Keynote speech

by Dana Stabenow

One of my favorite quotes about the craft of writing is from Frederic Raphael in After the War. "And how is your writing going, Michael?" a character says to the protaganist, an author, who replies, "Still from the top of the page on down, Mrs. Raglan."

Putting one word after the other on the page, moving from the top of the page on down. Twenty-five novels, 20 short stories and essays, 50 Alaska Traveler columns and multiple feature articles for Alaska magazine, hundreds of blog posts in, I am here to tell you that, contrary to too many comments I have heard over the years, there is nothing mystical about writing a novel and having it published.

There is no code word, no magic button, no secret handshake. It is sweat equity. It is the butt in the chair and the hands on the keyboard. It is meeting deadlines for delivery, and deadlines for edits, and deadlines for copyedits, and deadlines for passproofs.

However. After you’ve written the best book you can, you have to promote it. Now, I will be the first to tell you that there is a reason writers pick a job that keeps them locked up alone in a room with a computer, and it’s not because we like public speaking. When I signed my first publishing contract, it came with a two-page questionnaire, whose intent boiled down to one question: What will you do to promote your books?

Back then, that was an easy answer. If your publisher paid for it, you went on a book tour. If your publisher didn’t, you flogged cover flats to local newspapers and radio and television stations, sent bookmarks and postcards to as many indie bookstores as you could afford postage for, and prayed for every scrap of media coverage.

Today, if the intent is the same, the questionnaire is a lot different. Today, they want to know if you have a website. It is in fact one of the first questions you’ll be asked by a prospective publisher, and it’s one of the first things your agent will recommend.

They want to know if you’re on Facebook. They want to know if you’re on Twitter. They want to know if you have a smartphone app. Have you built an Amazon Connect Author page? Do you have a Goodreads profile? Are you on LinkedIn? Do you have a blog?

Once, in a business of writing workshop, one of the attendees asked me how much she could expect from her publisher in the way of promotion. “Nothing,” I said then, and I repeat it again today: “Nothing.”

This isn’t because publishers are inherently evil, or incompetent, or oblivious. The reality of the publishing world today is that they are operating on an archaic business model under increasing fiscal attack. Massmarket paperbacks are damn near dead, and trade paperbacks aren’t taking up the slack. Hardcover sales are plummeting, and none of this is helped by the hysteria in New York over the advent of the e-book. You’d think a new delivery device hadn’t come along since Gutenberg.

My point is, publishers are going to spend their promotional dollars on their biggest sellers. It comes under the heading “betting on a sure thing.” Which means rarely will they take chances on an unknown, and any author on their list below the rank of New York Times bestseller is not going to see a double page ad in the New York Times Book Review. That’s just the way it is.

Now, you can stamp your little foot all you want and fume over the unfairness of throwing unlimited promotional dollars at writers who obviously don’t need it, but throwing a hissy is unproductive at best, and at worst gives you a reputation in New York City that you don’t want.

What you can do instead is take direct, positive action, employing as much time as you can spare from your main job (which is writing a good book, and forget that at your peril) and spending as much money as you can afford in putting together your own promotional campaign.

This isn’t as intimidating as it sounds, and it isn’t as expensive as it sounds. Because today we’ve got the Internet, and if you can type well enough to write a book, you can type well enough to promote it online.

I submitted the final draft of the sixteenth Kate Shugak novel, Whisper to the Blood, in the spring of 2008, at which time my publisher told me that for an author tour they were sending me to do Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust show in Seattle, to launch the book on publication day at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, to sign the book at Title Wave Bookstore in Anchorage, and they were taking out an ad in Alaska magazine. And that was it.

I was grateful. They could have done “Nothing.” That’s happening to a lot of my friends.

I could have left it at that, let Whisper to the Blood sink or swim on its own, not look for new readers for the Kate Shugak series, not personally invite the diehard fans back on the ride. Instead, I decided I was going to pick up the promotional slack, and that I was going to do it online.

I had done this the hard way, the real world way, once before. In 1998 Fire and Ice, the first Liam Campbell novel, was going to be dropped on the market with no publicity from my publisher whatsoever. I believed in that book, I believed it deserved better, so I spent $6000 of my own precious savings and countless hours of my own time in an effort to get the word out. I sent cover flats and bookmarks and postcards to every single indie bookstore in the US I could find an address for, I exploited every single contact I had made with the Kate Shugak series, and I made a series of personal appearances beginning with Bouchercon in Philadelphia and barnstorming my way back home. I spoke in front of every group and at every bookstore that didn’t get out of the way fast enough. The Milwaukee Barnes & Noble? I was there. The Minneapolis chapter of the Romance Writers of America? I was there. The Madison Rotary Club? I was there.

