Author: Scott William Carter

Thoughts on Self-Promotion

Well, I can say that response to The First Book blog has been tremendous, especially considering that I’ve barely started promoting it.  I plan to do one interview a week, releasing them on Mondays.  Maybe more down the road, but we’ll have to see. 

Someone asked me why I wanted to do it.  First, I truly do want to help new writers.  A lot of writers have helped me along the way, so anything I can do it pay it forward is a good thing.  With a full-time day job, a working spouse, two young children, and the writing on top of it, it’s hard for me to find time to do a lot.  But because my day job has me online almost constantly, it’s not difficult to use my lunch hour or break times to do something like a blog. 

But . . . I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I hoped I’d get some publicity myself.  Now that I’ve sold a book, I realize that it’s going to be my name in those computerized inventory tracking systems on the line when it’s published, which is a lot different than sharing the responsibility in an anthology of short stories.  This is a golden age for first time novelists, because publishers are constantly looking for The Next Big Thing, but it’s also a time when publishers are reluctant to take the time to build an author over the course of many books.  You’ve got to start strong right out of the gate, with good sales, or it’s unlikely you’ll find publishers willing to sign you up for more books.  (You can start fresh under a new name, yes, but that’s something most of us want to avoid.  Every time you start with a new name, you’ve got to build your audience from scratch.)

What does this mean?  Well, of course you’ve got to write a strong book.  That’s a given.  You don’t have a strong book, no amount of self-promotion will help.  But unless you’re one of those rare authors a publisher is really going to get behind, your first book probably won’t get a lot of exposure.  Self-promotion becomes a necessary evil.  You can have a great agent, and a fantastic publisher (I think I have both), but still, no one will take responsibility for your career the way you will.

So then the question becomes, what kind of self-promtion is worthwhile?  Taking a cost/benefit approach — meaning, what is the cost in time and money versus the benefit in exposure a particular type of promotion gives you? — helps a great deal.  Doing book tours and attending genre conventions (think RWA or SFWA) may give your book exposure, but they also have a high cost.  If you enjoy them, or you do them for other reasons (going to conventions is great for networking and learning), that’s another matter, but you should do so being fully aware that getting exposure for your book is secondary.

That brings us to the Internet.  It has an extremly low cost (you can do a blog/website for free and even have your own domain for less than a hundred bucks a year), and it has the potential for extremely high exposure.  The key word here is potential.  While I do think there’s no excuse for a professional writer not to have a website, it’s also true that most of them aren’t going to get a lot of traffic without some effort.

Okay, so then how do you create Web traffic?  That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?  Opinions vary, but I think the key is you create value.  What can you do that gives value to others?  Putting up information about your book does give some value.  It educates potential readers on why they should buy your book.  Doing a blog that lets your readers learn a little more about you helps, too, because it helps your readers feel like they have a stronger connection to you.  That’s a start, but in a way, these things are self-focused.  If you focus on others, on how you can give value to them, then it’s far more likely your site traffic will increase dramatically — from what I’ve seen, anyway.

That’s how I came up with The First Book blog.  I asked myself, how could I give value to others?  What could I do?  Well, if I turn the question around, what would I hope someone would do for me?  Having recently sold a book, the answer was obvious — I hoped people would help me spread the word on my book when the time came.  Was there a website out there focused on first time novelists?  Not exclusively, no.  If I created one, what would the response be?  So far, the response has been terrific, which bodes well for the future. 

Helping other writers does many wonderful things.  It’s good for the soul, first of all.  Never underestimate the power of creating a sense of goodwill among others.  It also helps me make new friends in this crazy business — and that, even more than the Web traffic, makes it all worthwhile. 

The First Book Blog

After recently selling my first book to Simon and Schuster, it dawned on me how many first-time novelists are published each year — over ten thousand, according to some estimates.  Most of these books get very little exposure.  To help, I decided to create a blog called The First Book:

http://thefirstbook.wordpress.com/

Along with basic info about the book, there will be an author interview. I’m going to try to do two a month, more if I can.  If you know of any debut authors, send them my way.  The only criteria is that their second book can’t have appeared yet. 

