Effective Strategies on Giving Book Talks

One effective way I've found for spreading the word of my books around and selling them is to give talks at various  events and clubs.  When I first started doing this I tried having events just for my books, such as a signing at a bookstore, or at a library.  I got spoiled because it went well the first time I did it.  This was, however, a fluke.  I happened to have written about a subject that occurred in the town where I was speaking, so I had a huge turnout.  But after that, you could hear crickets chirping as I sat and waited in a bookstore for someone to give a crap.

What turned out to work much better was to find groups that were already meeting on a regular basis and who were looking for guests to speak.  Rotaries are a perfect example of this, because they meet every week, and most of them need a new guest speaker every single time.  That's a lot of slots to fill, so authors are helping them out by offering to speak, as long as it's on a topic their members are interested in hearing.

The first few times I did this, I was very nervous.  However, it became easy for me once I understood what I really needed to do; just tell the story.

You typically have only 20 minutes.  That's enough time to just tell everyone the basics of your book.  This may seem like you're giving it away and they won't want to buy it afterwards, but the trick is to not tell them any major spoilers, and to give them broad strokes.  In the case of Two Gun Hart, I'm telling the story of a man's entire life.  By giving the broad strokes of what happened, I'm basically providing a trailer for each part of his life.  By the time I'm done, the listeners feel that they've been told an entertaining story, and they get the book to fill in all the details.

This style works particularly well with nonfiction.  With fiction, it's a bit more difficult.  First of all, Rotaries are less interested in fiction.  Most of the members are interested in hearing true stories.  However, they're also interested in hearing about true facts.  If you find some that are related to your book, you can give a talk on that.  For instance, when I give talks regarding my novel The American Game, I talk about the true history of baseball, and how it coincided with the Civil War.  I then end by explaining how I integrated this history into my book.

All these methods have gone over well with attendees, and have often gotten a good number of my books sold, and the word spread about them.

Still Promoting at Conventions I Can't Make

The main reason I went to the Alamo City Comic Convention was because someone I met told me that you can make more money at conventions in Texas than anywhere else.  "Texans will buy anything," he said.  I needed that sort of a break, so I looked into getting a booth at the Alamo City Comic Con.  I chose that one because it's near Austin where my uncle lives, and I've been wanting to show Austin to my girlfriend Jamie for a while now.

When I saw the price of the booths, I was taken aback.  $600.  I looked for a small press area, and there was none.  I looked around at other conventions and it was the same story.  It seems Wondercon is unique in having a small press section for independent artists.  It's really a pity because I can't see us independent authors making back $600 plus all the other expenses.

I tried to get a list of vendors who would be at the event, but the website was never updated with their names.  (It said 'vendor list coming soon' all the way up to two weeks before the event, at which point I stopped looking.)  By this time I already had a plane ticket to Austin and Rotary club talks scheduled for another one of my books, so I just went and got a badge to the convention.

I met several vendors, all of whom said they maybe just barely make their money back, and that it's really about exposure.  I suggested the idea of renting table space from them next year, and a couple of them seemed to like the idea.  One of them called it "sublet renting."  I'm going to try it at that convention.  I'm also going to see about hiring a model to cosplay at the front and hand out flyers, and also offer a giveaway to attendees if they write down their email addresses.  This might be a good way to proxy myself into these conventions that are too expensive for me to go to.

Before I left the convention, I set out a bunch of flyers in the common area.  This only worked slightly as I got five new views the day I put them out, all of them around 7 pm, soon after the convention ended.  So the tiny spike was probably from that, but it wasn't enough to justify going out of my way for it.  I'm really coming to believe that the best solution is anything that involves building the mailing list where I can be certain to personally send people things rather than counting on them to check out my projects.

Had an Interesting Interview with Reels

I had a nice interview regarding my book Pro Bono with the Reels channel. They're doing a series of episodes around movies that were based on true stories. The idea in this episode is that Natural Born Killers was based on the story of Starkweather and Fugate.

This is actually not true, as even Oliver Stone said it was inspired by Bonnie and Clyde, and the tale has no similarities whatsoever to the Starkweather-Fugate story. However, we were able to essentially debunk the myth, and tell some true information about the story.

