My Kingdom for an Advance

Do the costs to promote a book sometimes equal the advance you got for it, and does that make you question A) writing it or B) doing all that expensive promotion?

by Paul D. Marks 

The question isn’t, or shouldn’t be, if the costs to promote the book = the advance, but if the money you spend pays off in terms of more sales, new readers and a higher profile in the long run. Of course, not everyone can have a perfect profile like these fellows.

W.C. Fields and John Barrymore -- AKA "The Great Profile"

In ye olden days of yore ye promotion was extremely expensive for the most part and largely out of reach of authors unless you were at the top of the heap and your publisher was hefting the hefty bill with hefty ads in various book reviews and papers of weight. Maybe even radio spots. Or sent you on a multi-city, multi-state book tour, flying first class of course…’cause isn’t that how we think of authors?

But in ye days of today things have changed. Many, if not most, advances are on the low end. And many publishers do little or nothing to promote a book once they birth it, whether you’re with a small publisher or on a big publisher’s midlist. They throw it out in the world, give it a spank on the rump, and then it’s sink or swim—unless, again, you’re one of the lucky few that the publisher decides to actually get behind and promote. So unless you’ve been through drownproofing you’re gonna sink and your book will go down even faster than you do.

But these days there’s so much you can do that either costs nothing or next to nothing. Hey, if you’ve got even 1/10 of Bill Gates’ money you can still do expensive promotion—take out TV ads, radio spots, full page newspaper ads…but with so many other outlets today you can probably get away with spending a lot less and getting a lot more bang for your buck. So even if your advance isn’t huge there’s plenty you can do.

Facebook, Twitter and a million online things, blogging, groups, conventions, promo materials (like PR releases, bookmarks, etc.) are a few things you can do on your own. Or you can hire a PR firm or person. Some work on an a la carte basis, others more on a retainer system. You can see more about ways to promote here:

     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2017/02/face-to-facebook.html
     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2016/05/kicking-and-screaming-into-social-media.html
     http://7criminalminds.blogspot.com/2014/12/blog-tweet-meet-and-greet.html 

There’s also book signings that you can set up on your own, but I have issues with those. Unless you’re John Grisham or Louise Penny most likely you’ll be lucky if your family shows up. On the other hand, doing book signings can get you in with booksellers who can then recommend your books to future customers. It’s a six of one, half a dozen of the other kind of thing.

When my two novels, White Heat and Vortex, came out they both sold pretty well, all things considered. But I’m not living off the profits. What I’ve done is set up an account where any profits go and I use that money to promote future books as well as existing ones. There’s very few of us who can live off our book writing, so unless you need the money to cover some basic expenses why not take whatever you earn, both the advance on a book and royalties from any books, and plow it back into promoting your books and yourself? Or to be hip and cool: your brand.

So to answer the questions: I rarely question the writing, though who doesn’t on occasion? Anyway, we all know you have to be nuts to want to be a writer. As Dorothy Parker said, “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

And as for doing all that promotion, expensive and otherwise, it’s all part of the glamour, appeal and prestige of being a writer, as much as the writing and all that “glory” heaped upon us. But without it there’s definitely no glory.

***

And now for the usual BSP:

My short story “Blood Moon” will be coming out in Day of the Dark (Stories of the Eclipse). Edited by Kaye George. Releasing July 21, 2017, one month before the big solar eclipse on August 21st. From Wildside Press. Stay tuned for updates.

www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

Truth, Justice and the Crime Writing Way!

What prompted you to become a writer of crime fiction?

by Paul D. Marks

Uh, time to delve into that whole Pandora’s Box of psychopathology that makes me, uh, me. And that made me want to become a writer of crime fiction. But we won’t delve too deep. You never know what you might find down in the depths.

So, what prompted me to write crime fiction: I write it so I can kill people...on the page that I can't kill in real life...........

