Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

Posts Tagged ‘Monica Valentinelli’

Guest Post: Having a Saleable Novel
Doesn’t Make You a Sell-out

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

by Monica Valentinelli

I was at a writer’s conference this past weekend called A Weekend With Your Novel. These are the same folks who put together Write By The Lake and other, similar programs. I had taken a class from Christine DeSmet way back in the day, when I was in college, and was familiar with the depth and breadth of her experience, so I gave it a shot. I received several techniques for the areas I need to focus on — many of which popped up in some of the trunk novels I wrote and Redwing’s Gambit during the revision process. The instructors know their craft. For that reason, I’d go again. The other authors I talked to, however, well… That was a different story. I did not feel that this was a good place to network on that front.

I do work-for-hire and I also understand marketing. So when the stat popped up that 90% of queries to agents get rejected because they aren’t saleable concepts, I nodded my head. Many authors (myself included) start out writing a story for their own vanity. This is often very personal and rationalized in the category of “very important to share.”

Yes, absolutely, that may be true. However? That does not necessarily mean that your story to teach the world about X is a saleable concept. Read other books in your preferred genre. Understand what people are reading. Then, tailor your novel to be a story people will want to read — not your personal soap box because you, out of nigh seven billion people on the planet, will change the world with your one story that someone else has probably already written.

(more…)

Tags: Monica Valentinelli
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Building a Career, Information Center, SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | 4 Comments »

Message to New Writers: It’s Okay to Focus on Your Craft

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

by Monica Valentinelli

On the heels of yet another discussion about whether or not success is attainable in today’s ever-changing publishing industry, I’d like to offer the following to new writers: there is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on your craft. You don’t have to worry about the state of the publishing industry and your place in it.

Before I proceed, let me clearly state that I feel no two authors are alike and no two paths to (and within) the publishing world are the same. Your path and experiences will probably differ from mine. Every author’s story is unique. You may recall the story of bestselling author Pat Rothfuss, just as one example. (Go Pat, Go!) Amanda Hocking as another. This article is not meant to suggest that you are doing anything wrong by worrying about the news. Rather, I’m bringing a few touchy issues up because I think they are worth exploring. (more…)

Tags: Monica Valentinelli
Posted in SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »

Hunting Down the Value of Social Media

Monday, May 16th, 2011

For April Fool’s this year, I was one of three authors who penned a satirical collection called Paths of Storytelling to celebrate Vampire: the Masquerade’s twentieth anniversary. For most of the day, I was glued to the internet, wondering what reader’s reactions would be.

Coupled with an impromptu squirrel riff off of The Raven, I didn’t get much else accomplished that day or the next – and I was hopping mad about it. I asked myself a few, pointed questions: Did I really need to freak out know what reader’s responses were going to be? How much do I need to engage on social media to promote myself or my books, anyway? Will people buy the projects I write because I wrote them, or because it’s a subject they want to read?

Then, I asked myself that question. That scary, grab-your-keyboard, query to end all queries.

Are Facebook, Twitter and IM having any effect on the quality or volume of my work?

These questions, coupled with a very long list of goals I wanted to accomplish, plagued me like a broken plot. I was already hoping to cut down on my usage of these tools, but the underlying questions caused me to do something I never thought I’d do: I started a one-hundred day sabbatical from all social media from April 4th through July 13th.

Things to Keep in Mind
Before I go any further, there are a few items of import I’d like you to keep in mind. First? I’ve applied the word “introverted” when describing authors in the past. If I ever say that, please understand I do not mean “all writers live in small cabins far removed from civilization and do not shave or wear brightly-colored clothing.” Like playing a solo, writing is an introverted activity. You can be the most social person in the world and still be a writer, but when you do? The words you type are coming from your head — not an alien hive mind. Not yet, anyway.
(more…)

Tags: Monica Valentinelli, social media
Posted in Building a Career, Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | 4 Comments »

Guest Post: Why Writers Suck at Marketing

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011

by Monica Valentinelli

Writers and marketing. In this digital age, the two words are becoming synonymous, but to what end? Having been on both sides of the fence, this is a difficult post for me to write. This isn’t the sort of thing I care to admit or highlight to people, because writers are a unique breed. Immersed in words, we use them to the best of our advantage. We research. We’re intelligent. We should be able to learn anything we set our minds to.