The show is called The Shocking Truth, and it will be on in the spring.

My Book Tour Through The Midwest

I recently returned from a book tour I took through the several states in the center of the country.  They included Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas.

I was mostly speaking at Rotaries, which I've quickly learned are the best resource for public speaking about my nonfiction books.  Rotaries need new speakers every week, so they are often happy to hear from an author who has an interesting story to tell.  It's as helpful for them as it is helpful for the author.

I knew I would be traveling to Nebraska for a few weeks, so I wanted to fill my schedule as much as possible to make the trip worthwhile.  I also knew I would be going down to Texas for the Alamo City Comic Convention, so I filled as much time there as possible.

I started by going to the Rotary Club Finder: https://www.rotary.org/en/search/club-finder

Here you can enter the region and get a list of all the rotaries in that area.  I got their email addresses and wrote to all of them, telling them a quick summary of Two Gun Hart, including the website for the book, and saying when I'll be in the area and that I would like to speak at their club.  I also found the local libraries and made a similar offer.  From the responses I was able to make a schedule of appearances.  There would be 12 in all, 10 rotaries and 2 libraries, plus the convention, which is a different subject because that involves my book series Relic Worlds.

I stayed with my family in Lincoln, Nebraska and set out from there to speak in Omaha, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri.  At these events a little under half of the people bought books, and there were usually about 15 to 20 attendees, so it was decent amounts of money.  In Texas it was hit or miss, either only one or two bought, or almost everyone bought.  Ultimately it turned out to be about the same number.

Basically, the conclusion I came to was that the sales were decent, but when you took into account the amount of time I spent arranging the talks, the flights, the car rental and gas, at best I came close to breaking even.  These were really talks to spread the word.  The problem with this is it's hard to measure it's effectiveness.  Worst of all, people forget things you told them after they leave.

So the best suggestion came from my uncle in Texas who said I should have flyers or bookmarks made up that say the name of this book and other books.  The people who bought books get to see there are others to purchase online, and those who did not buy get flyers to take with them to remind them where to buy them later.

I wish I had thought of that before, but I'll have it in mind now in future events.

My Wondercon Experience - Friday

I posted before about my experience at Wondercon.  I didn’t really say much about the specifics, or what I learned, so I’m going to tell about how things went over the next three posts.  I’m giving this one extra attention, because it was a huge event in my life.

It was important because this was the last chance I was going to give myself to make sure something happened in my profession of storytelling.  If this didn’t work, I was going to settle down into some other career, and accept that book publishing would just be a hobby.  I had promised my girlfriend Jamie that I would do this so we wouldn’t be constantly in poverty with me chasing my dream.

So the plan was to make the booth so flashy it looked like it was from one of the larger companies, not in the small press area.  I spent a couple thousand dollars on decorations, including several banners, greenery to wrap around the poles, a large diorama, and of course the books and book stands.  Basically, I didn’t want people to be able to miss it if they tried.

Thursday was setup day, and when I arrived, I was excited to see my booth was the first one you saw when you came in.  Then I realized that I was entering through the loading zone, which was at the very back of the convention hall.  However, the food court was directly in front of me, so that would be my strength.  People would see it when they were at lunch, so I used an idea my girlfriend gave me, give away free soda.  This would work splendidly as drinks at the convention cost $4.

Even though I had taken most of the supplies on Thursday, I still had a few to bring Friday, so I went a bit earlier than I had originally planned.  As it turned out, I should have gone even earlier.  By the time I got there, attendees were arriving, and it took me a while to get parked.  I took the remaining pieces upstairs and returned each time to my car.  The last big piece, the diorama of the volcano, (Jamie called it “Break-up mountain” because it almost cost me my relationship with her,) was supposed to go in three pieces.  However, time was short, so I picked up the whole thing and ran upstairs with it.  I had to run through the entire convention to get to my table, and it was so difficult I nearly had a heart attack.  Ironically, I passed the booth that I used to go to Wondercon with, the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, but I wasn’t able to stop and say hello.  I was in a tremendous hurry.  When I set it down, I wondered if I had time to wipe my sweat off in the bathroom.  But just at that moment, the voice on the intercom announced that Wondercon was beginning.