The result? Fire and Ice was into a fourth printing before I got home. Subsequently, that personal tour and its resulting sales got the initial print run of the next three books in the series up to 16,000 copies, which was a lot better than the original 9,000-copy initial print run of Fire and Ice.

Ten years later, I didn’t have the time or the money or the energy to do that again. This online campaign for Whisper to the Blood would be different. First of all, I didn’t know what I was doing, so it would be a throw-everything-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks effort. And it had the distinct advantage of most of the work being done at home, on my own computer, attired in my pajamas.

I began by posting the first four chapters of Whisper to the Blood to my website, one chapter a month, for the four months preceding publication.

At the same time, I ran a contest to give away one ARC to a fan every month. I announced the posting of the excerpt and the winner of the ARC each month in a newsletter.

I made a book trailer, my first, “the Kate Shugak series (abridged)” and posted it to YouTube, which amounted to gag lines from the previous fifteen novels in the series. It had been two years since the last Kate Shugak novel had come out and I figured some remedial Kateology for the fans couldn’t hurt. I wrote the script and hired a local videographer to shoot me speaking the lines sitting at my desk, and then he took it home and edited it, and, I say proudly, at my instigation added sound effects right out of a Road Runner cartoon. When he was done, I posted it to YouTube and announced it on my website and in a newsletter.

It seems like nowadays every time my personal book club reads a book, there is a Reader’s Guide in the back, so I wrote one for Whisper to the Blood and posted it to my website. I wrote a Teacher’s Guide, too. I get a lot of fan mail from teachers.

I wrote a mini short story set in the Kate Shugak universe between the last book, A Deeper Sleep, and the new one, and posted it to my website. It was a ten-manuscript page character sketch connected by the thinnest of plot lines about four recurring characters in the Kate Shugak novels. It had the unexpected benefit of teaching me more about those characters, which will pay off in subsequent novels in the series.

Pre- and post-publication, I guest blogged, on Moments in Crime, 49 Writers, and Jungle Red Writers. My mother taught me that a knitting pattern doesn’t count until you have made the item at least three times. I am the greenest writer you ever met, I reuse and recycle every short piece I write. Six months after I blogged for Moments in Crime, I ran those pieces on stabenow.com. When you’re solicited to write short pieces for whatever publication, online or off, be thinking where else you can post them. At the very least, after a decent cooling off period, post them to your own website.

And if the subject can be updated, post them again later on, sometimes years later. From 2000 to 2005 I wrote the Alaska Traveler column for Alaska magazine. I’m still reposting those columns on www.stabenow.com. I post my quick-and-dirty Alaska itinerary column every spring.

Post publication, I did an online chat with the Danamaniacs, my fan club. The Danamaniacs wouldn’t exist without my website, www.stabenow.com. You have one, right? A website, a place for fans to go? No? Then start a blog on Blogspot, it’s free, and make sure its URL is on the signature of your email, on your bookmarks and business cards, at the end of the author bio on the back flap or page of your book, on your Zazzle products, and everywhere else you can think of.

Yes, I have a Zazzle store, where I designed and fans can buy a “Friends of Mutt” T-shirt. The URL of my website is on the back of the T-shirt. It’s on the cards, too, and the mugs, and the bags. I make a little money whenever one of these products sells, and that money pays for prizes I give away to the Danamaniacs.

I used to review books on Amazon, with a link back to my website. I’ve pretty much switched that to Goodreads and to a recurring feature called “book review monday” on Stabenow.com. My website is a blog, and the RSS of my blog is subscribed to my Facebook page, my Alaska Sisters in Crime page, my Crimespree page, my LinkedIn page, my Amazon page, my Ravelry page, and my Goodreads page. I’m all about the biggest return for the least amount of effort.

You can upload videos on these sites too, so I have dutifully uploaded "the Kate Shugak series (abridged)" to each of them as well. Every now and then I repost the video to my Facebook page, because I always have new Facebook friends who haven’t seen it. It’s on my email signature, too.

At their invitation I created two Love it! Lists on Vibrant Nation, “10 Hot Books for Cold Nights” and “10 Books That Make Me Want to Quit Writing,” and when Vibrant Nation wants to link to anything I put up on my website I say “Sure!”

