Author Strategy? You mean there’s a strategy to this?
by Carmen Amato
I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I chose this quote from Louisa May Alcott to adorn my high school year book picture: “Far away there in the sunshine sat my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
Years later, my kids found the yearbook and had a hearty laugh over the hairstyles, the basketball team’s tiny shorts, and Mom as a member of the Wingettes cheer squad. But I was appalled. My quote implied I didn’t expect to achieve my goals, but would be content to look at them because they were pretty.
That has hardly been my approach as a mystery author. In fact, my mantra has been:
“If you aim at nothing you’ll surely get there.”
Plus this motto, attributed to dozens of graphic designers from Ireland to Australia:
“Create something every day.”
But somehow, before all the aiming and creating, I needed a strategy.
Three for the Price of One
About the time I was acknowledging my love of clichés, I had a Skype chat with David Bruns, a sci-fi and thriller author (WEAPONS OF MASS DECEPTION, JIHADI APPRENTICE.) It was a powwow on author strategy: marketing, website design, shorts versus novels, cover art, writing routines, Kickstarter options, etc.
It all felt overwhelming.
Mulling over the conversation later, however, I realized we’d unwittingly identified three mini-strategies:
- Branding
- Production
- Discoverability
Heck, three mini-strategies was much more manageable than a scary, sodden lump of everything under the sun.
I could even visualize a three-legged stool. No one leg is more important than the others and all three are essential to balance.
Let’s see how each mini-strategy can help you.
1) Author Strategy for Branding
Someone more widely quoted than I said that branding is what people say when you aren’t in the room.
Sorry, but, um . . . No.
Branding is what people see when they Google you.
I think one of the reasons I landed a television deal for the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series with a major US network was because of strong branding, including consistency across platforms that projects a professional approach and a quality product. All that didn’t come together by accident.
Branding is the online version of Dress for Success. You wouldn’t show up for a business meeting in your pajamas, right? Everybody who Googles you is in effect a potential business partner—a book buyer, an agent looking to purchase rights, a blogger to host you, etc.
First impressions count.
Out of all the variables that go hand-in-hand with this writing business, branding is the one thing totally under your control. Consistent branding across platforms shows you are taken seriously as an author, that you have confidence in your creative offerings, and that you are Going Places.
Google your name and “author.” Your website should be the first search result, followed by your social media profiles or your books on Amazon or Goodreads.
Your website is your key piece of online real estate and should be considered the hub of your branding mini-strategy. The spokes are your Amazon author page and social media accounts.
If someone clicks through those links, are all these profiles and pages consistent? Do they look professional? Same author photo in each place? Similar descriptions? Similar fonts and colors? Is it clear what genre you write? Can they read it on mobile devices? Is the font too tiny or eye-bleed inducing pink on purple? Does your brand scream “amateur”―or worse―“indifferent”?
Whatever you project is what the reader will internalize about you.
Minimal is better than messy, if you are doing it yourself. Find help on Fiverr or Facebook groups if you need online graphic design help.
Maintain your branding with periodic housekeeping, and remember to let your writing shine.
2) Author Strategy for Production
If you are an author, you are in the business of producing and selling written content. High-quality written content.
One book or 100, it doesn’t matter. Bottom line, what do you want the finished product to look like and when are you doing it?
Slow or fast, it doesn’t matter. Everybody has a different approach. But be intentional about your writing.
A production mini-strategy has many moving parts. When I’m writing a novel, I need time to research, outline, draft, edit, and work with the cover artist. Guest posts take photo and SEO research, query letters, and more. My Mystery Ahead newsletter needs photos, original content, as well as interviews sent to the featured mystery author of the month and received back.
Fellow indie author David Bruns and I both juggle multiple projects at a time. We both plan out our writing production for the year. Mapping work time on a calendar helps keep us focused.
Having a production strategy shouldn’t take the joy out of the writing process but hold you accountable to your dreams. If you didn’t want this author gig, you probably wouldn’t put yourself through the creative angst most authors experience.
Having a production strategy, even if it is no more than notional deadlines marked on a calendar, helps to put a framework around the effort and prod you to keep going.
Like the branding mini-strategy, production is totally in your control.