I still had to put up the banner, which shouldn’t have been too much of a problem.  I had created a PVC pipe setup which I had practiced setting up at home and it worked fine.  But for some reason, now that I was trying to put it up at the convention, it kept falling over.  I got one end up, and the other end fell over.  It seemed as though the laws of physics had suddenly changed in the convention hall.  I was tremendously frustrated, especially since the crowds were coming in, and slowly they started making their way to the back where I was.  The other booths around me were all set up with the people at them ready and waiting.  They started taking customers, and there I was, a sweaty mess wrestling with PVC pipe that kept falling over.  I was in a near panic.  I had been preparing for this for a year, and now here I was and I couldn’t even get the sign up.

I at last had to scrap the idea and threw the pipes beneath the table.  I taped the banned to the front of the table, then went into the bathroom and changed my shirt.  (Luckily I had more Relic Worlds shirts with me that were supposed to be giveaways.)  I returned to the table, and began.

Throughout the day I set up bits and pieces, placing up one of the vertical banners of the first book hanging from a C stand I owned.  Ultimately, it didn’t look too bad, all things considered.  The convention had provided a sign for the back wall that said Relic Worlds, so I didn’t really even need the long banner.  In fact, when I got the second vertical banner of the second book up the next day, it turned out that horizontal banner in the back would have made things too busy.

As for the day itself, there were a lot of people who came by perusing, but not too many ready to buy.  The hope was that they would be looking now to buy later in the convention.  I had a lot of flyers out, one of which was a treasure hunt that led attendees to other booths.  When they returned, they would get entered into a drawing for free stuff, including a trip to Disneyland.  But to get their prize, they would need to give me their email address, which would go onto an email list.

One thing I learned from this element is the importance of the email list, and how I had shot myself in the foot by making people have to jump through hoops to get to that point.  I met other independent publishers at the event, and all of them told me how important it was that they build that email list to build their fan base, but very few were coming back to give me their email address because they didn’t finish the treasure hunt.  I would have to change strategies.

The biggest trouble that happened all day was I hadn’t heard from one of the models who was supposed to help out on Saturday.  She was coming back from Egypt and had gotten stuck in Germany.  I needed a new one fast, and she was trying to help get a replacement from Germany.  I was trying to text and make calls while also talk with customers.  At last the one that was still coming the next day said she had a friend she could bring, so it was arranged after about three hours of stress.

But that would be the next day.  In the evening I was supposed to put on the Relic Worlds miniatures game.  I was exhausted by the end, but it had to happen.  The worst part was, it was supposed to start at 7, and the convention hall didn’t end until 7.  So I had to leave a little early to get set up.  I took a couple things with me since I didn’t know how far it was.  And boy, was it far.  First I had to go all the way across the convention hall, then I had to go across the rest of the convention center.  After that was a gap before I got to Staples Center, which I had to go across.  A basketball game was about to start, one of Kobe Bryant’s last, so there were crowds to go through.  Then I had to go a block, go into the Marriott, go through the lobby, go up a couple escalators, walk across to the opposite side of the hotel, then across a walkway, then up another flight, then to the opposite side of the next building to reach the gaming area.  My miniatures game had a huge number of pieces, and this would have taken all night to get set up.  So I just returned to the convention center, grabbed the small board game, and went back.  (Someone bought a book during the short time I was back at the booth, one of the only copies I sold all weekend.)  I returned to the gaming area and found a friend.  We set up the game to show it off, and to provide a little more advertising for Relic Worlds, but we never got around to playing.  I was too exhausted.

So that was Friday.  My take away from that is that Friday is the day to present yourself, and to not expect any sales.  It’s the primer for the convention, and for your potential audience.  It’s important to have an easy and attractive way to get people to join your mailing list.  It’s also a good idea to have a great looking booth with something that catches everyone’s eyes, (Breakup Mountain was a big hit, and it actually helped that I carried it through at a time everyone saw it.)  And it’s good to have a gimmick.  The treasure hunt was great in this regard, but I needed to not have it tied to the email list.  Next time it will be just you sign your name and you draw from a treasure chest.

Next week I’ll tell about Saturday, the biggest day of the convention.