From my website there are links to all of the above, as well as to my entry on Wikipedia, to my photo album on Flickr, and to my Zazzle store.

Now. Contrast all of the above with the two live and in person events I did for Whisper to the Blood, one at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale, where we launched the book, and one in Anchorage at Title Wave Bookstore, where I signed for the hometown team. That’s it.

So. Did the online campaign work?

You tell me. The week following publication, Whisper to the Blood hit the New York Times extended best-seller list.

You know the first thing I did? I sent a newsletter to the fans, thanking them for their support. Your first tribute always is to the people who got you there.

Okay. That was last year, the everything-that-stuck campaign. I learned a lot. I looked at the numbers on Google Analytics, which counts the hits and page opens on stabenow.com, and on my webmaster’s site, which tracks the numbers for my newsletter, in particular which links are clicked and how many times. I paid attention, and I learned what worked.

So this year, for A Night Too Dark, the seventeenth Kate Shugak novel, again, I posted four excerpts. I don’t think I’ll do that again next year. According to the stats, enough people aren’t clicking through to read them. A fan on Facebook told me, “When I sit down with a Kate, I immerse myself in it. Everything else I'm reading stops. My kids are assigned to the television until I've read the last chapter twice. Everyone can eat whatever they want, because I stop cooking. Reading one chapter at a time would be like making love to my husband in five minute spurts...very unsatisfying.”

The stats bear her out. So next year, I’m thinking maybe one excerpt, or maybe another short short between-the-books story, but not both. The short-short I could repost later on Stabenow.com, or sell outright in e-format, or include in a Kate Shugak short story anthology one day. I like making stuff do double duty.

I gave away four ARCs to fans. I will continue to do that so long as I can successfully chisel ARCs out of my publisher. Everyone likes prizes.

I wrote a Reader’s Guide for A Night Too Dark. I didn’t write a Teacher’s Guide. The feedback from Whisper to the Blood justified one, but not both.

I let “the Kate Shugak series (abridged)” video run as is for another year. Maybe I’ll update it next year, or maybe I’ll film another, title-specific trailer. Maybe I won’t. Last time I looked, it had about 5,700 views, which I’m told is pretty good for a book trailer, and the comments have been very positive. It will stay up there promoting the whole Kate Shugak series into cyber-eternity, but while making it was fun, it was also expensive and time-consuming. As I say, I like a return on my efforts, and I’m not convinced that book trailers translate into books sold.

I sent out five newsletters to the Known Readers Club, one each of the four months leading to publication day, and one on publication day itself. Each newsletter had active buy links to the actual A Night Too Dark book pages on the websites of each individual bookstore I was signing at on tour, and on Amazon.com.

So. This online campaign, four excerpts, five newsletters, four ARC giveaways, and one Reader’s Guide, all generated from my home office, written by me, in my pyjamas. And you know what happened? A Night Too Dark hit the New York Times extended best-seller list.

It turns out that an active buy link, in a newsletter targeted at people who really want to get it, is the most effective means of selling your book.

This only makes sense. People have busy lives. Fans want to be reminded when my book comes on sale, and they’re grateful for any shortcuts I can give them.

So my advice to you? Start an e-newsletter, and start collecting email addresses for it now. The Known Readers Club, 5,700 subscribers and counting, has been painstakingly assembled over a period of fifteen years, which is just about how long I’ve had a website.

I learned only last month that all this random effort I’ve been directing at online promotion has been dignified by its own name. “Platforming.” I tweeted about it. And my Twitter feed is subscribed to my Facebook status.

I repeat. There is nothing mystical about writing a novel and having it published.

And then? It is networking on line, on your website, on Twitter, on Facebook. It is trying to anticipate the next new online thing. Right now? I’m reading Free by Chris Anderson, which is trying to convince me that I can make a living by giving things away. And I am working with my webmaster on publishing on iTunes and Amazon, both my out of print backlist and original content.

One last note. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Why do I have to do this? Why isn’t it enough that I just write the best damn book I can?” I’ve said that myself too many times to mention.

Well, you don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to. You can write your book, and go on to the next. In particular, you don’t have do any of this if writing isn’t your sole source of income.

It is mine. It is my ‘vocation and my avocation, as my two eyes make one in sight.’ It is about need as well as love for me. I am a storyteller, first and foremost, and being a storyteller implies the existence of an audience.

Today, like it or not, we reach that audience online.

Thank you.