You are the boss, so you can:
- Decide the type and quality of your product.
- Choose how best to execute your vision.
- Make every hour intentional.
3) Author Strategy for Discoverability
At last we come to the mini-strategy that you only partially control but which can suck up all your time.
Many online marketers talk of a “sales funnel.” This is basically the process of converting someone from clueless-about-you bystander to lemme-buy-that-book money slinger. You control what the funnel looks like, but the final decision belongs to the buyer.
The “sales funnel” dilemma
There are many ways to build that sales funnel, using these and other tools:
- Outreach
- Paid promotion
- Author blog
- Guest posts
- Newsletter and press releases
- Sales platforms
- Book sales description
- Keywords
- Social media platform/volume/frequency/type of post
- A bajillion other things
Aaaaand you immediately see the problem. You can drown trying to make the mouth of that sales funnel—discoverability―as wide as possible.
What to do?
Your “one true reader.”
The key to creating a manageable discoverability mini-strategy is to target your one true reader.
The Detective Emilia Cruz novels are a police procedural series. My one true reader likes intense plotlines, visual settings, and authors like Jo Nesbo, Ian Rankin, and Louise Penny. My Mystery Ahead newsletter caters to those interests, I target that audience in Facebook ads, look for guest posts on mystery-themed blogs, and so on.
Once you know what readers to aim at and where they hang out, make checklists so you touch these places frequently, with comments, posts, ads, etc. Readers usually need to see a book reference more than once before buying, but be mindful of the difference between spam and honest engagement.
Your daily checklist might be posts on specific Facebook groups and Pinterest group book boards, as well as commenting on posts. On a weekly basis write a blog post about something to do with your books or genre, query for genre-specific guest posts, run an ad, or refresh your Goodreads shelves.
Above all, stay focused on that one true reader to avoid wasting time and money, which is advice I wish someone had given me about 5 years ago.
My own daily checklist includes blog housekeeping, loading up my Buffer dashboard with hashtag-specific tweets, posting 3-5 times on Pinterest group boards, and 2-3 outreach tasks depending on current projects. The latter might include adding new websites to my master checklist, querying for a guest post, inviting fellow mystery authors to be featured in my newsletter, or inviting contributions for a non-fiction anthology I have in the works. Buffer and IFTTT.com streamline some of the process, but I find I get the most bang for my time when I personally connect.
Go beyond author-specific marketing circles if you need fresh ideas. Check out CoSchedule, Digital Marketer, the BookMarketingTools.com podcast, and the Buffer blog to find new approaches to add to your checklists.
A Balancing Act
There are times, especially when I’m in the homestretch of a novel, when life is 100% production. I can barely answer the phone, much less bother with a disciplined discoverability checklist. Other times, especially if I’m between big projects, life is all about branding. Like now, when I am obsessively changing all the graphics for the book reviews on my blog because I’m waaaay too Type A.
But in general, I aim for a balance of 10% branding, 30% discoverability, and 60% production. Of course, branding takes more time when things are just getting set up and consistency established across your personal online universe, but afterwards the time investment is minimal. I also keep discoverability from sucking up time by setting a timer. Whatever I do within 45 minutes is good enough.
But the most important thing to achieve balance is to ALWAYS have a list when you sit down at the keyboard. It can be your daily list, your weekly list, your production task list, your one true reader hangout list, it doesn’t matter. Work from the list.
The Sequencing Game
One big question remains: the order in which to do things. Yes, start your branding as soon as you can, but the answer is that a smart production mini-strategy should be the driver.
NaNoWriMo is a big influence on would-be and emerging authors these days but a casual surf through many of the fora devoted to the writing month shows that too many are ready to publish as soon as something is done. There’s a rush to get work to an audience, but little thought as to how one book fits within a body of work or if the author is ready to display themselves as a professional.
My point is that authors need to think about the body of work they are building and publish in a sequence that makes the most sense for name and genre recognition.
Harken back to your one true reader. Toss a jumble of mystery/romance/sci-fi/self-help/true crime at him/her. That one true reader just dissolved in a puff of wishful thinking.
Let me illustrate.