But not all of us can.

Our Personality Matters

By nature, our work requires us to be introverts. We turn our focus to the voices inside our head to produce the words on the page. Marketing, on the other hand, forces us to be extroverts. The two fields don’t always jive with our personalities. No matter how hard we try to hide it, we all have our quirks and sensitivities. Is that wrong? No, not at all. Our personalities aren’t something to be picked apart and analyzed, but by their nature it’s difficult to pull off both at once.

Many authors read popular marketing books from the likes of Seth Godin, etc. or learn more from their organization. (Truthfully, I’ve learned more about marketing books from my romance writer’s group than I have in any other.) Can an author understand marketing from a pragmatic and theoretical level? Yes. Can an author turn around and apply that knowledge to reach new readers? (more…)

Tags: Monica Valentinelli
Posted in Advice for New Writers, Information Center, Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | 6 Comments »

Guest Post: Your Business Model Is Not Your Neighbor’s

Monday, January 17th, 2011

by Monica Valentinelli

I’ve been in a lot of discussions recently with other authors and a few game designers about pricing. Over and over again, I hear comparisons to the iTunes model or whatever Amazon is doing. If “free” is not the golden calf, then ninety-nine cents is the deal of the decade.

From my perspective, pricing right now is being determined not based on the content that is being created, but by its ease of distribution and the potential market reach a website has. The iTunes model worked for music, and now it’s being applied to fiction and games, too. While I understand why this is happening, I’m disappointed that the pricing is based on availability rather than its intrinsic value. Impulse buy? Sure, but in my opinion, some things are worth paying more than ninety-nine cents for.

Just for the sake of argument, say that it takes a composer as much time to write a good song as it does an author to write a short story. Should they be priced the same? From a consumer standpoint, you listen to a song, regardless of what you’re doing. You can consume this song over and over again, and don’t have to drop your activities to listen to it.
(more…)

Tags: Jason Sizemore, Monica Valentinelli
Posted in SFWA Blog, The Business of Writing | Comments Off

Social Media and Your (Lack of) Privacy

Monday, June 7th, 2010

The year is 2010. The internet has passed the infant stage and has grown into a young adult that still hasn’t quite gotten the “rules” down yet. Much of internet law is still in its infancy, in part because the legal system hasn’t been able to keep up with the rapid changes in technology. Words like “piracy,” “identity theft” and “copyright” are just three examples of that, but there are several more. In its basic form, the internet is like a giant toolbox that offers you an array of tools to help you quickly deliver content. Your content, which in its basic form is really different types of data, can be shared through a number of tools like forums, blogs, email, etc. Several of these tools are on a public platform that allows people to not only interact with each other, but to listen in to other people’s conversations as well: this is where social media comes into play.

Although there are hundreds of social media websites out there, many of which can be found through KnowEm.com, there are really a handful that stand out for authors. They are: LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube! and MySpace. Each of these sites allows people to engage in different ways: you can microblog, blog or comment on other people’s blogs in your network, have conversations, share links or stories and play games, watch videos, or do all of the above. Each one of these sites has a Terms of Service (ToS) that spells out what your rights are as someone who might want to participate in their free network. I know several of you might have a blog located on a WordPress or BlogSpot domain. When was the last time you checked your Terms of Service to see who owns your own content? You might be surprised what the ToS states. In many cases, the content that you provide is not, technically, owned by you. For a writer, the question of who has access to your private data or your content can be detrimental. Oddly enough, I’ve seen how many “tools” will proclaim that they won’t enforce their ToS. That is, not until something happens and you wind up encountering legal trouble.

