Writers in the Storm

Jen Karsbaek

So, you have a new book coming out, not a ton of marketing support from your publisher, and not much of an advance you can put towards your own marketing budget. What on earth can you do to get the word out about your book?

Well, there’s this awesome community of readers out there who are extremely passionate about books and absolutely love to share information about what they are reading with their (sometimes quite large) audiences. Now, these bloggers aren’t your marketing team, but if you can find the ones most likely to love and review your book, they might help you build some nice buzz and word of mouth.

But how do you go about orchestrating reviews with the bloggers who could really do something for your book?

1. Find bloggers who fit your book

If you have a good sense of what your comparative titles (also called read-alikes in some circles, books which are similar to yours and which are likely to have similar audiences) are, a good place to start is by searching for bloggers who have reviewed (and preferably liked) those comp titles. Make sure you check out their review policies though, to be sure that they are currently accepting books in your genre. The review policy may also tell you what sort of lead time the blogger requires and how likely they are to be able to actually review your book.

2. Evaluate the bloggers on your list

Hopefully you found a ton of bloggers who you think would be a good fit for your book, but unless you have free range with e-arcs you probably can’t send a book to everyone. You may be tempted to just pick the blogs with the biggest audiences, but they are often the ones who are busiest, so you need to weigh bigger audiences against blogs where you are more likely to get reviewed. Big audiences may also not be as helpful as you think if the blogger in question doesn’t really have authority in speaking to your genre.

3. What to offer book bloggers

Obviously you can offer a blogger a copy of your book (which they will probably accept for consideration of review, not for a guaranteed review), but you can also increase your chance of getting blog coverage if you can also book an interview, guest post, or giveaway. All of these things require more work and/or resources on your part, so be sure you are able to commit what is necessary before you offer these things.

4. How to approach book bloggers

Most book bloggers have jobs and family lives that come before their blogs so be respectful of their time and approach them in a professional way. Book pitches should be done via email, unless another method is specified in the blogger’s review policy.

Pitches to bloggers should be approached in much the same way that you might approach a query letter for an agent or editor. In a pitch, as in a query, you will want information on ‘the hook, the book, and the cook.’ In other words, a brief hook to grab the blogger’s attention, pertinent information about the book, and a brief author bio.

If you’ve done your research on the blogger you are pitching, the hook may be something about why you believe that they might like your book, instead of only being about the book, since you’ll get into more in-depth information about the book in the next paragraph. It is fine to use your back cover copy or other marketing copy to describe your book in the pitch, but please also include your publisher and the book’s release date, at minimum. This information can help a blogger make a decision about whether they could possibly fit your book into their editorial calendar. Your bio can be very brief, but feel free to include any writing awards you have won here.

In your pitch you will want to be clear about what you are offering. Occasionally authors send bloggers pitches that make it sound as if they are asking for the blogger to buy and review their book, which usually leads to the blogger simply ignoring or deleting the email. Be clear whether you are offering a physical review copy or an electronic one, and if you are open to doing a guest post or interview, that information can be conveyed here as well.

So that you don’t waste your time crafting personalized pitches to bloggers who are unlikely to accept your book for whatever reason, it is a good idea to check the review policies of the bloggers you most want to have review your book.

Review policies are documents written up by bloggers to say whether or not they are accepting anything for review, what sort of things they’re open to seeing pitches about, and often how much lead time they prefer and what formats they like to read in as well. This is a step you may want to take as part of your initial ranking of bloggers, but even so you will want to check review policies again before you send out pitches. Being able to personalize your pitch with information gleaned from a review policy makes you look like someone who respects a blogger’s time and preferences, which can definitely help you get in the door at a busy blog.

There are many things you can do to optimize your experience of working with bloggers, all of which are detailed in my Short Fuse Guide to Working with Book Bloggers (which is free until the end of the year, so if you think you’ll need it at some point, get it now!). If you’re pressed for time and don’t want to read 8,000 words of ideas, though, you can boil it down to this: if you work with book bloggers in a professional manner you may not get all rave reviews, but you are likely to get fair reviews, and to get your book talked about on social media and help you build your word of mouth.

What questions do you have about working with book bloggers? What has been your experience with them so far? Are there any bloggers you recommend for a particular genre?

p.s. For our American readers...HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

About Jen

Jen Karsbaek is an associate agent at Fuse Literary where she represents women’s fiction, historical fiction, upmarket commercial fiction, and literary fiction. Before becoming an agent, she ran the very popular book review blog Devourer of Books. You can find her on Twitter as @devourerofbooks. 

About The Short Fuse Guide to Working with Book Bloggers

One of the very best ways to reach readers is to connect with a passionate and internet-savvy group of readers and reviewers who delight in sharing the books they love with others: book bloggers.

