Getting the Word Out: Your Blog and You

After my blog last week about paid reviews in which I looked at Clarion Reviews and San Francisco Book Review, I'd intended to go on to other venues in which you might be able to get your book reviewed.  It's worth looking at the blog from last week, however, because the CEO from San Francisco Book Review weighed in on my post. Take a couple moments to read her comments and my response--and pay attention to what I focused on, i.e., that a consumer wants and needs certain information in order to make a decision about whether to go with a particular service or not.

Her comments got me to thinking, too.  No, not about my job as an investigative journalist: I don't even pretend to that.  But what I am and continue to be, first and foremost, is a customer, and in that case, a potential consumer for the services the SFBR would like to offer.

Readers are consumers/customers, too.  So it stands to reason that when a reader comes to your blog, she's looking for information.  She's coming there as a consumer/customer.  The question is, what kind of information is that reader looking for? 

I'll be honest: I think that books direct readers to blogs, not that blogs direct readers to your books (unless there's a specific post about you as part of a blog tour).  Blogs can help readers find your other books, but the reason that any reader bothers to Google your name is because she's read your book and is interested in knowing more about you. 

Not convinced?  Want to test this out?  Easy.  Look at the number of entries I've had for the MONSTERS audiobook giveaway, one that has relied solely upon Facebook, Twitter, and traffic to my blog; and then go look at the Goodreads giveaway for WHITE SPACE.  There's no comparison.  I've had a very small number of entries for the MONSTERS Rafflecopter giveaway.  Yet, for WHITE SPACE on Goodreads . . . there are over 2400 entries--and that's because people have a reason to be on Goodreads.  Goodreads is a community.  By contrast, there is no community organized about Ilsa J. Bick.

So it's clear that my blog--just me and my vanilla random thoughts--doesn't generate much traffic.  Yes, I have fans, and yeah, I get a fair number of comments and fan mail.  But it's not me that makes people come to the blog.  What makes them come there, if they come at all, is that I've written a book they like.

So when they come to the blog, what should they find?  What is it that you want your blog to reflect about you and your work?  Is there some hook you can use to keep a random consumer--someone who's read one of your books and decided to look you up--coming back?

Remember, I said that the Internet is nothing but a vast marketing tool.   Blogs and every aspect of social media is/are marketing tools.  In her blog last week, Kris Rusch mentioned a few things the standard blog ought to provide a consumer in terms of basic information about you and your work, past and current.  Take a few minutes to read her blog; it's well worth your time, although I'm not sure that I agree that your blog needs to be genre specific.  For me and most people I know, a blog needs to be clean and easy to navigate.    I used to have a different theme for my blog,  one that I thought was very spooky and kind of cool. But I also found that that particular theme got to be too cluttered, busy  and difficult to read.  At the time, I'd been influenced by other folks' blogs--no, I won't tell you who--that had all kinds of bells and whistles.  I mean, navigating their blogs was like playing a video game.  Roll over this, something would happen; click this, something else would blow up.  All very nifty.  But also very pricey--and not easily transferrable to things like iPads and iPhones, which don't use Flash (and something I discovered to my chagrin after shelling out a fair amount of cash for an animated sequence for ASHES that relied on Flash.  All that money for nothing.).

So, recently, I switched, going for a blog format that I think is clean and easy on the eyes.  Is it as spooky and creepazoid as I would like?  No, but it's easy to navigate; you can find out all you want to find out about me (or, as much as I'll let you find out) and you can also read about my upcoming releases and where to find them. That's really all the information that a blog needs to provide the average consumer. 

But once you've enticed a consumer to your blog--to that bit of advertising about you--do you want to keep them coming back?  If so, what can or do you offer?  Some writers give out free fiction; others just post their opinions about this, that, or the other; some folks talk about what recipe they're trying out that week.

Or . . . are you targeting different consumers?  That is, if someone loved your book, will they keep coming back to your blog if you talk about writing?  Or cats?  Or what cake you baked that week?  Do you capture a different audience on Mondays--when you post a picture of your latest cake, for example (actually, Sundays are when I usually post mine--and on Facebook and Twitter because I don't think people stroll by my blog then, but I know they're on the other platforms)--and yet another on a different day when you offer advice on writing?  Or share your latest needlepoint pattern?  Or your Charger's new paint job?