In more cases than I care to admit, your privacy (or your content) is the price you pay for using a free service. This is often addressed within the ToS or within a separate document called a “Privacy Policy” that spells out what a site does with your data. Of course, most businesses have a privacy policy that addresses whether your data is public or anonymous and what they do with it. Many social media networks are businesses to some degree, but sometimes we overlook that fact because they are free (and fun) to use. If the networks are not technically structured as a business, they are often experimental and attractive platforms in order to encourage people to sign up for them. Remember, a social media network is valuable because of the people that use it and not necessarily because of its technology.

If you think about it, each social media platform is very much like a playground at a school yard. When you go to play at Facebook by creating a “page,” for example, you need to abide by their rules or you can get kicked out. Recently, Facebook encountered several problems with updates to their new privacy settings earlier this Spring; the conversations have literally run amok. In response, Facebook posted an update that attempts to be a bit clearer about what you can do with your settings.(1) The end result is that everyone — from the New York Times to Time Magazine — is now talking about privacy.

Regardless of what you think about sites like Facebook and their practices, these “free” websites need to monetize their efforts in order to remain free for you to use. The latest stats claim that Facebook has over 400 million users worldwide (2). Twitter’s user stats, on the other hand, may be closer to approximately 100 million by comparison, but no one knows for certain (3). Both social media platforms have offices with employees; both have business models that employ different techniques in order for these platforms to stay afloat. Behind the scenes, millions of dollars could be pumped into a “free” service through venture capital, online advertising, or other forms of revenue-generation. (more…)

Tags: facebook, Monica Valentinelli, social media, twitter
Posted in SFWA Blog | 3 Comments »

An Overview of Writing for Print vs. the Web

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

by Monica Valentinelli

This month, I wanted to take a break from discussing topics in online marketing to chat with you about what it means to write non-fiction for the web versus writing for a print publication like a magazine. The first thing to keep in mind is that writing for an online medium is night-and-day different from writing for print. Why? Take a moment to think about the core functionality of a print publication. Once an article is printed and circulated, it becomes a product that may be read by the people who might come across a physical copy of it. That publication is now a finite moment in time; the publication doesn’t live or breathe because it’s in a physical form. Readership is dependent upon when the article is released to ensure the highest amount of readers and whatever happens when it hits the secondary market. Publishers can guess how many people might read your article by their circulation numbers, but there really isn’t a definitive way to track who read it and who didn’t.

On the web, not only can a publisher track how many people have read your article, they can also see how many visits it receives, where the visitors originate from, etc. over a long period of time. For this reason, some consider web-based works to live and breathe online. Articles that you may have written two years ago have the ability to become popular again on the web, simply because of how the web functions. Unlike a print publication, mistakes can also be fixed instantly or articles can be changed, which is why some publications have rushed to produce timely content without having all the facts.

In many cases, writing for print allows you to have more freedom and more flexibility with your writing style because you are writing for a captive audience. When you write for the web, you are trying to capture members of a much larger audience. (more…)

Tags: Monica Valentinelli, non-fiction, Publishing, writing
Posted in Building a Career, Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog | 1 Comment »

Authors! 8 Tips For Your Website’s Usability and Design

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

by Monica Valentinelli

In today’s article, I’d like to share with you some tips to consider when you’re reviewing your current website or when you’re thinking about creating one. Let’s take a look at these tips for your website’s design and usability.

1. Structure Your Theme Around Your Update Frequency – First and foremost, I believe that you have to make a decision, up front, about how often you plan on updating your website. If you’re not going to blog or update very often, you can simply choose a different website theme that’s a little more static than a blog, but still attractive and professional. If your website isn’t focused around a blog, visitors won’t expect you to update your website as often, but you can still provide good, useful information for anyone who visits. Several themes offer you the ability to have a blog component integrated separately into your website, too.

