Book Promotion: A Full Time Job For a Writer

Working Stiffs welcomes guest blogger Elizabeth Zelvin today!




by Elizabeth Zelvin

I haven’t been a working stiff since I left my last day job, directing an alcohol treatment program on the Bowery, in the fall of 1999. Or have I? One of the mystery writers’ e-lists I belong to recently had a thread about what everyone was currently writing. I was not the only one who said, “Who has time to write? I’m hip deep in promotion.”

When I dusted off the existing first few pages of Death Will Get You Sober back in 2001, I was already sitting at the computer. I had just launched my online therapy website at www.LZcybershrink.com and embarked on a major professional journey: building a practice, treating clients all over the world, and making all the mistakes as a website novice that would help me not make them when I launched my author website at www.elizabethzelvin.com several years later. Being an online therapist can be a fulltime job, as can being a writer, though in economic terms both are vocations about which everybody advises, “Don’t give up your day job.”

When I completed the manuscript in 2002, two more jobs awaited me: writing the next one and trying to find an agent, then a publisher. The many tasks included learning how to write a query letter and a synopsis, then expanding and contracting them according to the moment’s needs, polishing them till they sparkled, then fine tuning and fine tuning and fine tuning them. That process still goes on. Did I mention revising the first draft? I made the neophyte’s mistake of sending it out right away and learned about critique and revision the hard way.

Networking with mystery writers and mystery lovers in general was another delightful but time-consuming task. I couldn’t have reached this point without the New York chapters of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America and their respective e-lists; Sisters in Crime Guppies and its subgroup AgentQuest; e-lists DorothyL and Murder Must Advertise; and later, the online social networks CrimeSpace and MySpace, which I’ll get to in a moment.

So it’s Chanukah and then Christmas, 2007, and I’m finally on the homestretch toward publication of my book in April 2008. And how come I’m working harder—more hours per day, seven days a week—than I have since I got my master’s in social work (60 credits in two years plus three days a week working full time for free, first with severely mentally ill clients and then with alcoholics) more than twenty years ago?

Here’s some—by no means all—of what I’ve been up to:

December:

Sent individual holiday messages to my then 900 Friends on MySpace and 800 on CrimeSpace, greeting each by name and NOT mentioning the book.

Sent holiday cards to the 100 closest friends I send them to every year—with a letter asking for their help in spreading the word about the book, explaining about sales and computer modeling and why I can’t give any copies away, and listing everything they could do, from asking for it at the library to getting their book club to invite me to speak.

Added an address label and a handwritten note to a postcard for each of the 1300 people whose postal addresses I have—some will come back undeliverable, as I’ve been collecting them for 30 or 40 years as I waited to have something to tell them about my dream of publishing a novel.

January:

Set up the book tour. I’ve hired an outside publicist, but can’t afford to turn it all over to her, so I work closely with her and my publicist at St. Martin’s by email, pore over lists of mystery and indie bookstores, make endless virtual trips to their websites and to Mapquest to check the distance between towns and make sure I can get from one gig to the next in time. Do you know that the state of Florida is as big as England? And Dayton, Ohio is not as close to Indianapolis as my publicist assumed it is. The book tour job also requires me to turn travel agent and book flights, hotels, and cars all over the country.

Subscribed to Consumer Reports and did comparison shopping for a GPS. Bought the GPS.

February:

Set up the virtual tour, of which this visit to Working Stiffs is a part. This involved writing numerous guest blogs as far in advance as I could, always striving to hit the requested word count and deadline, to keep it lively, and not to repeat myself; and participating in numerous interviews. Actually, I enjoyed both these tasks. Writing blog pieces (as a guest or doing my weekly stint on my own group blog, Poe’s Deadly Daughters) makes me feel like a journalist, and the interviews give me unprecedented license to go on and on about myself—what bliss!

Sent individual Valentine’s Day messages to my 1100 MySpace Friends and 800 CrimeSpace friends, again not mentioning the book. This kind of networking is its own reward: back-atcha messages are still trickling in from Valentine’s Day and even Xmas, every one putting a big smile on my face and convincing me that all these folks in cyberspace really are my friends who wish me well and might even, some of them, buy the book one day.

Learned how to use the GPS. Started to get used to it. Sent it back to the manufacturer for repair because it stopped talking to me.

March—well, you get the idea. There are now new bookmarks quoting the early reviews instead of the author blurbs and new postcards to alert people about the book tour in May and June instead of inviting everyone to the launch party on April 15 at the Mysterious Bookshop in New York. (Yes, you are all invited.) There’s endless recording of every stock signing and podcast: on two or three calendars, on my website (can’t believe I’ve learned enough HTML not to have to prod my webmaster to make the almost daily updates), on my MySpace and CrimeSpace pages, on the spreadsheets I keep so I won’t lose track. I have to keep reading all my groups because you never know when someone will offer a crucial tip or contact on DorothyL or Murder Must Advertise or CrimeSpace or EMWA or Guppies or SinC or MWA-NY or SinC-NY or MWA-Breakout—or the addictions and online therapy lists I still belong to. There’s the small matter of needing a new agent at this crucial phase of my career.

So there you have it. Network network network. Schmooze schmooze schmooze. Full time job. And you know what? I love it!