There are some fans who read a book and then want to know all about you, and so they're the ones who will happily read a post about yak tea on Monday and your car's new paint job on Wednesday.  There are others--and I would say that they form the majority--who only come to find you because something you wrote touched them in some way.  They happen by your site and drop a line . . . but they don't keep coming back.

Except . . . don't we want them to keep coming back?

So that then begs the question, the very same one I had for SFBR's CEO: if I want to use a certain service, I need to understand the target audience.

It's the same for us as writers.  Who's your blog for?  Who's your target audience?  Who do you want to engage--and are those people you engage on, say, Monday, the same folks you engage on Thursday?  My guess is that you can't please everyone, and people cherry-pick.  As I've said before, I happen by a particular blog every week on the day that I know there will be information I think might be useful.  But that's all.  But if I were to offer, say, a free story on a certain day and do it reliably . . . would that increase my traffic?  Chances are good that, eventually, it would--and if a reader's read enough free fiction, he or she just might want to pony up to buy an actual novel.

I'm not suggesting that all we writers need to or can do that, but I think that a writer who provides an array of content--say, a story one day a week, advice another, a recipe a third--is one who understands a diversified market.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing from other writers out there, and bloggers, too: do you even think of a target audience?  If you do, do you think in terms of different audiences and different platforms for those audiences?

Signing in the Bookstore and Nobody's There

Yes, that title is a complete steal from this superb (and very funny) video that’s been out a few years and tell me this isn’t an author’s worst nightmare: a bookstore talk and/or signing where nobody shows. 

 

Now, tell me you haven’t been there, done that.

I can completely sympathize with Parnell Hall there.  I actually attended Bouchercon once, years ago, and volunteered to hang in the authors’ hall where they do this mass signing.  I don’t remember the writer to whom I was assigned, but he was relatively new and so, of course, a lot of people hadn’t heard of his books.  He wasn’t sitting next to Mary Higgins Clark, but he was either alongside or very close to Barry Eisler.  So you can imagine the scene.  I must’ve refilled that poor guy’s water glass a half dozen times in the space of an hour and made small talk.  He took it okay, but—honestly—what are you going to do but smile bravely and soldier on?  Having been in a similar situation at several Trek conventions and watched the lines snake out the door for all these other writers—or going now to conferences and seeing throngs cluster around writers whose problems I wouldn’t mind having . . . it’s pretty demoralizing: so much so that you have to wonder why you put yourself through this agony in the first place.

Have I done a signing where no one showed? Yes: my very first Trek book.  This wasn’t my first signing either; I’d actually done one for a couple anthologies at a now-kaput Borders, which went . . . meh.  At least a few people showed who weren’t relatives, you know?  But that time,  I remember the store owner gamely hovering and offering me cookies while patrons went through this little dance: eyed me, eyed the posters, eyed the books, eyed me . . . and then moved on. It was sort of traumatic.  What I’d been really excited about—look, see, my first book; I wrote this!—went out with this horrible whimper. 

It’s a wonder I ever agreed to do signings again, but I did when I went on tour for ASHES a couple years ago.  I guess you could say I was lucky that I--this complete unknown--got traffic at all, but we’re not talking droves here and I know that these bookstore people really tried hard.  So the low turnouts weren't their fault or anything, but I was a nobody.  One place I remember in particular, three people showed--and all were octogenarians.  I’m not kidding.  What was worse was one guy was there because it was hot, and his apartment wasn’t air-conditioned; one woman came thinking I was someone else; and the last woman, who’d been sitting in the little café right next to the space where the store had set up chairs, only perked up when I mentioned the Holocaust.  She also turned out to be . . . wait for it . . . delusional.  I’m not kidding.  My shrink antennae were already up; there was just something about her.  As soon as she started talking about getting special messages from . . . gosh, I don’t remember . . . and how they’d given her ECT and she should be on meds but wasn’t taking them . . . my book signing had morphed into geriatric group therapy.  (The guy was pretty quiet but stayed for the whole thing; it was pretty hot and the cookies were free.  The other woman was . . . helpful?  Sympathetic?  A tad of a enabler, I think, who kept encouraging the obviously psychotic woman to tell us more.  I was able to pull us back around to some kind of topic that was germane to the book . . . but you get where I’m going here.  This was just gruesome.  On the other hand, the publicist traveling with me at the time did say that of all the authors she knew, I was probably best equipped to handle something like this.  Yeah, but I used to get paid by the hour, too.)