In The Short Fuse Guide to Working with Book Bloggers, literary agent and book blogger Jen Karsbaek shows you how best to approach and work with book bloggers to secure reviews, spread word of mouth, and build strong buzz for your new release. The Short Fuse Guide to Working with Book Bloggers and Fuse Literary’s other Short Fuse Guides are free at Smashwords through the end of 2014 and are available for purchase as Kindle books.

Books photo credit: Sunshine Lady ! via photopin cc

Kathryn Craft
Turning Whine into Gold

Fear can waylay even the most intrepid writer. Recently, I found myself in its confidence-rattling grip.

Followers of this series might be saying, What? This can’t be written by Kathryn, the relentless optimist who would never be caught whining on the Internet and who I’ve come to count on for my monthly shot of can-do attitude!

In order to be real—or “Velveteen,” as Therese Walsh called it at the Writer UnBoxed UnConference in Salem, MA earlier this month—I want to share the perfect storm of emotions I battled when I came home. Is this whining, or just a cold hard look at the life of the writer? You be the judge—but I promise to turn it to gold by the end of the post.

How to stir up a doubt-fest

Start with exhaustion. After a week of joyful interaction with a slew of new writers at the UnConference, my inner introvert needed her down time. Way down, as it turned out. Overstimulation and sleep are rarely happy bed partners. The first night I got home from the conference I slept 12-1/2 hours and couldn’t shake the resulting fog.

Add several handfuls of overwhelm. With a dream team of presenters led by Donald Maass and Lisa Cron, the UnConference prompted dozens of ideas to incorporate into my next novel, challenging everything I thought I had so far accomplished. How would I bring it all together? Even though I’m an experienced writer, I’d never traveled the path this novel needed to take. Sitting with the discomfort of not knowing what to do, and allowing a new vision to distill, is an emotionally challenging but necessary task.

Whisk in separation anxiety ’til dizzy. Before leaving for the conference I had completed all work on my second novel, The Far End of Happy. Writing under contract for the first time, I’d had all of ten months to create this important and very personal project based on my first husband’s suicide standoff—all while launching my debut. It took 17 years of climbing to gain the perspective needed to write about this life-changing event—I did it!—but the all-consuming, high-altitude effort left me reeling. And leaving it behind felt like walking off a cliff into an abyss.

Bake until dough cracks. I fervently believe that the Universe would not call me to write the book of my soul and then kick me to the curb without the tools to make it happen. But it’s one thing to trust the Universe when improving the book is still under my control, and another when my primary role is complete and the team takes over. Doubt creeps in.What if it isn’t as good as it could possibly be? What if I let my publisher down? What if, despite my fervent promotion, it never finds its audience? What if, after all these years of tilling the soil of my soul, and investing so much time and money into my writing education, this book doesn’t matter?

This wasn’t just a recipe for doubt, my friends. With these ingredients I had concocted a full-out crisis of faith.

The antidote to fear

People have been having crises of faith for as long as the human spirit has yearned to be part of a bigger, more meaningful story, and the antidote is readily available in our wisdom literature. Marianne Williamson, in her #1 bestseller A Return to Love, simplifies the issue by saying there are only two human emotions: love and fear. At the root of all negative human emotions—jealousy (I’ll never have what she has), disappointment (I’ll never be able to get what I want), and anger (I’ll never be treated as I deserve)—is always a seed of fear.

And look at all the seeds of fear I’d been feeding on! Luckily, my writing buddies helped me see this and helped me find compassion for myself—an emotion rooted in love.

Williamson suggests, as does the Bible, that love will heal our fear. And what do I love? Writing. As soon as I removed the opening scenes that weren’t working and typed my notes into my document, a resurgence of love and excitement drew me into the task.

Because I had already raised questions about my new project before overstuffed at the creative banquet that was the UnConference, hidden magic had been brewing upon my return, even during my week of despair. As UnCon session leader Meg Rosoff would have said, my unconscious mind was chewing on my problem and synthesizing a solution—and it showed up on the page when I began to write.

And once again, the same journey that led me into the dark forest of my psyche has delivered me to the sun. Through this work that I love, I am healed.

Have you ever noticed that fear cannot touch you while you are actually writing? What ingredients feed your storm of doubt? Let’s be real today. We will not whine, but share the burden of our doubts across empathetic shoulders, and try to love one another back into wholeness.

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft is the author of two novels from Sourcebooks: The Art of Falling, and The Far End of Happy, out May 2015.

Her work as a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft, follows a nineteen-year career as a dance critic. Long a leader in the southeastern Pennsylvania writing scene, she now serves as book club liaison for the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. She hosts lakeside writing retreats for women in northern New York State, leads workshops, and speaks often about writing.

Kathryn lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.

Website: http://www.kathryncraft.com/

 

Photo credit by Lorena G at Dribble.

Marcy Kennedy

Hashtags are one of the best things about Twitter. (In case you’re brand new to Twitter, a hashtag is the # sign followed by a term.)

