What I'm Learning as I self-publish Loving Emily

Cathy: Here's a link to my press release:

link deleted

Eek! How come I didn't get the same warning? I deleted the link immediately. I'm so sorry!

Thank you very much, Merri and Cao, for your help.

And while on the subject of internet hijinks, I just had to file a complaint with scribd.com, where a mysterious Olga had posted the entire Loving Emily. Scribd took the post down within 48 hours, but still. Anyone else had problems with this?

Cathy C said:

Anne,

Okay, the first thing I noticed is it's a perfectly acceptable press release about a book. One book. That's why it's dropped so quickly in the Google rankings. I know it's easy to say, "Oh, news changes so often that it'll move down quick." But that's not necessarily true. If you make the press release NOT about just the book, but the topic of the book, you'll stand a better chance of having your book featured not just as a book, but as NEWS.

For example, here's a "press release" (just so you don't have to sign up there, here's the release on PRWeb) I did about a 2009 book that still appears in the top twenty rankings on Google if you put in "Tor & urban fantasy"

Now, you might ask why I did the release this way, where my book is just a footnote at the bottom. Well, first, it benefits friends who also write the same genre. In turn, they mention me in their stuff (doubling or tripling the benefit). Second, it's "news". It's NOT about a book, but about a publisher. We're one of their people.

As a self-pubbed author, there are still plenty of things you can do to beef up promotion. Here's one that I wrote for a self-pubbed anthology I was part of in 2005. This is a "feel-good" news story that can be picked up as filler for the Mother's Day holiday. Is there anything about the book that's tied to noteworthy topic or holiday? Sure there is! "Coming of age" is a big topic, as is the death of someone close when you're young. You can approach it with some research, as though you're writing an article on the topic and discuss HOW you dealt with it in the text a little.

Ultimately, there are a lot of books in the market, but news filler is gold in newspapers and magazines. Add in a few expert quotes or something timely in the news and you'll have a winner that will last for years as a "new" story.

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Invaluable information! Thanks so much, Cathy, for the tips, and if you have any more ideas for us, come back any time!

All right, folks. Inspired by Cathy's tips for writing press releases, I decided to write a new one of my own. The Loving Emily marketing shark is dying due to neglect, and something had to be done.


Cathy's suggestions for how to spin the press release were interesting, but required distressing amounts of expertise. If I were to write a piece on how teens cope with grief, I would have to know what I was talking about. Which would require a lot of research. Which I didn't want to do. I'm killing myself to finish the rewrite of The Wedding Cake Girl by the end of March and don't have time right now to make myself into an expert on something.


That's why I decided to make the press release All About Me. People are interested in self-publishing stories right now, and I thought maybe if they liked reading my thread here on absolutewrite, they might like reading the same information in a press release. And I wouldn't have to do any research.


So below you'll find my latest press release, which I've sent out through mmdnewswire.com. I'll let you know the results!


Aspiring novelist finds happiness through indie publishing


Deciding to self-publish her story Loving Emily proved to be exactly the right move for debut author Anne Pfeffer.


LOS ANGELES, California—In 2011, Anne Pfeffer was making the rounds through traditional publishing channels with her young adult novel Loving Emily, but no one was biting. One major agent explained it to her this way: "I really enjoyed reading it, but I don't think an editor will buy it."


Large publishers, Pfeffer realized, wanted stories with big hooks, that fell clearly into an identifiable genre, and that were "high-concept," that is, they could be described in a single attention-grabbing sentence. Loving Emily wasn't like that.


At the same time, Pfeffer was getting emails from her small fan base at inkpop.com, a teen literature website where she had posted Loving Emily in 2010. A year later, her readers were still asking when the book would be published and if she planned a sequel.


Enter Amazon.com and the new world of self-publishing. In October, 2011, Pfeffer published Loving Emily as a kindle book. The following month, she brought out the paperback on Amazon as well.


In the book, 16-year-old Ryan Mills falls for Emily Wintraub and loses his best friend Michael on the same night. He comes to terms with his grief and guilt over Michael's death as he simultaneously falls in love, and grows up in the process. Loving Emily (ISBN 978-1466341821) is available for sale online at Amazon.com.