2. Balance Text with Images – Images can be a great enhancement to your website and they can allow you to easily share content with your readers that they might enjoy seeing. However, your website copy is arguably the most important asset you have for many reasons. Copy allows you to reach your readers and search engines, and it also allows you to attract new visitors through Google and similar places. As an author, your content is exceptionally important because it’s a reflection of you and your work. (more…)

Tags: beginners, business, Monica Valentinelli, web
Posted in Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog | 8 Comments »

Quick Updates for 2010-03-03

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Resources

• What do LGBTQ teens want to read?
• Victoria Strauss: Mokoto Rich on the math of ebook pricing: they’re not as cheap to produce as many people think.
• Bookends Literary Agency offers a handy publishing dictionary

Member News

• New issue of Apex Magazine is a single author issue with fiction by SFWA member Mary Robinette Kowal.
• SFWA member Jess Wynne has a story in the Steampunk issue of Crossed Genres.
• SFWA member Monica Valentinelli‘s THE QUEEN OF CROWS is now available at DriveThruHorror.com.
• SFWA member Jay Lake is reading and signing new novel PINION at Powells Cedar Hills store on 4/1.
• Happy release day to SFWA member Seanan Mcguire for A Local Habitation.
• Happy Book release day to SFWA Member Blake Charlton's novel, Spellwright.
• Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member Rachel Aaron, author of The Spirit Thief.
• Welcome to SFWA's newest Active member Genevieve Valentine. Read one of her qualifying stories.

Industry News

• The Nebula final ballot is now open to Active SFWA members.
• Asimov's has posted their Nebula nominated stories.

Tags: Blake Charlton, genevieve valentine, Jay Lake, Jess Wynne, Mary Robinette Kowal, Monica Valentinelli, Rachel Aaron, Seanan Mcguire, twitter, victoria strauss
Posted in News, SFWA Blog | Comments Off

Thinking About Your Writer’s Platform? Consider Your Online Reputation First.

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

by Monica Valentinelli

If you attend as many conventions as I do, you’ve probably heard about the importance of developing a writer’s platform. There are several books and articles on the subject, including this book featured on Writer’s Digest entitled Why All Authors Need A Platform Before you start thinking about your writer’s platform, I recommend considering what your overall online reputation is first.

“Search” Matters

Through my experiences in online marketing for different companies, one of the most common forms of “discovery” for a person’s name or brand is to simply type it into a search box. (Right now, Google holds the majority of the search engine market share worldwide and in the U.S., but the search engine traffic is constantly changing.) Search engine results pages continually “breathe,” offering different results depending upon a variety of factors.

Search is often referred to as “natural” or “organic” search, and is a key component for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For any professional, search is extraordinarily important for visibility into your online reputation, for two reasons: One, it’s widely used by many people and two, it’s a “free” way to find information about you. Keep in mind that search engines don’t “care” if you have a writer’s platform or not. In fact, there’s a good chance you already have a reputation on the internet. Do you know what yours is?

Tracking Vs. Managing Your Online Rep

Everyone who has ever posted something online has an online reputation whether they like it or not. Managing a reputation, however, is a different story. Google Alerts are a great way to help you track your current online reputation, but that tool has its limits because it doesn’t tell you a) where you rank for your own name in Google or b) what people are typing in to find you online. You can, through Google Webmaster Central, see some great data not available through Google Analytics. If you haven’t set up Google Webmaster Tools on your website, I highly recommend it.

Tracking your online reputation is only part of the story. Next, you have to figure out how you want to manage and foster it. Take a moment and think about the content you’re posting on various websites and forums. Are you comfortable with complete strangers reading what you’ve posted? What about your employer? Agent?

Online reputation management not only includes monitoring what people say about you, but also your strategy related to what, when and where you post your content.

Your “Content” Comfort Level

For a variety of reasons, I take a pretty careful approach to what I post online. Internet content can be tracked, dissected, read, copied or pasted at any time on any website, regardless of when it was posted. Because of that, I have a broad variety of topics I typically do not discuss online including: personal finances, health problems, politics, religion and family, relationship or job troubles and data related to my book sales or popularity of posts. (Mind you, I’m not perfect.) On occasion I have whined about a bad case of the flu or talked about politics, but for the most part I steer clear of these topics. Why? Here’s my reason once again: at any time, anyone, in any place, can read anything you’ve ever posted. Your “audience” may include complete strangers that live in different countries, but also past, present and future friends, employers, agents, publishers, readers, family members, teachers, colleagues, etc.