Related to that is the desire to see justice served as it so often isn’t in real life. That said, in much of what I write there are no neat bow-tied endings. And even when parts of the stories are tied up other parts are left open-ended. Kind of like life. So, justice is often served on some level, but maybe not neatly and maybe not legal justice, but some kind of street justice. Unless it’s a totally noir tale where there truly might not be justice, at least not in terms of how we normally think of it.

Writing crime fiction also gives me a way to comment on things that I want to comment on. Also to explore different points of view about those things, via various characters, including those that might not necessarily jibe with my own thoughts. Kind of like when you did debates in school and you had to take the other side of the issue, whether you agreed with it or not.

And, as RM said earlier in the week, “With crime fiction I get to write about people in trouble, not just criminals and victims, but the people who happen to be police officers as well.” It's so true, and crime fiction is about so much more than whodunit. It's about all the people affected by the crime. As such, it gives us a vehicle to explore the human condition (now that sounds pretty hifalutin) but in a structured story with a plot that keeps us interested (hopefully) and moving forward.

But ultimately I want to entertain. I’ve talked about this before, and I don’t want to beat on a dead Sturges, but the Preston Sturges movie Sullivan’s Travels makes the point very well about entertaining. It’s the story of a film director who makes movies like Ants in Your Plants of 1939. But he thinks it’s light and silly junk. He wants to make the ponderous message movie Oh Brother Where Art Thou. But through his adventures he learns that what people really want is to laugh – and to be entertained.

White Heat on Amazon

Now, there’s not generally a lot of yucks in crime fiction, though there are some exceptions. But the best crime fiction is entertaining first. Sam Goldwyn famously might have said, if I want to send a message I’ll call Western Union. Which is not to say that crime writing can’t have a message, just to say that it shouldn’t hit you over the head. The best writing makes you think, but it doesn’t tell you what to think. A crime writer can illuminate aspects of society, good and bad, without being preachy or moralistic. My novel White Heat deals with race and racism in the form of a fast-paced, intense mystery thriller. And while I hope I make some points about those subjects, my first goal is to entertain. The sequel to White Heat, which may actually see the light of day one of these days, does the same thing about another pressing issue of life today.

And, of course, I enjoy reading crime fiction and watching crime-related movies. As I’ve stated here before, I’m a “movie guy,” and I came to a lot of crime fiction via the movies. Anyone who knows me knows I love film noir and in that genre there are few heroes, at least of the conventional variety. I’ve done a lot of different types of writing, mainstream, humorous/satire, screenplays of various genres. But crime writing/fiction and noir allow me to explore what good and evil are and where the boundaries between them are sometimes blurred.

So there you have it, now I can stuff the bats back into the belfry and close the lid to Pandora’s Box. Why do you write crime fiction?

***

And now for some refreshingly new BSP:

My story Twelve Angry Days is coming out in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magaine, on sale at newsstands starting April 25th. Or click here to buy online.

And I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, “Ghosts of Bunker Hill,” was voted #1 in the 2016 Ellery Queen Readers Poll. If you’d like to read it (and maybe consider it for other awards) you can read it free on my website: http://pauldmarks.com/stories/

www.PaulDMarks.com

Click here to: Subscribe to my Newsletter

Kicking and Screaming into the Social Media Mosh Pit

Do you use social media to market your books, and if so, do you think it’s made a difference?

by Paul D. Marks

Yes. And Oh yes.

Facebook:

I went kicking and screaming onto Facebook a few years ago. Publicist and friend Diana James “gently” suggested that I should go on Facebook.

“I don’t want to see pictures of what people had for breakfast…or worse,” I said.

So, after much cajoling from Diana I took the dreaded step and signed onto FB. At first I didn’t know what to do, how to use it. I was an evil lurker. Of course, since I had few FB friends I didn’t have much to lurk at. So I’d check in every few days or so, still not knowing what to do, but gaining a few friends here, a few friends there.