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York City psychotherapist whose debut mystery, DEATH WILL GET YOU SOBER, will hit bookstores April 15. Library Journal called it “a remarkable and strongly recommended first novel.” Her short story, “Death Will Clean Your Closet" has been nominated for an Agatha for Best Short Story. Liz is also one of the bloggers on “Poe’s Deadly Daughters” You can visit Liz’s website at http://www.elizabethzelvin.com/. Elizabeth will also be at the Festival of Mystery in Oakmont, PA on April 28th.

Party Planning

Party Planning

by Nancy Martin

My new book, MURDER MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH, will be released in three weeks, a thrilling event in any author's life except for one glitch---I should have done all the advance work for this book at least three months ago.

But three months ago, I was getting ready for Christmas, my kitchen was under construction and my husband surprised me with a 30th wedding anniversary trip--the kind a girl just doesn't say no to. And now it's too late for book launch PR.

Good thing my publisher has assigned a topnotch publicist to do the basics: Send ARCs to all the big reviewers (PW, Library Journal--which, by the way, gave me a rave--whew!--syndicated newspaper reviewers, etc.) and to the smaller reviewers (local newspapers, genre magazines, independent mystery bookstores that publish newsletters, amateur online reviewers. The publicist also coordinates some visits to bookstores for me. (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Lansing, Michigan.) Plus he's sending postcards and doing a massive promotional mailing that has meant dozens of phone calls, not to mention hours devoted to packing, writing cover letters and doing the mailing. And putting up with me referring more and more jobs his way as stores and newspapers contact me personally.

This year, my publisher isn't sending me on the road to tour as they have in the past. Instead, they're putting the money into something new--sending little tins of promotional chocolate to booksellers. This sounded like a great idea to me. (The way it works is this: Your book hits stores and requires at least four weeks of intense promotion. But at the same time, you're frantically trying to finish writing the book that will be released a year from now. Ever try doing the best writing of your life while also planning multiple parties?? So staying home this year sounded like a blessed relief.

Fingers crossed that the chocolate draws attention to MURDER MELTS.

Of course, the really big task was accomplished months ago by a totally different department at the publishing house. That task is getting bookstores to agree to stock the book. (You think books appear on shelves by some kind of publishing osmosis? No. No and no and no and no.) My publisher creates and prints a catalog four times a year and sends it to bookselling entities. (Not just stores, but the buyers for the big bookstore chains and buyers for the huge wholesale distributors that supply big box stores, drug stores, grocery stores and whatnot, not to mention libraries and anybody else who requests one.) Then the follow-up phone calls begin. This year my editor personally called the buyer for the Borders group (which includes Waldenbooks) and scored a nice order.--Yay!

The sales department works really hard to get bigger and bigger numbers of my books into stores every year. Depending upon last year's sales, though, distributors want to buy exactly the number of last year's sales to avoid "returns"--unsold books that the store returns to the publisher for reimbursement. Returns are espensive for everyone, so nobody wants them. So orders are often smaller than they were the previous year. And because the publisher doesn't want to print too many more books than they can sell, they reduce the print run. Everybody's trying to save money, and who can blame them? The publisher wants a great "sell through"--the percentage of printed books sold. But for the writer, this is all very nervewracking. If my orders are reduced and my print runs get small, won't all these numbers eventually spiral down to zero?? At the distribution phase, the author feels entirely helpless---at the mercy of numbers.

Talk about nail biting. The joke among writers is that our publisher doesn't want us to know the names of the sales staff in case we camp out on the office floors and make their lives miserable.

The other big expense my publisher pays is co-op money, which nowadays is primarily spent on placement in bookstores. What does this mean? A couple of years ago, one of the big bookselling chains admitting that they're selling 80% of their books within 20 feet of the front door--in other words, the books that are on special display racks as you enter the store sell best. For those of us who write genre books that are generally shelved at the back of the store, that's not good news. How is a customer supposed to find a book buried in a dark back corner? So I'm pathetically grateful when the publisher agrees to pay for my book to be placed in that golden real estate. Not all books are treated so royally, and I'm lucky to get good placement.

What should I be doing to help all this happen?

First of all, my job is to write great books--each one better than the last. But I also maintain an email list, and I'll be sending notices to nearly 5000 formerly satisfied readers, asking them to please buy the new book within the first week or two of release. (After that, sales will be not nearly as important. A book needs to sell well right away, or it's stripped out of stores to make way for books that will sell.) I also blog weekly--which nurtures a community of loyal readers which--we hope--will buy the book when it's released. And I maintain a "fan" listserve of over 250 readers. In addition, I belong to various organizations, including Sisters in Crime which coordinated a nationwide promotion featuring member authors, and my books were widely displayed thanks to SinC's efforts. And I do set aside a small travel budget each year to make a handful of library appearances and attend a few conventions.

But mostly? I write.

Obviously, I rely on the team at the publishing house to do the lion's share of bookselling. As I strive to write entertaining stories, the effort it takes to sell tens of thousands of books would be beyond me. I must protect my writing time.

But we're having a launch party when the book is first released. If you live near Pittsburgh, I hope to see you at Mystery Lovers Bookshop on Sunday afternoon, March 9th. We're throwing a chocolate extravaganza! Please come, because I don't dare take home the leftovers.