When you post content online, it’s important to understand what you’re comfortable with people knowing about you both now, but also in the future.

Tarnished Reps and Their Effects

Unfortunately, there has been a rash of writers that publicly argue with agents, bash reviewers (or delete bad reviews), talk about their “evil day job” or even beg for money. It may take years, if not months, to build an online reputation, but all it takes is one flame war to bring it down into the gutter. (For a funny take on this read my post about How to Ruin Your Online Reputation in Ten Easy Steps.) If the idea of managing your online rep isn’t complicated enough, keep in mind that popular authors may have different methods of managing their online reputation than aspiring writers, simply because the volume and quality of posted content is dramatically different.

People have been sued, accused of plagiarism, lost their jobs or publishing contracts, gotten divorces or have ended long-term relationships over poorly-worded exchanges online. The things that you write not only affect your desired readers, but also the readers you least expect. Sure, you can delete your unwanted activity, but you might find that it’s more difficult than you thought. Twitter, for example, allows you to delete Tweets but they currently still show up in their Twitter search functionality for a period of time. Depending upon when you delete blog posts or other content, it can take up to six months for your content to fall out of a search engine’s index.

With that in mind, do you know what are you comfortable with sharing publicly?

Of course, the question that every author wants to know is whether or not a bad online reputation affects the sale of your book. It’s not uncommon for buyers to research things they want to purchase online before they go to a brick-and-mortar store in their area; no amount of web analytics data will show how many people do just that. While retailers are often obsessed with conversion (e.g. How many people that visit my website buy directly from me?), selling massively-distributed products (like books) online is extraordinarily complicated. Besides a typical buyer’s behavior, there are dozens of factors that may affect online sales including: technology, seasonality, paid advertising, SEO, social media, brand awareness, trends, etc. So the short answer is, “No one knows.”

“You” Or Your Rep?

While I believe you definitely want to be genuine online (especially if you network offline as much as I do), I also think you should define what you’re comfortable sharing for public consumption. Because you don’t have control over your audience, developing your online persona can be pretty difficult. After all, different people will find you interesting for different reasons. Your “reader” could be your editor, your neighbor — even Donald Trump!

So take a minute and search for your name. Seriously. You’ll be glad you did. Ask yourself a few questions to help you make your own decisions about your online reputation. “Am I ranking for what I want to rank for?” “Is my website up-to-date?” “What are people reading about me?” “Are the claims I’m making accurate?” Taking a peek at what content ranks for your name is only one aspect of online reputation management, but it’s a good place to start. (If you have a name that’s pretty common, I recommend adding a keyword like “author” or “writer” after your surname in your content to help your readers find you more easily. Be sure to read up on how to optimize your website for more information.) Remember, the old way of thinking said that if you searched for your own name, you were being vain. The new way? It’s essential to ensure that people not only find “you,” but also that they are left with the impression you want to leave them with.

In the end, remember that the web does not distinguish between your “online” writer’s platform and your online reputation. That’s something you’re going to have to figure out how to do.

About the Author

Monica Valentinelli is the content and web analytics manager for the digital sheet music retailer and publisher Musicnotes.com and the project manager for the horror and dark fantasy webzine Flamesrising.com. Monica is an aspiring novelist working on revisions for her first novel; she has several non-fiction, short fiction and game writing credits to her name including her recent work for APEX MAGAZINE Vol. III, Issue III and FAMILY GAMES: the 100 BEST.

To read more about Monica, visit her blog located at www.mlvwrites.com.

Tags: Monica Valentinelli
Posted in Building a Career, Networking and Self-Promotion, SFWA Blog | 4 Comments »

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