DORIAN GRAY REVISITED

Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” Was he right? All publishers seem to agree publicity (now politely called a platform) is necessary for sales.

Is publicity really just a form of advertising?

That question demonstrates I’m no expert on communications and perhaps a bit cynical. Here’s what one expert said, “Advertising and publicity are two very different communication tools, even though both employ the mass media as a vehicle for reaching large audiences… Advertising buys its way into the media… Publicity is presented by the media because it's newsworthy."

What works in advertising?

Probably millions of words have been written on the topic. These two ideas may be useful to authors.

1. Extend engagement. Consumers are more apt to buy a product if they spend more time looking at an ad or better still interacting with the advertiser.

Accordingly, I am starting a CONTEST: WIN A CHANCE TO BE A CHARACTER IN MY NEXT NOVEL. To enter, post a comment to this blog or any of my guest blogs during the next six months. I’ll draw the winner out of a hat and name a character after them in an upcoming book in my thriller series.

2. Associate your writing with things readers like. Advertising often sells products not by providing factual information but by surrounding the product with other things shoppers liked (like cute pets in toilet paper ads).

I suspect that’s why so many novelists write blogs. They’re trying to tempt readers with a slightly funny blog.

Many readers would love to travel to exotic spots, but lack the cash and maybe the guts to face long flights, endless lines, and questionable food. That’s why I have my heroine Sara Almquist travel to Bolivia in Ignore the Pain, Cuba in Malignancy, and Lebanon and Qatar in I Saw You in Beirut. Should I send Sara to India or Laos in my next novel? Which country would you rather visit vicariously?

Please extend your interaction with this author and leave a comment. Thanks.

P.S. DID YOU NOTICE I PUT A PICTURE OF BUG AT THE START, SO YOU'D THINK POSITIVELY?

Here are thumbnail sketches of international adventures with a middle-aged woman. Maybe, I shouldn’t use the words (middle-aged) because it isn’t a pleasant thought to many. However, I suspect her views are closer to most readers’ attitudes than those of James Bond.

See BOLIVIA in Ignore the Pain, as public health consultant, Sara Almquist, learns too much about the coca trade and too little about sexy undercover agent Xave Zack.

Available at Amazon: http://amzn.com/1610091310 and on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ignore-the-pain-j-l-greger/1117532777;jsessionid=C54A000FC8C6FFBE5237D52396D7B8C6.prodny_store01-atgap03?ean=2940157799212

 

Visit CUBA in Malignancy, when Sara Almquist arranges scientific exchanges

between the US and Cuba and learns more about undercover agent Xave Zack.

Available at Amazon: http://amzn.com/1610091779 and on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/malignancy-jlgreger/1123390529?ean=2940157827649

Explore LEBANON, QATAR, and THE EMERATES with Sara in I Saw You in Beirut. Her past has the clues for the rescue of a nuclear scientist from Iran.

Available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1610092201 and on Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/i-saw-you-in-beirut-jl-greger/1123184446?ean=2940158046957

Perseverance Pays in Writing

My most recent medical thriller set partially in Cuba, MALIGNANCY, won first prize in the published novel category in the Public Safety Writers Association (PSWA) annual writing contest.

During the last seven years, I've had four of my novels and a couple of short stories published. This is the first time I won in a writing contest. Here's my advice to other writers. I suppose it's presumptuous to give advice, but I may not have this opportunity to "speak from successful experience" again.

1) Write every day. My definition of writing includes: researching topics, composing text, editing, and publicizing the work. The advantage of writing even a few lines every day is you are forced to think about your plot, characters, and style frequently.

2) Organize your writing. I don't think you have to prepare a detailed outline before you write, but create a running list of characters as you write anything longer than flash fiction. Include a short profile of each character ion your list. This prevents a blue-eyed beauty, who never cries, from having tears well up in her brown eyes. A timeline is also helpful, especially during the editing process.


3) Edit. I know a few authors claim they only need to edit their work once; I'm not that good. I think there are three general categories of editing.  

These questions should be considered during a content edit . Are the scientific facts clear and correct? Are locations described vividly and accurately? Are the characters interesting and consistent? Do major character "grow" during the arc of the story? Is the timeline realistic?