The first interview has appeared and the second one is lined up.  Check it out.

It’s a very tiny bit of exposure, but every bit helps.  How long can I keep it up?  Who knows, but I’ll try to at least do it until my own first book appears in print.  Maybe then I’ll hand it off to another writer — someone like me, who has sold a book and is awaiting its publication. 

I’m on PM

Something neat . . . My book got listed on Publisher’s Marketplace, which is a sort of clearinghouse that editors, agents, and writers use to keep up with industry: 

Scott Carter’s THE LAST GREAT GETAWAY OF THE WATER BALLOON BOYS, in which two teenagers make the daring choice to steal their principal’s ’67 Mustang and end up on a life-changing road trip, to David Gale at Simon & Schuster Children’s, for publication in spring 2010, by Rachel Vater at Folio Literary Management (world).

Pretty stoked.  The good thing about the book coming out in 2010?  I have plenty of time to try to spread the word . . .

Writing, Politics, and Obsessive Tendencies

I’ve been following the Presidential election closely. In fact, I’ve gotten a bit obsessed about it — reading every article and blog out there, following the polls, even animatedly talking back to the radio spinheads when they say something I think is blatantly false (which, unfortunately, is quite often). This obsessiveness is a trait that can sometimes serve me well — like, with writing novels, which requires a certain amount of obsessiveness to be able to stay with a project of such magnitude — but it can also hurt me in other ways. Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about politics more than writing, which is a sign that it’s time to put on the brakes. And that means engaging in a media and Internet blackout of anything related to the election. Cold turkey, in other words.

But first, before I do, I want to go on record with something. I’m not a registered Democrat, but I’m fairly progressive by nature. After having read his book, The Audacity of Hope, and following his career closely the last few years, I believe Barack Obama is, indeed, the real deal. He’s the best hope that America has for turning the page on the politics of the past and really charting a new direction for the country. Yes, he has a knack for oratory which is inspiring. But if you do the research, you’ll see that there’s a real man of substance there as well. Behind the lofty speeches, he’s also a pragmaticist, and after the last seven years, the country desperately needs a little more open-mindedness.

I wouldn’t even feel compelled to say this (I’m reticent to talk about anything related to politics here in Mutterings), but there’s a lot that’s happened in the campaign lately that makes me feel I should. That I should go on record. Maybe this is the childish part of me that wants to someday be able to say, see, I told you so, but it’s also a defiant act in a sense. Because until very recently, I thought if Obama failed to win the nomination, I could still vote for Hillary Clinton. But their actions the last few weeks have made this possibility go from probable to less likely to almost zero. Why? Because I think the Clintons believe the Democratic voters are too dumb to see through what they’re trying to do — which is to engage in Karl Rove style politics, smear Obama with anything that sticks whether it’s true or not, and then win ugly. If you think I’m exaggerating, you haven’t been following this closely.

I have really tried to give the Clintons the benefit of the doubt, since I do want to support them if they become the nominee (and see, I find myself referring to them as the Clintons even without realizing it, as in plural, which should tell you something), but even the mainstream media is finally starting to call them on their game. Not everyone, of course, because they’re pretty adept at playing the victim, but at least a few people are getting a clue.

Jonathon Alter at Newsweek makes this case much better than me in his article, “The Clintons’ Patronizing Strategy.”  Read the whole thing. You’ll see what I mean.

I’m betting Democrats are smart enough to see through their distortions. They’re betting that Democrats aren’t — and judging by the number of people who still believe Obama is a Muslim, because, gosh darn it, they saw it in an email, they may be right. I hope not. There were five glorious days between the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary that gave me hope that the country might be finally ready to turn the page on the politics of the past. I want that feeling back. I hope come November 2, I get it.

But now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, it’s no more politics for me. I’ve got to save my obsessiveness for other things. After all, I have a novel to write.