I’m not down on book signings, per se; I’ve had some really lovely times with small groups of people, and these are folks who have kept in touch and like my books.  I have met and just adored some very special bookstore owners who went out of their way to make me feel welcome.  But I do wonder about the utility of signings for those of us who, you know . . . we’re not Stephen King or Joe Hill or Lee Child (the latter two of whom I’ve had the misfortune to always seem to be competing against with dueling book events—at least, Child dogged my every step through Ireland, or maybe I dogged his . . . I can’t remember).  I also know there are stories of famous authors who can’t draw a crowd, although I’d love to know who they are so we can have a drink and commiserate. 

But these non-events bring up two interesting problems/points.  For starters, a signing is, for lack of a better word, a form of entertainment.  You’re vying for someone’s time that they might use to watch TV, play a video game . . . you know the drill.  If you, the headliner, aren’t compelling or interesting enough—think of all those warm-up bands (God, I remember when Peter Frampton, who was once a big deal, warmed up some other forgettable band.  Yes; I am that old)—no one’s going to come to that show.  Timing has something to do with it; it’s best not to do these things on weeknights, for example, but a weekend’s no slam-dunk either. 

Which brings me to my second observation: bookstores don’t seem to be places where people really hang out.  This is not a slam; I love bookstores, but I never hung in any.  I came in to buy a book, maybe chat with the owner or ask for a book recommendation, and that was that.  When I was a kid, I sometimes hung in the corner drugstore next to the comic rack until the owner gave me one too many pointed looks, and then I ponied up my twenty-five cents for the comic and another quarter for chewing wax.  (I liked the cherry lips; remember those?)  Even in the age of Borders and B&N and other smaller independents that might offer some frills to encourage you to stay and hang—those ubiquitous cafés, for example—I haven’t seen a bookstore emerge as a viable place for scads of people to congregate and socialize, and this is a problem for everyone. 

Now there are some bookstores that are very skilled in outreach, both to schools and the general community, and create events that draw a loyal clientele; I know people who work in a few of those places, and I’m all for that.  The problem here, though, is that you are counting on and hoping that your name actually means something.  Most often, it doesn’t because we’re not Stephen King, etc.

So what matters isn't only us (although name recognition is huge; let's face it).  What sells the event is the actual bookstore and its reputation.  Anderson's Bookshop is a fabulous example of a bookstore whose owners also have a deep understanding and knack for organizing venues people (and writers) want to attend.  For the last ten years, they've put on a terrific conference on YA lit that I had the great fortune of attending a few years ago and would kill to be invited to again.  Anderson's has singlehandedly created an event where booklovers of all ages want to come--and you'll notice that it's not in the shop either. That's not to say they don't have great events in-store; they do. I also suspect that they've had a long time to work at this and develop a great outreach system--yet, looking over their upcoming events, I'll bet even that experience is no guarantee of a crowd unless the writer's already über-famous.

Which gets us back to the original problem: short of becoming a New York Times bestseller, how do you expand a virtual network?  How do you build a fan base of folks who follow you online and then, hopefully, into that bookstore?  Some writers seem to have a knack, and to be fair, they've also been at it a long time where the blogging and the engagement become a priority.  I’m thinking specifically here of something I heard Maggie Stiefvater talk about at a conference on kidlit and blogging.  Now this is a woman who built up an online presence as an artist for years before she published her first book.  I think she said she needed . . . two, three years to gain a substantial following, and this was just for her art.  So when she started publishing, she had a loyal base already, and that only grew.  She is also very good and skilled at engaging a virtual audience, something that not all of us can (or should) do.  Scholastic had this idea of having her do a signing in the off-season—I think it was June or July—and rely almost exclusively on her virtual reach and word of mouth.  She said that when she drove to the bookstore, she was really nervous and worried that no one would show.  But over two hundred people did because her network was and is that good.

So are we saying that having a broad virtual network of fans who love what you do . . . is that enough to turn a Parnell Hall into a Maggie Stiefvater?  I don’t know because I’m still not sure what draws people into a virtual community to begin with.  I wrote a post a long time ago about blogging being like that proverbial tree in the forest.  You know, sort of like Field of Dreams: if you write it, will they come?  (Or as Julie Powell said in Julie/Julia . . . is anybody there?  Anybody?)  What makes for a successful blog or online presence?  It can’t be just numbers of followers; a few weeks ago, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has a fabulous blog on business, wrote that all those readers did not translate into substantive sales of one of her nonfiction books.  Yet she has a wide following, one she’s made for herself by offering a blog that’s unique.  (I have no idea what her traffic is the rest of time; I’m just talking about Thursdays, when she posts The Business Rusch.)  Clearly, she’s built up a fan base around her business blog.  I have no idea if this translates into wider sales for her other work, but I can’t see that it hurts.

