Guest Post: Having a Saleable Novel
Doesn’t Make You a Sell-out
So let’s get back to that whole laughing at work-for-hire authors or trashing popular books or not understanding what a saleable novel is.
So let’s get back to that whole laughing at work-for-hire authors or trashing popular books or not understanding what a saleable novel is.
According to Carolyn’s research, aided by Google, there are about 288,355 books published every year by traditional publishers. Current estimates anticipate 800,000 books will be self-published this year. So how do you make your book stand out among literally a million titles?
Honestly, it is difficult (although not impossible) to avoid strategies that don’t incorporate Facebook in some way, either through a personal account or through Facebook Pages, at least not for writers who have at least one novel published. Once you have fans, Facebook becomes logical since it has the largest user base, therefore making it much more convenient as a way for people to find you.
Whether you want to self-publish your novel or are trying to land a traditional publishing contract, it is in every author’s interest to make connections and talk with the editors in our field.
Anything I can control, I pay close attention to. Contracts. Personal relationships. The words. Stories I want to tell.
The Speculative Speakers Service at AboutSF.com provides information for educators and conference organizers who are looking for guest speakers. Members of SFWA, who’d like to talk about SF at schools, meetings, or conferences, are invited to register.
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.
Somewhere during the summer, when I got the latest “I can’t sell this” from an agent, I realized, “You can’t, but I can.” I have not looked back since.
The times they are a-changing, the question of when will probably be answered after the next Christmas season as ebooks emerge at minimum as a major market force, over 20% of book sales is a conservative guess, so the answer to that one is soon.
Amazon.com is now offering BookScan information to authors enrolled in their Author Central program. For authors, previously one had to subscribe to BookScan or to get their sales numbers through their agents or publishers. Amazon says: We’re happy to announce that – for the first time ever – authors can see weekly sales trends of […]