Since its publication, Loving Emily has been slowly but steadily acquiring fans, especially on the popular reading website www.goodreads.com. "It's been so long since a book just knocked my socks off. This is no ordinary YA coming of age novel," wrote blogger Jolene Perry. According to best-selling Kindle author Ryan Winfield, Loving Emily "is sure to entertain teenagers from sixteen to sixty-four."

Pfeffer says, "I plan to keep my book in print for a long time and grow my reader base slowly, through word of mouth and the publication of new books." She writes about her experiences as an indie author on her thread titled "What I'm Learning as I Self-Publish Loving Emily," at www.absolutewrite.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Pfeffer lives in Los Angeles, California and worked in business and law before becoming a writer. "Loving Emily" is her first novel.

MEDIA CONTACT:
Anne Pfeffer
www.annepfeffer.com
E-mail: [email protected]
Phone: 323-839-2658
REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE
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Can anyone tell me how to increase the font size on this?

Hello folks. Coming to you via my brand-new microphone and sound pod, purchased for use with Dragon Naturally Speaking, my voice recognition software. I bought the new equipment based on the recommendation of Old Hack (thank you, OH), and it is much better than my old cheapo microphone. However, it still picks up the dog barking, and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

Still working away on the rewrite of The Wedding Cake Girl and having a great time with it. I'm lucky to have the best writing class in the world. My teacher, Linzi Glass, has this way of finding good writers with interesting projects. We each read 10 pages a week for critique, and it's so much fun to follow other people's works, not to mention improving your own.

Linzi's very demanding, which I love most of the time, and when I don't love it I remind myself that both of her first two books were shortlisted for England's Carnegie Medal and her third book has sold over a hundred thousand copies. So she knows something about how to write a book. I pretty much do what she tells me to.

The Oregon writers' workshop is a month away. They sent us the teacher bios, which I've put below:


DONALD MAASS, INSTRUCTOR, is president of the Donald Maass Literary
Agency in New York, which he founded in 1980. <snipped>

LORIN OBERWEGER, PROGRAM/EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, is a highly sought-after independent book editor and ghostwriter with more than twenty years experience in publishing. <snipped>

JASON SITZES, STAFF EDITOR, is a freelance writer and independent book editor based in Louisville, KY. <snipped>

ROMAN WHITE, GUEST WRITER/BRAINSTORMING GURU, is an accomplished director and writer. <snipped>

BRENDA WINDBERG, STAFF EDITOR, has been on the staff of Free
Expressions since 2002. <snipped>

I'm having health issues and may have trouble getting there, but tough cookies. I'm going!


Mod Note: I've cut this post to try to ensure compliance with the principles of fair use. Anne, please don't quote material like this in full again; and when you do quote things, make sure you cite your sources properly. Thanks.

Old Hack said:

Anne, if you bought the same mic that I have--the Sennheiser ME3--then I wonder if you're positioning it right, or if the foam baffle over the mic has slipped off a bit. If not, then do go to the KnowBrainer forum and ask for advice because dog-barks shouldn't affect your transcription unless they're happening really close to you, or you're in a very echoey room.

Sorry for the derail, everyone.

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Jane,
I did buy the same one you recommended -- thanks for the info. I'll investigate further. I don't know if the Sennheiser people tested their device on Dachshund barks, which have a special ability to inflict pain -- on human listeners, at least.

I didn't realize this topic was a derail -- I won't bring it up again. And thanks!

Thanks, Jane and Merri, for your good wishes, and thanks to everyone who checks in occasionally to read this thread.

I keep trying to post things that people find useful and thought I'd just say a little bit more about my experience with press releases.

First off, I've used mmdnewswire.com to distribute my press releases and had no problems with it. I didn't do any comparative research ahead of time, so can't tell you definitively that it's the best choice out there, just that I was satisfied with it.

Press releases have a very specific format. Below is a link to mmdnewswire's instructions for drafting a press release, which I found helpful.

http://www.mmdnewswire.com/write-press-release-5398.html

In posts above, Cathy provided what I thought were fantastic tips on how to position your press release in a way that makes it generally newsworthy over an extended period of time. I loved those suggestions and will try to follow them when The Wedding Cake Girl comes out.