Author Events and Signings

As I was going through the pre-release promotions, one of the most important things I was trying to do was set up talks at bookstores and libraries.  I had had such good luck in my early publishing days when I offered to do signings in Nebraska that I figured it would be like this almost every time; at least when I had a big story.  Nebraska bookstores opened their doors wide to me, and I had lines going out the door of people wanting the book.  It turns out this would not be representative of all of them.

First, my premier book was about something that deeply affected Nebraskans, and I had a personal, family connection to the story.  (It was about Caril Fugate and the Starkweather murders.)  Also, people who had known me years before came out to see me because they hadn't seen me in more than 10 years.  It made everything a much bigger deal.  But now they're used to me there; and people in other parts of the country don't know me at all.  I thought that having a person who had a direct connection to the Capones would help, but for some reason it hasn't.  In fact, San Francisco bookstores, which always have loads of guest authors, haven't even responded to me.  Part of that is because of their prejudice against independent authors, (even though they pretend to be all about independent artists,) but they're also afraid that they're not going to get enough customers to justify the event.  Even in Chicago they turned me down, and apparently for the same reasons.

Some of the Nebraska bookstores are having me back out of loyalty, and because the Harts will be coming with me.  First on the list are A Novel Idea and the Bookworm, two places that have been very good to me over the years, and for whom I will be eternally grateful.  I also had an event at the Burbank Central Library, apparently the last one they will be having as they recently were placed under the arm of the Los Angeles Public Library system, which doesn't care for independent authors.

I shouldn't be too disappointed, though.  As I implied, after my initial success, the signings I've had since have been mostly empty rooms, or occasionally just a gathering of a few friends.  Ultimately, promotions online and social media are more effective.  However, I did stumble upon a better way to have events; and this one came from one of the Hart family members.

I've known for a while that it's all about going after the niches, but I hadn't really pursued this logic when it came to giving talks.  And there's no better niche than specific departments within universities.  When I was invited to speak at the University of Utah, Corey Hart and I gave a presentation to the Italian-American studies department.  This meant that not only would the university tell people who were already interested in the topic, and not only was it a good place to have an event at which we could invite people from all over town, but there would be students who either had to go, or got extra credit for going.  It was almost literally a captive audience.  Once there, I was able to win them over with the story.  There were about 50 people at the event, and almost every one of them ordered a book.  Many of them have also linked up with me on social media.

So I've come to appreciate universities for non-fiction books.  There are a few other concepts I might try, like organizations that study the specific subject.  I'll be talking to Civil War roundtables about The American Game, and local "Sons of Italy" organizations about Two Gun Hart.

The Various Jobs of an Independent Author

The book is now out and the pre-release promotions are all done.  (Well, they can't be done anymore.  There were a few things I didn't do that I wanted to, but I ran out of time.)  I had intended on keeping this journal active as I went through the process so you could see it, but I learned that the only way I could really accurately do it would have been to have someone else with a camera taping me as I did it.  The process took so much freakin' time that I had no time left over to talk about it.  This is why major publishing houses have multiple people doing the various jobs.  As an independent author, you have to be writer, publisher, and promoter, and each of these jobs has sub-categories.

The writer of course has to also be a researcher, and has to learn to edit his/her own work.  He/she also has to go on tour and talk to people about the book and give signings.

A publisher has to learn all of the different formats, such as hardcover, paperback, e-book, etc., and he/she has to know how to upload them and make them look right.  He/she also has to learn which platforms work best for printing and releasing the work.  This leads to another job I forgot to mention...

Distributor.  You must learn how to distribute the work, and part of that job combines with the publisher responsibilities, as you have to print from places that will be accepted by the selling platforms.  For instance, bookstores will not take your book unless it's printed from a place that will do returns.  Thus, you must make the book available through Ingram Spark, or you have to have a distribution warehouse that can handle all of that.

Finally, you must also be the promoter, because your book can be all over the place, but if no one knows about it, no one will buy it.  This involves going to radio and TV stations, newspapers, podcasts, magazines, etc., etc.  It's one of the most time consuming, difficult, and discouraging jobs, as most of your efforts go unanswered.