 The style edit is hard to define but important. Novels are generally more interesting if dialogue, action sequences, and psychological development of characters are interspersed so that the pace of the novel varies.The point of view should be clear in each chapter or scene.

The edit for word choices, grammar, and typos often seems like an endless process. I try to reduce the use of "overused " words, replace weak verbs with action ones, tweak sentences to be active not passive, and check for spelling and grammar errors (which I euphemistically call typos) several times.

4) Hire a professional editor. I'm always amazed how much they discover after I finish my edits.

5) Try a variety of promotion techniques. Recognize when certain venues fail, and either fix the situation or move on to another format. Read criticism and less than glowing reviews several times. I usually learn more than I care to admit.  

6) Persevere.

Hopefully, you'll want to read MALIGNANCY and feel the tension as a woman scientist tries to escape the clutches of a drug lord in New Mexico and accepts a risky assignment in Cuba. Besides the excitement, you'll learn a bit about modern Cuba and new immunotherapy cancer drugs.

http://amzn.com/1610091779 Kindle: B00QG7SZ58

Real or Virtual TRAVEL PLANS

Are you planning a trip overseas this summer or fall? Or are you considering going to the Olympics in Rio in 2016 and want to travel around South America?

If you’re in the mood to learn a little history and to see a different culture, consider Bolivia.

The markets of La Paz, including the Witches’ Market, are a blur of color. Native women with black bowler hats and brightly colored clothes hawk their wares. Things for sale include big (a yard across) plastic bags in red, yellow, and blue filled with popped corn, trinkets, baskets, and pottery. The most interesting items were llama fetuses, gifts to the gods. (Yes, Bolivia is officially a Catholic country, but the “old gods” haven’t been forgotten.) I think the best view of the market is from the roof of Iglesia de San Francisco.

Potosí and nearby mountain, Cerro Rico (the source of much of the silver that built the Spanish empire in the 1500s and 1600s) deserve to be a UNESCO World Heritage site. But be warned, the price of extracting all the silver in term of loss of human lives and ecological damage is staggering.

If you’re looking for natural wonders, consider Bolivia.

The Valley of the Moon (10 km from downtown La Paz) is eerily stark and beautiful with thousands of rock spires, but not as colorful as Bryce Canyon in Utah.

Lake Titicaca is considered the highest navigable lake in the world (elevation 12,507 feet). Remember the pictures of reed boats on Lake Titicaca in your fifth grade geography book. Indigenous people still live there on floating islands they create from reeds.

Salar de Uyuni is a 100-times the size of Bonneville Salt Flats, and the largest source of lithium in the world.

Downsides of travel to Bolivia

Altitude sickness can be a problem. (The altitude in Potosí is 13,420 ft, and in La Paz is 12,000 ft). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends travelers to Bolivia be vaccinated for typhoid and Hepatitis A. It is unwise in Bolivia to drink tap water, eat raw fruits and vegetables that you didn’t peel and wash yourself, or eat any food sold by street vendors.

If travel to Bolivia sounds too tough, read Ignore the Pain.

In Ignore the Pain, Sara Almquist, a public health consultant, is your guide to Bolivia. Of course, her view of the Witches Market and Iglesia de San Francisco in La Paz might be a little different that that of the average tourist because someone, determined to kill her, is chasing her across the church’s roof. The descriptions of the roof and the markets below are realistic (as I saw them while walking at a leisurely pace).

Because Sara is an epidemiologist consultant for USAID (United States Agency for International Development), you’ll learn a lot about child health and pollution problems in Bolivia. But you won’t have Sara’s problems. She can’t decide which of her new colleagues to trust as she learns too much about the movement of coca from Bolivia to the U.S. and the dangerous working conditions in the silver mines of Potosí. Of course, you’ll only vicariously enjoy the attentions of the roguish Xave Zack, too.

Better yet, read Ignore the Pain before you travel to Bolivia.

Ignore the Pain is available at Amazon: http://amzn.com/1610091310  

Kindle: B00HOODVTW

Writers can learn from DESIGN THINKING

Stanford University’s D.School (more correctly the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design) wants to foster design thinking - a methodology for producing reliably innovative results in any field, not just product development.