I did run the "All About Me" press release that I posted above. It did well enough, getting picked by writers' websites and publications, by Kindle-related media, and so forth -- in other words, by media that have the same emphasis as this thread, i.e. self-publishing info for writers. But I realized in retrospect that its focus was too narrow and not directly targeted to readers -- you live and learn.

So it's an art, to find an angle to your book that's both newsworthy and reader-oriented AND that you're qualified to write about.

juniper said:

Hi Anne, I'm one of those who checks in here to see how you're doing on the journey.

When it gets closer to the Oregon conference I'll send you a pm to see if we can get together. I should know my schedule better in a few weeks. Hope we can meet up.

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Juniper: I don't know my schedule either, but I look forward to hearing from you!

I've been reading with interest the neighboring AW thread about Darcie Chan and her great self-publishing success. (For those who haven't seen the thread, her literary novel The Mill River Recluse has sold over 400,000 copies.) Good for her! It's nice to see someone living the dream.

Chan's story is documented in a WSJ article which I looked up and found absolutely fascinating. It describes in detail how she marketed her book and how her sales grew. The link is below—I would call it required reading for anyone who wants to self-publish.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html

Chan attributes part of her success to a Kirkus Indie Review—the kind where you pay Kirkus in the range of $500 to get what is purported to be an honest review. Then you have the choice of publishing the review or burying it forever, depending upon whether or not you like what it says about you.

Curious, I looked up the review, which I've printed in full below:

THE MILL RIVER RECLUSE
The hardworking people of a small Vermont town are on the receiving end of a benefactress’ goodwill.

<snipped by mod> The dialogue occasionally leans toward cliché, but not often enough to be distracting. Readers may even find comfort in the book’s foundation of predictability—this is not a novel that strives to break new ground, but rather settles in one’s lap like a familiar cat.

A comforting book about the random acts of kindness that hold communities together.

Pub Date: May 18th, 2011
ISBN: B0051PRFLQ
Program: Kirkus Indie
Review Posted Online: July 21st, 2011

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The subject of paid-for reviews has come up here on this and other threads in the past, and I'm wondering if people's views are changing on this.

In the past, AW readers have written that they would give little credibility to a paid-for review, or even to an author who made use of one. If an author directly paid someone to write a review for them, I'd agree. But in the case of the Kirkus Reviews? Personally, I'd be inclined to trust them.

Any thoughts on this?

MacAllister said:

Errr, my thoughts are that you need to redact that review, please -- it's not okay to reproduce it in full, without written permission (which we don't have.) A link and a brief excerpt are okay, though.

ETA: Never mind, then. Since you've logged off, I'll redact it myself. Please don't quote in full copyrighted materials from elsewhere, in the future, Anne.

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Oops, I'm sorry MacAllister. I just did it because it was so short. Now I know, for the future.

merrihiatt said:

I'm still of the mind that paying for a review is a conflict of interest for the reviewer.

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Wouldn't it depend on the situation? I'm just asking. If a reviewer is employed by Kirkus and his instructions from Kirkus are "Review this book honestly and objectively," don't you think he would do that? Even if the author had paid Kirkus for the review?

On the other hand, if I walked up to you and offered you $100 to review my book, that would seem like a tainted deal, like I was essentially paying you for a good review.That's not acceptable.

Again, I'm just asking. It seems like it would depend on the circumstances.

Old Hack said:

Anne, you should reacquaint yourself with the concept of quoting and fair use. If you quote things inappropriately in the books you publish you could get into a lot of trouble.

As for whether paid-for reviews are appropriate or not, I bet there are existing threads on the subject which you could find and link to here. Not that I think we should dig up old, dead threads: but a bit of background reading might be interesting.

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Thanks, Jane. Yes, those rules are important to know. and I'll look into them.

As for appropriateness of paid for reviews, it was discussed earlier on this thread, not in connection with Kirkus, but with Bookrooster. That's what I was thinking of when I brought it up now. But I'll look around and see if there are any other threads on it.

merrihiatt said:

That's the thing, there's no way to know what the circumstances are. An author may or may not get an honest review, but the fact that money has changed hands means someone benefited from the transaction, no matter what the outcome. Again, this is my take on it. Someone else may have a different opinion.

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Merri, Thanks for weighing in on it. I guess the point, for me at least, is that--like you-- not everyone trusts these types of reviews, and that fact's worth taking into account when I'm trying to decide whether to do it or not.