In addition to writing a mystery series, I’ve also written two romantic thrillers. By the time I published my first book, THE HIDDEN LIGHT OF MEXICO CITY, I had five books in the hopper: two YA adventure tales, romantic thriller AWAKENING MACBETH, and CLIFF DIVER, the first Detective Emilia Cruz mystery.
HIDDEN LIGHT was my baby, the Great Latino Novel, and I had dreamed of its publication for years. I self-published it in 2012 to mild cheering. When it came to what’s next, although I knew not all of my books would be set in Mexico, I decided to release books based on setting.
Yes, setting. Mexico, to be precise.
Because. I. Am. So. Damn. Clever.
My second release was CLIFF DIVER, the first Detective Emilia Cruz novel set in Acapulco. As the series gained traction it was clear that my one true reader was a police procedural mystery series lover, not someone who wanted to read about Mexico.
We all make missteps
Eventually I dusted off AWAKENING MACBETH, but the romantic suspense audience that enjoyed HIDDEN LIGHT was long gone. Despite being my most imaginative book with some really great sex scenes, AWAKENING MACBETH is now an orphan, all because I didn’t capitalize on the importance of the genre-specific one true reader.
In retrospect, I should have grouped my romantic thrillers and released AWAKENING MACBETH after HIDDEN LIGHT. I should have identified where my romantic suspense one true reader hung out and built and maintained a small sales funnel.
With the lessons learned from that experience, only then should I have released CLIFF DIVER for the police procedural mystery series one true reader.
Luckily, today’s publishing environment means I can go back and create a discoverability mini-strategy for romantic thrillers. Ebooks are always in print, and I control the production and branding. But is my time better used that way or working on Detective Emilia Cruz #6? I don’t have the answer. It’s a hard call born of a fairly bitter lesson.
Your Author Strategy
Especially if you write in multiple genres, here are the takeaways:
- Establish branding for yourself as a serious author, even before you publish. As you choose logo, colors, artwork etc to spread across platforms, don’t peg yourself too tightly to one genre unless you’re sure you’ll never expand your repertoire.
- Embrace and identify your book’s genre and your one true reader. Know where they hang out and get your book in front of them. To avoid wasting time and money, make checklists to focused.
- Build a backlist and have a discoverability mini-strategy for one genre before moving to another. Write whatever you want and whenever you want, but be strategic about when you actually release. It never hurts to let a project breathe while you take a long term approach.
- Consistency and quality are king and queen. Work your mini-strategies. Don’t be influenced by slapdash writers, peer pressure, or make-a-billion-dollars-by-taking-our-course-to-write-a-bestseller-this weekend glib promotions.
Pundits call it strategic intent. I call it author success.
by Carmen Amato (@CarmenConnects) May 14, 2017
What about you, scriveners? Do you have an author strategy? I admit I have lots to learn from Carmen. (Maybe that’s whay I don’t have a TV deal. 🙂 ) Did you have a strategy when you began your career? Or did you have to learn about sales strategies after you were published the way I did?
***
Carmen Amato is the author of the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery novels set in Acapulco and recently optioned for television.
She’s also written the romantic thrillers The Hidden Light of Mexico City and Awakening Macbeth,
Originally from New York, her travels around the world inspire many of her books. Visit her website at carmenamato.net for a free copy of the Detective Emilia Cruz Starter Library and follow her on Twitter @CarmenConnects. Stay in touch via email to carmen@carmenamato.net; she always responds.
BOOK OF THE WEEK
In PACIFIC REAPER, the latest Detective Emilia Cruz novel, Emilia investigates a string of murders connected to a cult devoted to Santa Muerte, Mexico’s forbidden saint of death. As the investigation heats up, everyone close to Emilia has a brush with danger. Has she been touched by the so-called Skeleton Saint’s curse or something even more unholy?
Find it on Amazon today!
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Thanks, Carmen.
“Branding is what people see when they Google you.”
How true. And those articles you wrote two decades ago will come back to haunt you if they’re still online.
I found my one true reader by accident, and have stuck with her for the past year. That approach has focused my writing.
Kathy, finding your one true reader by accident could sound like luck, but the big takeaway is that you were smart enough to recognize what it was and capitalize on it. Congratulations and keep going in such a confident direction.
