and wrote a series of books where a heroic young ham uses his wits and his rig to foil crime. Tompkins' mysteries were first published in the 1950s and republished by the American Radio Relay League in the 1980s. Now out of print, some of his titles command more than $100 on eBay. I scored this and another book from collector Jose Fritz in trade for some British 78s I'm hunting down for him. Isn't collecting grand?

I'd heard about these books when I got into amateur radio in college. I drifted away after a few years as travel and the Internet gave me the international connections that first attracted me to ham radio, but I was always curious about those books. One day I Googled them and came across Jose's excellent series of blog posts about the history of radio fiction.

So how was the book? Well. . .OK. The characters were cardboardy and the writing a bit labored, and it could have used a good edit to weed out overly expository sentences. It probably works better as a young adult book than an adult mystery, but it would be a bit shaky even for kids.

So why did ham radio operators lap up these books and are still looking for them twenty years after they went out of print?

Because the books are about them. A specific group of people are far more receptive to fiction if it's targeted directly at them. I have a feeling there are all sorts of obscure subgenres out there. Yard sale thrillers? Knitting mysteries? Pirate tales for yacht owners? Asian-American science fiction? Oh wait, I've read that last one! An anthology of Asian-American science fiction came out in the Nineties.

So writers shouldn't be afraid to write to very narrow groups. You won't make the bestseller list, but you just might make an enduring name for yourself.

Niche publisher has strong year despite recession

Looks like I've backed a winning horse. Osprey Publishing, which will be releasing my book American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics in September, had a banner year in 2008 despite the worldwide economic downturn.

According to an article in Publisher's Weekly, the military history publisher reported a 16% increase in sales in 2008 and a strong first quarter in 2009. There are a lot of reasons for this. First off, Osprey has long been recognized as the leader in short, detailed, and heavily illustrated books on military subjects. They've also built up a large and loyal fan base by encouraging and actually listening to reader input. My editor tells me there are people who buy every one of their hundreds of titles!

It's these specialist publishers who are best prepared to ride out the recession. In bad times people don't give up on their enthusiasms; they tend to retreat into them. A railfan will still buy books from Ian Allen, a romance reader will still buy from Harlequin, and a military history fan will still buy from Osprey. The familiar, favorite subjects are comforting in hard times. Osprey readers have supported the company enough that they are even creating new lines in the midst of the recession, including the Raid and Weapons of War series. Expect titles from me in both of those series in coming years. I'm sticking with the winning horse.

The Bloated World Of Publishing

Did I say tomorrow? Well, it's been three days now but I'm finally getting back to writing about the London Book Fair. I got busy writing my next novel and researching my next history book. Sue me.

One thing that really struck me at the London Book Fair was the sheer immensity of the publishing world and how much it repeats itself. I'm not talking fiction here, because while there may be plenty of publishers churning out fantasy novels or mysteries, at least those all have somewhat different plots. One would hope. No, I'm talking about nonfiction, my forté. I saw half a dozen publishers coming out with heavily illustrated histories of World War Two or the monarchs of England this season. A dozen different coffeetable books on the castles of Europe or Hollywood's greatest stars. Tens of "timeline histories." Countless cookbooks.

It seems the publishing world flows in comfortable grooves. One publisher comes up with an idea and the rest do their own spin on it, only the spin isn't all that unique. This is less noticeable in the average bookshop because all these titles aren't under one roof like they are at an international book fair, but one has to wonder about the economic viablility of such a replication of effort. The smart move for publishers seems to be to find a niche and dominate it, like Osprey does with its short, narrowly focused, heavily illustrated military titles. Or Taschen does with its gloriously beautiful photo and art books.

The redundancy is especially noticeable with guidebooks. Having written my own guidebook to London, I flipped through every London guidebook I came across. I'm not sure how many there were; I lost count after a dozen. Besides slightly different layouts, there really wasn't much to differentiate most of them. Mine had more text and background, plus a bigger museum section than most, but the same venues came up in title after title. Is it any wonder that many guidebook publishers are jettisoning titles in the face of recession? I got the distinct impression that half them could go under and it wouldn't make the least bit of difference to the consumer.

If the publishers figure this out, freelancers like me are going to find it tough to find work.

Writing Pitfall #4: Faking It

We've all met them, the pushy "writers" who claim to know it all but don't have the experience to back it up. They're especially common on Yahoo groups, but prowl around conventions too. I've found they tend to fall into three major categories, although I'm sure there are more types I have yet to have the displeasure to meet. Watch out for them, fellow writers, they'll steer you wrong if you give them half a chance.

1. The Multipublished Nonpublished Writer.
One fellow I came across boasted he had published more than a hundred poems. Considering the quality of his poetry, I had my doubts. I looked him up and guess what? His poems had all been published either on websites that are open to all content, or in a book of poems he self-published. Paying to get published or posting something on the web doesn't count as getting published. That isn't to say there aren't good self-published books out there, or talented work on the open content sites, but it's not the same as going through the submissions and editing process. And it certainly doesn't give someone automatic bragging rights.


2. The Writing Expert Who Hasn't Written Anything.
There's a strange subspecies of writer who has published nothing but "how to write" books. I have to wonder why they think their advice on writing should be taken seriously. I've been a professional writer for ten years and have seven professionally published books in print or in production, and I only just now feel qualified to write a "how to write" book.


3. The Pulitzer Prize Nominee.
When someone says they've been "nominated for a Pulitzer prize" every journalist rolls their eyes and moans. There's no such thing as being nominated for this prestigious award. You submit your own work for consideration. The prize committee announces nominated finalists and posts them on their website. That list doesn't include all the people who sent in something for consideration, yet some people will send in any old thing and then claim to be "Pulitzer nominees."
As the Pulitzer website's FAQ says, "Work that has been submitted for Prize consideration but not chosen as either a nominated finalist or a winner is termed an entry or submission. . .Since 1980, when we began to announce nominated finalists, we have used the term "nominee" for entrants who became finalists. We discourage someone saying he or she was "nominated" for a Pulitzer simply because an entry was sent to us."

So watch out for these three types of deceivers. I'm not sure what their motives are. Perhaps they are trying to boost their egos and get a following in the hope that this will improve sales of their books. Their energy would be better devoted to getting some real writing done.