At a major publishing house, these aren't just various positions, they're entire departments.  So as an independent author, you have to not only put on different hats, you have to wear various feathers in that hat.  Running this blog is supposed to be part of promotion, but sometimes you have to just accept what's likely to work and what isn't.  I also want this blog to help future independent authors and publishers, but so far very few people have been reading it, so it's been a lower priority.

So that's a bit about what I do.  I'll go on to more topics throughout this week, as many as I can get done.

In the Final Stretch to Release

I missed a week of describing my promotional efforts because I've been so busy getting everything done for the big, last push.  I'm in the final stretch now, just over a week before the book releases.  I've always known that March 1st to release day would be a huge time filled with a lot of work, and I'm now there.  I had hoped to be able to record it in this blog, but when you're author, publisher, promoter, distributor, etc., you have to make priorities.

The big issue is the fact that this is a merging point between pre-release promotions release promotions, and post-release promotions.  I cannot push back anything that needs to happen before release, and I need to promote things that are timely with the release.  Plus, I need to do post-release promotions on a schedule.  So everything gets jammed into this one period of time without any room for adjustment.

Additionally, all distribution has to happen now.  Many places won't consider the book once it's already been released, and if other places have already started selling it.  Therefore, most distribution has to happen at the same time.  I've been setting this up for a long time, but some elements were not ready until recently, or they got pushed back due to other things that needed to get done, like reviews.

It's finally getting under control, and I'm wrapping up the majority of promotions for Two Gun Hart.  I had to have most things done a couple weeks before release, so the week before will include mostly just contacting some news organizations, and telling the public about the release; so I'll be able to take some time to describe in greater detail what I did to promote and distribute this book since I won't be too busy doing it.

I'll be starting these blogs tomorrow, and will release them each day for the next couple weeks.  I might forget some details, but hopefully it will be enough to help anyone who might read this in the future.

The Results of My Free Book Promo.

I ran a free book promo on Amazon for my book The Great Heist this weekend.  I did something a little different each day, and got varying results.

Day 1:  Announced on various sites.  I go down a list I found here:  http://www.trainingauthors.com/47-places-to-submit-your-free-kdp-promotion-for-your-kindle-ebook/  I submit to each of the places that still exist.  Some have been replaced, some just don’t exist anymore.  Eventually I’ll have to get a different list, but this one works pretty good right now.  I got 658 downloads.

Day 2:  I did all of my social media outlets, including posting to groups I belong to on Facebook.  I also retweeted some things and tweeted on my own handle.  Basically, I reached out to everyone I could get to throughout the day.  I mostly posted the book trailer, and where they could find the book on Amazon.  The result was 634 downloads.

Day 3:  I did nothing this day, counting primarily on what I had done on previous days.  (Actually, the main thing that happened is I got distracted with other things throughout the day.)  The result was 176 downloads.

Day 4:  I did two paid ads, one in Freebooksy, at: http://freebooksy.com/editorial-submissions and one at Bookgoodies: http://bookgoodies.com/  The result of these:  2,034 downloads.

Day 5:  I’m just reminding people that there’s one last day to download the book for free.  It’s so far had about 600 downloads.  Most of these are probably hold-overs from day 4.

The moral of the story?  You get what you pay for.  The Freebooksy and Bookgoodies ads combined came to $100.  Of course all the books are being given away for free, so I get none of that back at the moment, but hopefully it will get attention for the book.  It was #1 in the organized crime category the entire weekend.  It reached number one in nonfiction on Sunday, and is now number 16, and it is currently number 93 in the free category.  (It was even higher on Sunday, but I’ve forgotten exactly where.)

The next few days will tell.  But the point of this giveaway was mostly to get people to know my writing, and to know one of the characters in it, who is featured in the next book, Two Gun Hart, which comes out next month.  To me, the decision to give a book away is to get attention for something else.  It helps with sales of the book itself in that it shows up on people’s searches as “People who bought this also bought…” and they’ll hopefully talk about it and review it.  But I don’t count on those numbers.  I do count on looking at this book leading to looking at another.

If you would like to pick up The Great Heist while it is still available for free today, or for a low price any other day, you can find it at:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Heist-Biggest-Robbery-History-ebook/dp/B00G8ULNX4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423519063&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Great+Heist