On the other hand, are blogs—in terms of sheer volume and length—really necessary?  That is, do we really need to write a ton?  Won’t snippets do?  Something easily digestible, a couple paragraphs?  An example: for a while now, I’ve done a Sunday Cake.  I miss sometimes—like today because my husband asked if I would postpone baking until Tuesday for a Wednesday event)—but I always post a picture of the cake to Facebook and Twitter . . . and I always, always get a ton of comments.  Always.  I get many more comments and views of my cakes than I’ll ever get from a blog.  (Ditto when I post something about my cats, or my garden.  Or on the environment.)  In fact, people notice when I don't post a Sunday Cake and, sometimes, ask what's going on.  Some have also asked for recipes.  Which is pretty astounding.

Now we can go all chicken-and-egg here.  You could say that no one would’ve bothered about my Sunday cakes or cats to begin with, if they weren’t already interested in me as a writer.  Fair enough; I don’t know how to test that.  But all this does turn on this question: what makes for an entertaining blog?  What piques fans’ curiosity?  What do they want to hear about?  What makes them loyal enough so they’ll spread the word and show up at a book signing (as one example)?  Clearly, food seems to be big; I’ve my own experience with this, and I know many authors (and agents) routinely post recipes.  Or put up pictures of their pets.  Etc.

It all comes down to this: none of us want to end up at an event where no one shows.  I always live in dread of going to a conference and being the only writer whose table no one visits.  So we are talking—again—about marketing and how to rise above the noise, and  I don’t have an answer.  If you do . . . for God's sake, don't keep it a secret.  Inquiring minds want to know.

So, in the meantime, while I go think about this—and continuing writing my next book—I leave you with Parnell Hall who has finally hit upon a way to avoid signing in the Waldenbooks when nobody’s there:

* * *
On your way out, don't forget to enter the Goodreads MONSTERS/ASHES backpack giveaway!

The Story of Your Life

DROWNING INSTINCT is set to come out on March 1 in the UK, and as part of the launch, I've been asked to do a couple of blogs, etc.  You know, it's the whole marketing thing, and I'm fine with that, really.  I'm thrilled that the good folks at Quercus UK have chosen to put my work out there.

Right around the same time, THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION also makes its official U.S. debut, although it's already available through Lernerbooks, Amazon, B&N, etc., and I'll likely write an entry or two about it as well.

Both these launches got me thinking, not only about the books but blogging, in general, and my blogging, in particular.  I mean, seriously, come on: why blog?  Really.  There are a gazillion blogs out there, ten trillion of which--a trillion's less than a gazillion, right?--are devoted to writing, the writing life, publishing, marketing, blah, blah.  Some are by writers who know so much more than I do, and yes, I'll say it right now: if Stephen King chose to blog, which he doesn't, I'd be reading what he has to say.  I might even print out and eat the paper.  But when you consider the people I think of as, like, these writing GODS . . . you have to look in the mirror and say--bear with me: as a shrink, I can safely say that I see a shrink on a daily basis--"Ilsa, sweetheart, just WTF can you possibly add to that conversation?"

And you know what that shrink has the GALL to reply?

Nothing.  That's what she says: Ilsa, honey, you got nothing more important to say than any other writer, so shut your pie-hole.

I know: I have a very nasty shrink.  If I could afford it, I'd fire the old bat.

But, really, I'm completely serious here.  All I can offer is what has worked for me.  You know?  It's not magic; it's hard work; it's the screw-your-butt-to-the-chair work ethic that got me through med school and then writing and now to the point of dithering about blogs.  Whether it works for anyone else . . . who knows?  I think the principle's a little like the old joke about the cabbie and Carnegie Hall:

Passenger: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
Cabbie: "Practice, practice, practice."

And that's it, the sum total of my knowledge about writing.  Practice.  Read a lot.  Write some more.  Then do it again.  And again.  And again.

So . . . blogging is stupid, right?  What goes on in my addled brain . . . who gives a rat's ass, am I right?  If my blog falls in the forest, does it make a sound?  Is anyone out there to hear what amounts to a mosquito's fart in a tornado?