I really like the “one true reader” strategy, and realize that writing in different genres like I have done is counter-productive to that. The big surprise of my writing career (13 books with two different trad houses) is that readers don’t cross genres often. Excellent post, Carmen!
Melodie, congratulations on 13 books! What an accomplishment! As you move forward, do you plan to focus on a main genre to grow a core reader base?
Yes, my focus is back to madcap crime capers. Those are the nice advances that keep being offered. I’m with a large Canadian publisher, and am of course influenced by what they want for the line. I feel a little sad to let fantasy go (I did well with a trilogy) but it’s more important for me to keep this publisher and the audience I have now.
Melodie–I will miss Rowena! I love Gina, but Rowena is epic! 🙂
My initial author strategy was to concentrate on becoming, as an indie, known for quality writing, because it seemed the great reading public (some of the more traditional ones, anyway) had identified the indie writing phenomenon by the lable ‘tsunami of cr*p’ so as to ignore and marginalize it, and in many cases they were right.
I am in the process of focusing that strategy, because a more important part of what I write has been to show my disabled heroine, Kary, as far more than a throwaway or pitiable character.
No one I know who is disabled or chronically ill is to be pitied, but traditional publishers have taken few chances with such characters, and worse, have signed on to the common trope that such characters ought to do the right thing, and tidy themselves away lest they infringe on the rights of normal, able-bodied people to have reasonable lives.
It’s a big task – and someone has to start doing a quality job of tackling it.
I had hoped not to have to make the distinction, and just write ‘literary quality’ books, and hide myself as an author in the vast tide. But I will write few novels, and I would rather leave a distinctive set behind.
Alicia, it sounds as if you have set some impressive goals for yourself and I applaud you for your emphasis on quality and a thoughtful topic. I think that eventually the stigma of low quality associated with independent publishing will wear away under the weight of many excellent offerings. As for best-selling fiction with ill or disabled characters; take heart. John Green’s THE FAULT IN OUR STARS showed there is room for stories that deal with these issues in a meaningful way.
Truly wonderful post, Carmen. It really got me thinking about where I’ve been and where I’m going now. I started out writing short pieces–flash fiction and memoir–and then when the E Age appeared I realized I could publish shorter work. Longer short stories or what many call E Book novellas of 20-30K words. I wrote a WWII gay romance series that was great fun but then I moved into nonfiction again and editing personal essay anthologies. I’ve really moved around and I need to find my one true reader. I seem to have more success when I communicate directly to the reader in my own voice like my recent writing book or guest posts I’ve done. Maybe that’s why I just wrote a memoir about my unconventional single mother. I think my one true reader is calling me in memoir, personal essay, and nonfiction in general where I speak in “my own true voice.” I hope this all makes sense but I truly loved this post. It spoke to the heart of where I am right now with my writing. A lot of writers are getting some very good advice on Anne’s writers blog. Thank you so much. Paul
Paul, kudos for taking the time to explore what gives you creative satisfaction and resonates the most with your readers. Heartfelt memoir is a widening genre from what i’ve seen lately, and your readership is out there. BTW, I also had an unconventional single mother. Aren’t we lucky?!
We were. Very lucky. Thank you so much for your encouragement. It means a lot. 🙂
Carmen—Congratulations! Thank you for an inspiring and well-thought-out post. Like Anne, I have lots to learn from you. 🙂
Thanks, Ruth, but you and Anne are light years ahead of me! Thanks for letting me share my ideas and connect with your awesome readers.
Awesome and manageable advice. It is all so overwhelming sometimes that all you want to do is hide in your room and write and forget about everything else. I’m definitely keeping this post in my reference file. Thanks!
Annie
Annie, you are so right that writing and marketing at the same time can feel overwhelming. Chopping it into 3 has helped my blood pressure and I hope it does the same for you.
That’s a lot to think about and consider. I did the branding right. One true reader… I remember in the beginning, my publisher and I both aimed at a certain type of reader, but when my books took off, I discovered another type. Can you have two? And can your most faithful true reader not even read your genre? Because mine usually doesn’t…
Alex, you certainly can have more than one true reader, especially if you write something that crosses genres or you can define discrete audience segments. In that case, go after that one true reader for each audience segment. They likely belong to different Facebook and Goodreads groups, etc. A bit more work but potentially a big payoff. Good luck!