And eventually I started posting. Don’t remember what those early posts were. But not too long after I started on Facebook I began to find my way. I began to post things that meant something to me or that I related to. Things like pix of my breakfast: cereal can be fun and entertaining pop art. And pix of my scars – want to see them? Just kidding.

Actually, I started posting things about noir and film noir and putting up “Film Noir Alerts” when I knew a noir movie was coming on television. Also stuff about mystery and noir writing, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, et al. And I started posting about Los Angeles and LA history, something I’m very much into on many levels. I began to be known as the LA Guy or the Noir Guy. People I’d never met in person would come up to me at conferences and other events and say, “You’re the Noir Guy”. I had to plead guilty.

And then when White Heat came out I put up some posts about that. And other people shared them. And I think it did help get the book known, get reviews and make sales. But the key is, as everyone says, not to only push your books. People get majorly turned off by that. Be a friend. Be part of the community. Comment and share other people’s posts. Participate.

Twitter:

Twitter’s another ballgame altogether. A ballgame where it’s impossible to see the ball and more impossible to know the rules. Like: Don’t use more than three hashtags. Fine. Uh, now what the hell is a hashtag? And where do I find the hashtags that apply to what I’m posting? Can I make up my own hashtags? Would you like some ketchup with your hashtags?

Twitter, to me, was a mess when I first signed up. Tweets would fly by faster than a speeding bullet. I couldn’t figure out how to use it. How do I make – uh, get – friends? I mean followers. Who/how do I follow someone? How to do I participate in a conversation? And HOW THE HELL do I say anything in 140 characters? And DOUBLE HOW THE HELL do I say anything at all when I’m retweeting and now I have 3 characters left to add my own comment to? It’s enough to make you batty.

And then I heard the bugle. The cavalry was on the way led by Captain Tweetdeck and Colonel Hootsuite. Oh no, more things to worry about. But no, these were good things. And the light shined down.

Hootsuite and Tweetdeck are “social media management systems” – say that five times with a mouth full of cereal. They help you organize Twitter, the tweets, the followers, everything. So I signed up for both and magically Twitter became manageable. And I began to use it.

You can create lists and put different people or groups (like magazines, writers, friends, publishers, etc.) on different lists and then put them in different columns.  These columns allow you to see things more clearly and at a more even and manageable pace. And it makes all the difference in the world (at least to me) in terms of being able to use Twitter (though you can manage other programs on these systems as well).

A small part of my Hootsuite Dashboard.

I find that Tweetdeck is good for some things and Hootsuite for others. So I use both. But it’s too much of a “lesson” to go into here and explain the intricacies of each. Suffice to say, they both make Twitter much more user friendly and once you get the hang of them you’ll be able to use Twitter to much better advantage. But like with FB or any social media, you shouldn’t use it only to promote your books. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do some promotion. Just have fun with it.

In closing – other social media & tying it up:

There’s about 33 million different social media. I’m also on Tumblr, Google+ and Pinterest, and use them to varying degrees. For a while I had been doing a fair amount on Tumbler, but nothing there lately. It’s not that I don’t like it, it just comes down to the time spent and it adds up. Some other social media that I signed up for I really never did much with. There’s just so many to choose from. But you have to pick two or three, maybe a couple more. Because you just can’t focus on all these things. It’s too hard to follow people and too hard to keep up with your own accounts and you’ll never have time to write.

Have FB and Twitter made me a NY Times Bestseller? No. But they have definitely helped get me more readers and connect with people with similar interests, which is more than I could have done by going on a cross country booking signing tour …and it costs a lot less. And I figure now there’s not a state in the country that I couldn’t have lunch with someone if I happened to be passing through – and if I do I’ll be sure to post the photo of the meal. Hell, there’s several countries on different continents that I could have lunch with someone I know from social media.

So yes, in answer to the question today – yes yes yes. Social media is great. I’m a total convert. So, uh, here’s what I had for breakfast.

***

Click Here to Subscribe to my Newsletter

www.PaulDMarks.com