Normally, your tweets are seen only by people who’re following you, but if you add a hashtag, everyone who’s watching that hashtag sees what you’ve tweeted. If we’re using Twitter to build our author platforms, making connections with new people is one of the key things we want to do.

But hashtags on Twitter do more than just build our author platform. When we know which hashtags to follow, they can be amazing learning tools, provide us with inspiration and motivation, and help us keep up-to-date on the industry.

So today I’m going to share the twelve best hashtags for writers.

Genre-Related Hashtags

Sometimes, you just need to ask a question of someone who writes the same thing you write. Or you want to talk about an issue that really only affects others who write in your genre. That’s where genre-related hastags can be great. Not every genre has an active one, but these three do.

#SciFiChat – This chat is held Fridays from 3:00–4:00 pm Eastern. You can find more details on David A. Rozansky’s (the moderator’s) website.

#KidLitChat –You can find more details at www.kidlitchat.blogspot.ca. It’s held on Tuesdays at 9:00 pm Eastern.

#ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) – This isn’t a chat, but it is an active hashtag for faith-based writers.

Industry-Related Hashtags

Keeping informed on what’s happening in the writing industry, what’s working and what isn’t, and what the current taboos are can be headache inducing (at least for me). Here are the hashtags I’ve found help me keep up-to-date on the latest, greatest, and worst of the writing world (without wasting a lot of precious time).

#getpublished – This hashtag contains information on exactly what it says—ways to get published. You’ll find calls for submissions, contests, and articles offering tips on how to increase your chances at publication.

#publishing – This hashtag focuses on publishing “news” such as the newest author programs offered by Amazon, ways to avoid common publishing snafus, and how the publishing industry is changing (plus what that means for authors both indie and traditional).

#promotip – Book launch promotion tips, whether or not free still works, the importance of author branding, ways to market your audio book, etc. If a tweet or link to a post deals with helping you spread the word about your book, you’ll likely find it bearing the #promotip hashtag.

#askeditor – This hastag has been around for years for a good reason. While it doesn’t seem to have a set time of use anymore, you’ll still see editors and small publishing houses announce that they’ll be taking questions for a certain period of time on a certain day using this hashtag. Even if you can’t attend, it can be fun and informative to read through the conversations afterward.

Bonus Hashtag Tip: Go Conference-Specific – There are too many of these to list, but a great trick is to find out the hashtag being used for some of the bigger conferences in North America. Many people use these hashtags during the conference to tweet awesome tidbits they’ve learned. It’s not as good as being there, but it comes close.

Creativity and Productivity Helpers

Let’s face it—the well occasionally runs dry. We’re out of good ideas (or so it feels) or we’re struggling to put fingers to keyboard. Hashtags come to the rescue for this as well.

#writingprompt – I don’t keep this one open because some people abuse it. However, when you’re needing a kickstart, this is a good hashtag to scroll through. You’re sure to run into a prompt or idea that gets the juices flowing again.

#storystarter – This is the sister hashtag of #writingprompt. I find this one to be a touch less spammy, so if you’re really in a time crunch, I recommend going here first.

#1k1h/#1k1hr – Have you ever noticed how you get more done when you have to report your progress to someone else? (I sure hope that’s not just me.) That’s what these two related hashtags are for. The idea is that you go internet black for an hour to write, and when you return, you need to report your word count. You can either put out a call for other people to join you or you can watch for someone else to ask for joiners. Even though this hashtag implies you need to try to write 1,000 words in an hour, the real goal is to write as many words as you can. Beat your own personal best.

When You Just Need to Talk

No list of the best hashtags for writers would be complete without some hashtags where you can share your blog posts (both non-writing and writing-related) and simply talk with other writers. The non-writers in our lives won’t always understand what we’re going through, so being able to share with other writers can often be what saves our sanity.

#MyWANA – This is my absolute favorite hashtag. Author Kristen Lamb created it as a place for conversation and human connection. You’re fine to share your blog posts on the #MyWANA hashtag so others can support you with re-tweets, but only if you’re a regular and active participant there. No spam allowed.

#amwriting – If you need encouragement, this is a great place to hang out. Writers post their words counts, cheer each other on, share funny anecdotes, and link resources they’ve found particularly helpful.

Are you regularly using any of these hashtags? Are there others you think fellow writers should know about?

Want to know more about Twitter and how to use it to build your author platform in a time-efficient way? Check out Marcy’s newest book, Twitter for Authors: A Busy Writer’s Guide. It’s available in both print and ebook versions!

About Marcy

Marcy Kennedy is a suspense and speculative fiction writer who believes fantasy is more real than you think. Alongside her own writing, Marcy works as a freelance fiction editor and teaches classes on craft and social media. She’s also the author of the bestselling Busy Writer’s Guides series of books. You can find her blogging about writing and about the place where real life meets science fiction, fantasy, and myth at www.marcykennedy.com. If you’d like a free copy of her PDF booklet Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Hiring a Freelance Editor, make sure to sign up for Marcy’s newsletter.