As I approach the tenth year of being indie (and ten books out with the eleventh almost out) and spend many hours examining where I want to go next and how I want to do it, I find it’s easy to lose myself in the whizzbang new philosophies of marketing and branding. Especially as I am cross-genre and love both my genres.
Thanks so much Carmen, for reminding me that there is a strategy (or three strategies) that remain solid and unarguable and also which should be the foundation of my brand as I move forward.
Prue, 10 books is quite an accomplishment! I hope this post helps you get the branding down in a way that supports both genres. I’d love to see your branding “portfolio” when you are ready.
Hey Carmen & Anne – Thanks for a thoughtful & thorough post. I particularly appreciate the One True Reader Strategy — good thinking.
Thank you and good luck with your own one true reader.
Great post! It’s given me a lot to think on. One question: if you are writing cross-genres, how many do you release of say a romance before you open that path to fantasy? And then go-in between?
In my case, I could have published two romantic thrillers before moving on and developing a second audience for mystery series readers. I had plans to make AWAKENING MACBETH a trilogy so once I had established a footing in both genres, I could have alternated publishing books in those genres and growing the the audience for both. But by stepping away from the first genre for so long, I lost an opportunity and now am unlikely to continue the Macbeth series. I guess my point is that each time you publish in a given genre, you have to connect and can’t forget them when you write something different. Maybe it’s not how many you write in a given genre to start–although having a body of writing will help–but how much attention you give to connecting to readers. Good luck!
Thank you for your tips and strategies. We all need to have some sort of plan for our future if we want to become successful.
Absolutely! As my scuba instructor said, “Plan the diver and dive the plan.” You can make it happen!
Thank you for this great post, Carmen! This blog always offers helpful and intelligent information, but this post really hit home for me. After a year of personal calamities that upended my author goals, getting back on track is so overwhelming I go into avoidance withdrawals. Your mini strategies, including the smart approach to multiple genres and such specific advice right down to the percentage of recommended time for each strategy is brilliant. Thanks for helping to clear away the murk. And congrats on the TV series!
Alicia, kudos to you for making the effort to get back on track. As an indie author, it is a confidence booster to know that the “system” is elastic. There is lots of stretch, so redo, reset, and retry. Take aim and you’ll get there one way or another!
Enjoyed this very much. I do have a question.
I’ve been blogging since 2007 and recently traded it for a website with the ability to sell ebooks, etc.
I always thought I would be a nonfiction writer and was for much of my writing career. However, I’ve started writing fiction and need to change my branding across all social media outlets to support that.
My question is this. Should I keep my domain – which is my name, and change the material and looks? I know I may loose a few readers, but then again I don’t have many.
Or should I start all over with a different writing name and create a space for fiction only?
I’m leaning toward keeping what I have, it’s so much work with just one site.
Thank you for your suggestions!
Cindy
Cindy, if you have a domain with your name, keep it. That is branding gold. You can easily create branding that crosses genres–simple logo and/or name art using a specific and consistent font–then group your books by genre on the site. Having a blog wil help. Create categories of posts for different genre audiences, as long as your bio explains that you write various genres, and share those posts in Facebook groups, Pinterest boards, and on Twitter with specific hastags that target audience segments. You can also market via book covers–use the same font for your name across all covers, website, etc; but make sure your fiction and nonfiction artwork differs enough to show the distinction. Good luck and email me if you need a clean set of eyes on the website.
Thank you so much Carmen! I’ve enjoyed looking through your site and you’ve given me lots of ideas to begin on. I will take you up on the offer and appreciate your kindness!
Cindy
Carmen, I’m so happy for you. I remember discovering you some years ago and I’m so proud of you and all that you’ve attained. I know that you work hard.
Frances, I was so thrilled to be interviewed by you about using social media. I’d just discovered IFTTT.com and felt like I actually had something useful to say. Since then, you have become the go-to expert on social media for so many of us authors. Your newsletter is always full of great information. Keep it up!