To be fair, I'm also kind of a private person.  Blame all those years of training, when it was hammered into me that how and what I felt/feel is best left unsaid.  A therapy session isn't about me.  Oh, it's true that I used what I felt.  Any therapist worth her salt does that.  But the idea of a shrink sharing personal stuff . . . you do it very rarely and only if that might help the patient.  (And even then, a therapist in the grip of what happens in the space between her and a patient--that good old countertransference--you'd be surprised what some therapists can justify.)  The best therapists are welcoming but disciplined, and know when to keep their mouths shut.

So, I don't know who cares about what I have to say in a blog; I really don't.  What I can say is this: I seriously doubt that anything I've ever written ABOUT writing can even come close to moving a reader as much as WHAT I've written in a novel.  

Which brings me around to DROWNING INSTINCT, a book I've not blogged much about because, to be frank, I know the characters, in the very broadest sense, all too well.  I used to sit with them.  I watched them try to destroy themselves.  I watched them drown, quietly, all the time--and these are stories, confidences, secrets, dreams, and confessions that I, as a shrink, will not talk all that much about.  I just can't.

I'm not being melodramatic here, either.  Writing about those who suffer--even if none of my characters is a real person-person--isn't a joke.  I don't do it for kicks.  I tell stories, and whenever I do write about pain and suffering and sacrifice and triumph, whether it's for DROWNING INSTINCT or the ASHES trilogy or THE SIN-EATER'S CONFESSION or the forthcoming WHITE SPACE . . . here's what I'll tell all those people who think that these things don't happen; that people don't behave like this; that no one, no one, could be that stupid/self-destructive/gullible/bone-headed/blind; that shit like this can't happen: get real.  

Honestly.  

Get.  Real.

Now, I receive a lot of fan mail.  (And I love it, guys, really; keep those emails and tweets and all that coming; it lets me know that all those hours hunched over a hot keyboard have been worth it.)  I know I don't get a ten trillionth as much as Suzanne Collins or Maggie Stiefvater or Cassandra Clare or the gazillion more talented, better-selling authors out there.  I know that; I'm okay with it.  My needs are small.  All I care about is a) getting my work out there and b) yeah, okay, hearing that people have enjoyed a book. 

(And, yes, yes, uncle: I would like to be a New York Times bestseller; shoot me, already.  There.  Happy?)

The most touching are those emails I get from fans who've read a book that describes their lives, and DROWNING has provoked quite a few.  I've heard from some very sad and lonely people; I've heard from some very brave souls; I've heard from folks who tell me that I've written the book about their lives.

I take this all very seriously, too, and probably would even if I weren't a shrink.  But I am, and I really have to work, very hard, not to become a shrink when I reply (and I reply to each and every email).  As much as I want to help, I know that it's better for me not to.  Yes, there are all these ethical reasons to refrain--it would be flat-out wrong for me to engage in therapy, however well-intentioned--but I also know that it is far easier to confide in someone when there's no blowback or repercussions (hello, can you spell t-h-e-r-a-p-i-s-t?).  It is easy to fall into the fantasy--the trap, really--of believing you are saving someone when, in fact, you have become merely a bit player in a movie being directed by someone else, mouthing lines written by a script-writer you've never met.

But I hope that I am always open; I trust that I am always welcoming.  If blogging and a web presence have accomplished anything, they give those who find themselves in my books a way of telling me so.  When they do--when I get those emails--trust me, the urge to ease your pain and suffering is very strong.  

So, no, I have nothing new or novel to say about writing.  I have nothing amazing to say in a blog that's worth a millisecond of your time.  I don't claim that my books are all that fabulous either.

But--if you read one of my books and find yourself in the pages and wonder how it is that I know what you're going through, that I understand; that I won't give you any bullshit about how it'll all get better because, sometimes, we know--and we do, don't we?--that it doesn't unless you make some really tough, hard choices; are willing to take a risk, go outside your comfort zone and get help and really change . . .

I know.  I understand.  

And one more thing: I will not forget the picture you posted of your arm after you'd gotten done hacking at yourself, and for which you referenced DROWNING.  I get that, for you, this book was the story of your life.  

Now, listen to what I'm saying.  Read this into the story of your life.

Please, don't do that again.  You really are more valuable than you allow yourself to believe and know.  Really.

Yes, you.  I'm talking to you.