This could be considered another university attempt to foster creative thinking in education and scholarship outside traditional disciplinary boundaries. But it might also be a wake up call to writers.

The design philosophy is based on seven principles, which also are good advice to writers.

1. Show don’t tell. We've all heard that advice a hundred times.
2. Focus in human values. We know character development is central to any good novel.
   
3. Craft clarity. We know we should edit out excess adverbs and dangling phrases.
4. Embrace experimentation. Most of us stick with what works. Maybe we should try something different more often, such as write in the first person instead of the third person, write short stories instead of novels, or pick a different type of cover.
   
5. Be mindful of process. Edit, edit, edit.
6. Bias toward action. Showing action is better than conversation many times. Or another interpretation could be: write at least a page every day on your novel instead of just talking about writing.
7. Radical collaboration. I had trouble translating this one into advice for writers. Maybe it's find a new editor, writer's group, or publisher.

Perhaps the real message is effective communication share certain characteristics despite the format. 

I think this design thinking would be helpful for anyone contemplating revising and editing their novels for a second edition.

 How would you interpret DESIGN THINKING into advice for authors?

 

READING THE REVIEWS

Author Marilyn Meredith has published more than thirty novels and received several hundred reviews. Her advice on how to respond to reviews-good and bad-is useful to all of us. For example,  she responds to all reviews. Do you do that? I don't. Maybe I should.

Anyway here's Marilyn.

Every author hopes that when someone reads his or her book that a review will follow. Some authors send out free books to people they know will be willing to write a review. The more reviews that accompany your book on Amazon, the more apt you are to get other readers interested enough to buy a copy.

Even though authors want their books reviewed, not everyone reads their own reviews.

Why not? The simple reason is it’s hard to read a review that isn’t complimentary even though the majority are good.

As for me, I always read my reviews. Fortunately, most have fallen in the 4 or 5 star range. However, there have been some real stinkers. When I offered Angel Lost, an earlier book in the Rocky Bluff P.D. series for a few days, hundred were downloaded. In a week or two, reviews started coming in. Most were great, but some weren’t, and few downright funny.

I tried to leave a comment for each review, even if it wasn’t complimentary; I told the person thank you for taking the time to write it. I would never ever respond to a bad review in a nasty manner. (As a warning to writers, there are a few reviewers out there who get great pleasure out of trashing a book and even more when the author responds in an argumentative manner.)

In normal circumstances, when the person has had to pay for book, the reviews are usually more positive. What I’ve learned from many reviewers, if they don’t like a book they don’t post a review.

I’m a reader as well as an author, and yes, I do review the books that I read. Even if I’m not thrilled with a book, I can always find many good things to say about it. One thing we should all remember, is our reading tastes are all different. 

Will I keep reading reviews of my books? Of course I will. If you should happen to read Violent Departures, the latest in the Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery series, please do leave a review.

F. M. aka Marilyn Meredith

Blurb for Violent Departures:

College student, Veronica Randall, disappears from her car in her own driveway, everyone in the Rocky Bluff P.D. is looking for her. Detective Milligan and family move into a house that may be haunted. Officer Butler is assigned to train a new hire and faces several major challenges

Bio:

F.M. Meredith, also known as Marilyn Meredith, is the author of over thirty published novels. Marilyn is a member of three chapters of Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, and on the board of the Public Safety Writers of America. Besides having family members in law enforcement, she lived in a town much like Rocky Bluff with many police families as neighbors.

Contest:

Because it has been popular on my other blog tours, once again I’m offering the chance for the person who comments on the most blog posts during this tour to have a character named for him or her in the next Rocky Bluff P.D. mystery.

Or if that doesn’t appeal, the person may choose one of the earlier books in the series—either a print book or Kindle copy.

Links:

Webpage: http://fictionforyou.com/

Blog: http://marilynmeredith.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/marilynmeredith

Tomorrow you can find me at http://drusbookmusitng.blogspot.com and Stacey Milligan reveals her personal dilemma.

MAKING BOOK FAIRS WORK FOR YOU

I just came home from the Tucson Festival of Books — a two-day extravaganza of book stalls, sun, talks, and over 1000,000 people.  It is a fun event BUT being there doesn’t mean you raised consciousness of readers on your books or sold books. You have to work at it.

