How to Present Your Book in the Marketplace

Last night I had a long conversation with my ex-stepdaughter. Last year she moved to another state and her life there is good, but her business has been hurt by the move. She told me she wishes I lived nearby to help her promote her business.

It's the kind of business that needs personal face-to-face endorsements. Emails just won't cut it.

There are many small businesses that need that kind of personal touch. It would be nice if we could go to each book store and explain to the owners, over tea, what a wonderful product we have and why they should provide our babies shelf  space, but it's not going to happen that way. 

Many Independent and/or Hybrid authors are learning the ropes of being small business owners and the challenges of how to introduce their products into the marketplace in a way that will intrigue the potential customer.

The first order of business is to present as flawless a product as you possibly can. That means you must write and rewrite, no matter how long it takes or how many times you have to rewrite, until the story line and the grammar are as close to perfect as you can make them. Don't expect your beta readers to do this for you. Most beta readers are honored to be asked to read and are not fellow writers. They may see problems, but may not be able to pinpoint what they are and many beta readers don't want to hurt your feelings by telling you there is something intrinsically wrong with your manuscript.

Once you have your manuscript as close to perfect as you can make it you can move on to the next step.

What is the next step? No. It is not putting your book up on Amazon.

The next step is to find an editor who knows what she is doing. In a perfect world you would have both a copy editor and a content editor. One polices your grammar while the other looks for the inconsistencies and flaws in your story that would have a reader pelting the wall with your book. A good editor is worth her weight in gold, so don't try to cut corners and use someone just because they are cheap.

You must send the editor your best work and not expect her to be a miner. It is not her job to dig through the sludge heaps to find the nuggets of gold. It is not her job to rewrite and polish the story for you. That is your job. It is her job to find the problems that you are too close to see.

Then you have to do the edits that are suggested. If you have done your due diligence this step should not take too long. If you didn't do a proper rewrite, you will find you have a lot of work to do.

Now it is time to put the perfect face onto your product. The packaging is the first thing anyone will see of your book. Before they see the title, or your name, your blurb, or even an excerpt, they are going to see the cover in all its glory or all its flaws. People do judge the book by its cover, before they buy it. Before they even look to see who wrote it. You must find a cover artist who you can work with. 

(Time for an important note!!! If you are writing a sweet romance or an inspirational novel, do not put a naked body on your cover. The naked body may sell more books, but it is false advertising and the reader will never, ever, ever forgive you for not delivering on the promise your cover makes! Likewise, if your book is riddled with sex, do not put a picture of a white church in the middle of the town square on the cover. Inspirationals may be an up and coming market, but they are not your market. No matter how wonderful you may think your characters are or how uplifting the story, not everyone is going to love them, and the readers will not love them if you sold them sweetness and innocence and gave them hard core sexual situations.) 

A good cover artist will tell you when the cover you want does not go with the story you are selling.

Once you have the best product you can devise, then it is time to put it up for sale on the platforms you have chosen. And marketing begins. But that is a story for another day. 

Just remember, people will forgive many things, but they will not forgive you if you tell them you are selling them a Shetland pony and they get it home only to discover it is a Saint Bernard with gas problems. Be honest in your packaging and your labeling. 

And sell them the best damn book you can!

Writer + Editor = Good Business

It is with great sadness that I write this article tonight. I just completed the project from hell and decided to give myself a treat. So I pulled out my NOOK and read a friends self-published novel. There are many wonderful self-pubs, so I am not prejudiced against them. However, I am prejudiced against sloppy writing and editing.

Romance writers are fortunate to have groups in almost every state (courtesy of RWA) where they can go and learn about the craft of writing. Yes, there are people who are naturally adept at telling a good story, but there is so much more to putting the words down on paper than there is to relating a tale. 

Good writing is not easy. You can struggle for hours to come up with the right word, and then you strike that blasted word from your manuscript during the rewrite portion of the creation process. That is what a good writer does when there are words or phrases that don't work, no matter how much they had to struggle to get those words.

In the last few days I have read three indie books. One was a humorous romance, which left me feeling happy I had read it. One was a paranormal I wasn't sure I would enjoy. It was Book Three in a series, and I hadn't read One or Two. The story was strong and only included a line or two about past characters that were still active in Three. The author didn't bog it down with too much back story. It was a wonderfully imaginative story. It was clear both these authors had employed good editors.

The third book was a contemporary romance. It had a good story line, that got lost in bad editing. There were several times I would have thrown the book against the wall, but I was reading on my NOOK and I didn't want to damage it. The author told much more than she showed. There were homophones galore. Major repetition. And the biggest crime of all, at one point the the author used the wrong name for the heroine's son. 

Thanks to Indie publishing, every Tom, Dick, or Harriet who has ever taken an English class is setting up a shingle offering their editorial services. This is where you have to be careful and look at your perspective editor's credentials. Just because someone was an English teacher, it doesn't mean they know how to edit fiction.

Another friend of mine had hired an editor, but once my friend uploaded her book, people started contacting her about all the mistakes. She had to take the book down and correct the problems. She was so embarrassed that anyone had seen the uncorrected version. Not a good way to run a business. It's like owning a restaurant with a top notch chef and serving the food on dirty plates.

A good editor can take a good story and turn it into a superior work of art. A bad editor can take an excellent story and make it unreadable. Choose your editor like you do a new car, check out their safety records and kick the tires. Talk to other authors who have used their services. Read some of the books they have edited. Your career is at stake. There are so many good books out there and you want yours to be one of them.