The Visibility Fog

As I write this I am sitting in a car looking out on Cook Strait. On a good day you can see the South Island. Today I just see an empty expanse of white coming down on the rolling sea about 500 meters away. Visibility limited.

Somewhere out in the white are big inter–island ferries coming through the strait, along with smaller fishing boats and huge cargo ships. Modern boats have radar so there won’t be collisions.

Book visibility seems to be a theme running through my roundup today. Somewhere in the white noise of Amazon your book is floundering around. How can you make the book visible so it has less chance of sinking without a trace.

Book Radar

Your Cover. 

The Book Designer (AKA Joel Friedlander) has a good post on what a cover should have. Alan Rinzler also has talked to one of the best cover artists in the business about what is iconic and important.

Metadata. 

This is how your book is described on any digital platform. Penny Sansevieri describes in detail how to do this for Amazon. You will learn things about search that will blow your mind.

Getting Endorsements and Reviews.

All book marketing comes down to word of mouth in the end. Either the book is being hand sold in the bookstore, Indie bookstores do this amazingly well, or you found a great book because someone told you about it.

Writer platform goes into fine detail about how to target and get reviews. Training Authors has an interesting post on getting endorsements. These are cover pull quotes.

Joanna Penn talks about little tweaks that increase your email subscriber list which increases your reader reach and your visibility.

Small publishers are just as keen on visibility. BAP books is shaking things up with a pay what you want publishing model for a poetry book. They have had great success. It is daring... innovative... would it work for any book? Not sure... but I’m talking about it on my blog at the bottom of the Southern Hemisphere so it’s definitely visible.

In The Craft Section,

Writing with all five senses.

Writing to gaming music. (This is really interesting.)

Deepen your conflict by forcing your hero to embrace the grey of morality - Angela Ackerman

How do you know if your concept is right? Larry Brooks with two video tutorials on nailing your concept. (Bookmark)

How to use lyrics without paying a fortune.

In The Marketing Section,

10 questions to ask when researching your competition.

Plan your marketing with the power of story.

How to get your readers to do the marketing for you.

The evolution of the author website.

Book Marketing truths few experts will admit.

Marketing your series- Lindsay Buroker (bookmark)

Website of the Week

Actually it is a roundup of websites… on self publishing some of which will be familiar. But you may find a new one to try out.

To Finish,

Ryan Holiday has an interesting article on Growth Hacking for Creatives... This is thinking outside the box for visibility.

Maureen

@craicer

Pic: Cook Strait... what you see on a good day.

Finding the time...

Book Review from The School Library: Learning Media.

Bones By Maureen Crisp

Illustrated by Robert Calvert.

(Kiwi Bites series Puffin)

Despite the back cover blurb, I feel Bones is less a mystery story than a small and delightful study in both human and canine psychology, as well as a fascinating lesson in police procedure.

What would happen if your dog began bringing home suspiciously human-looking bits of skeleton? Bones answers this - allowing the reader to look in on a realistic police operation as well as the reactions of the individuals at the centre and on the periphery of the investigations. (I like the cameo from two elderly rubberneckers: ’Police are so young these days,’ said Carol to Mavis... ‘Almost babies.’)

By the end of the book, the mystery of where the bones came from is solved, but not the mystery of how they got there. The book hints at a possible sequel. Perhaps we will find out then?

****************************************************************************************

I received a copy of this review from Penguin recently. I would love to know who the reviewer was.

I remember when I was writing Bones, the list of people I made sure I interviewed to get the facts right. And the extra gruesome things I found out from the police and the pathologist that didn’t make it into the book. I am so pleased this reviewer picked up on this.

I think if we write for children we have a duty to make sure that we do get it right. I know that growing up in a medical family, if something was glaringly wrong in hospital procedure on TV, my mother would continually rubbish the programme so in the end no one could watch it.

And she was unrepentant...’It should be accurate.’

My Mother-in- law is the same, she write Romance novels. Her big issue is that the occupations of her main characters must be believable and accurate. You won’t find her writing about inherited millionaires and sheiks. So in her library (and she does have one...dewey-ed, of course,) you will find all sorts of textbooks and journals about the most amazing jobs out there. If you want to hunt for sunken treasure there is an international journal just for you...That was a good subscription she told me...Lots of exotic jobs in that industry...Plenty of romance there. Of course she interviews people too...to make sure her plots are believable.

It is the attention to detail -the believable worlds you create- that stay with the reader and give them a much richer reading experience. For five years our eldest child would discuss over dinner the implications of magic and plot from the Harry Potter series....and now our middle child, the one that never stays still, has begun to devour the books...guess what the dinner conversation is...?

So a sequel, huh?

I would have to get the Mars novel done, (I hate leaving unfinished work. (unless it’s housework and that nags at me,) and a few other plotted stories...and there’s this little conference I’m convening. Oh drat...finding the time...

Maureen