How do you “work” a book fair?

I’m certainly no expert but these tips might be helpful.

1) If you have a following already, publicize you’ll be at the book fair on your blog and website. If you don’t have a following and are worried burglars will read your website and visit your home while you’re away, you may decide to do less publicity.

Prepare handouts.  You can spend a lot of money on full color handouts on expensive heavy paper. They aren’t necessarily more effective sales tools than a colorful, well-designed ½ page flier or bookmark.

The print on your handouts should be large enough so that most can read it without their reading glasses.

Besides a photo of your cover and a short blurb, include info on where your books (paper and Kindle versions) can be purchased after the fair. Cite your website. I find many visitors at book fairs don’t want to take twenty pounds of books home and seem to be interested increasingly in Kindle books.

Carry a few handouts with you when you leave your booth. You never know when you might strike up a conversation with someone who’ll find your books interesting.

Try to interact with all passers-by and draw visitors into your booth. Those visitors, who look the most distracted, can turn into buyers after you ask them a question (What do you like to read?), if you show them something from your stock that fits their answer.

Don’t line up your tables as barricades. Place tables so you welcome people into your booth.

Rent a booth with other writers so you have a variety of books to sell. This means you and your colleagues will have to know a bit about each other’s books but it makes easier to take breaks. Besides, it more fun.

One woman told me she sold homemade beanbags along with her books at outdoor books fairs. The beanbags served to keep fliers and books in place and were cute and cheap.

Try to learn something new. You might learn a better way to display your books, see more effective handouts, or meet a potential publisher, proofreader, or illustrator. You might even find a book you like.

Remember, your success at a book fair can be judged in at several ways:

l The number of books you sold.

l What you learned. How much you enjoyed interacting with other writers and publishers.

l The increased number of your books sold afterwards (probably through Amazon) or increased hits on your website afterwards.

Good luck at you next book fair.

Publicizing Your Books: Using Psychology

Are these activities advertisements? Blogs and websites, reviews of others’ books, and talks on book-related topics.

According to Michael Turney, advertising and publicity are two very different communication tools, even though both employ the mass media as a vehicle for reaching large audiences… Advertising buys its way into the media… Publicity is presented by the media because it's "newsworthy." (Online Readings in Public Relations at www.nku.edu/ ~turney/prclass/readings/ads.html).

So the activities listed at the start of this blog are not advertisements, but if done right and you’re lucky, they increase sales.

Can I use advertising tools to my advantage?

I thought if I understood the psychology of advertising, I might do a better job at publicizing my novels. I’m guessing (if you’re still reading), you might think so, too.

Emotional & bright visual

Experts agree #emotions sell products. About three-quarters of the time, researchers found surrounding a product with other things shoppers liked, sold products better than advertising the desirable traits of the product (Dempsey & Mitchell, Journal of Consumer Research [Dec 4, 2010] Vol. 37). I understand the concept as it applies to shoes and beer, but what about books?

Perhaps, it means as authors we should emphasize the humor, romance, and thrills in our novels. That’s why I named on medical mystery Murder: A New Way to Lose Weight rather than Death of a Diet Doctor. I thought the former title was more humorous and consumers like the words “lose weight” better than “diet.”

Humorous title

Experts think #ads should appeal to as many senses as possible. This makes sense to authors. We know book covers and websites (visual cues) are important. That's why I chose a brightly colored image for the cover of Ignore the Pain. I thought it would arouse emotion (shock) and was easy to remember, but I'm not sure readers found the photo as interesting as I did.

I think it is less clear how to provide sound, smell, and taste clues for novels. I’m wondering if I should serve brownies at my next book signing. They appeal to the sense of smell and taste and arouse favorable emotions in most of us. What do you think? Do you think any bookstore owner would allow it?

Don’t be discouraged if all your promotions don’t work. Experts estimate as much as seventy-five per cent of all advertisements aren’t effective (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1904/01/the-psychology-of-advertising/303465).  My interpretation of this information is: Try. Try again.

Nest week I’ll have more ideas gleaned from experts on the psychology of advertising.