“The End” is Just the Beginning

by Jenna Schnuer
American Way Magazine (American Airlines)

The astronomical growth of the self-publishing industry has opened the door for many aspiring authors. But marketing your own work takes some serious energy — and innovation.

THIS WAS THE DEAL: Boyd Morrison’s wife wanted to become a doctor. So, even though Morrison dreamt of a far more creative future for himself, he promised to stick it out as an industrial engineer for the nine years it would take her to get her medical degree and finish her residency. Then he would get nine years — to try to become a published author.

In 2005, with his now-MD of a spouse giving the go-ahead, Morrison said buh-bye to his job at Microsoft and started writing. Over the next two years, he penned two thrillers (in addition to one he wrote in 1996) and in 2007 made one of the most sacred connections in all of publishing: He found an agent who was keen on his novels and thought she could sell them to a publishing house.

It seemed like he was about to arrive at his goal long before the clock ticked engineer again, right?

Not quite.

“I got what I call great rejections,” says the Seattle-based Morrison. “They said all these things they liked about [them] but then ultimately decided not to publish [them] for whatever reason.”

But Morrison didn’t just want to leave the books sitting idly on his hard drive. With his agent’s blessing, he made them available for free on his website. He also put them up for sale via Amazon’s Kindle in March 2009, pricing the first book at just $0.99 and the other two at $1.99. “It was really an experiment,” he says. “I just wanted to see if I could get the word out just through viral means or word of mouth.” His entire marketing shtick? He began introducing himself and his work to his one-day (fingers crossed!) fan base on the message boards at KindleBoards, MobileRead, and Amazon.

“I did not spend any money marketing myself. I did not take out advertisements. It was word of mouth and me just talking about the books on those website discussion forums,” he says.

Within three months, he had sold more than 7,500 books. Those sales and the positive reviews he received from fans were proof that Morrison had a following who wanted more. His agent went out to a new round of publishers and in July, Morrison signed a two-book deal with Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Hardcover and audio editions of his book The Ark will go on sale in spring 2010.

YES, IT’S TRUE. Self-publishing, once the redheaded stepchild of the book world, has turned quite the corner. In 2008, more than 285,000 new print-on-demand (POD) titles and approximately 275,000 traditionally published titles were offered up to reader eyeballs, according to Bowker, which tracks publishing-industry statistics. That POD figure — which refers to books that are printed only after an order is placed, as most self-published books are — is even more impressive when compared to 2007 numbers, when 123,276 titles went on sale. That’s a 113 percent jump.

Along with Morrison’s beloved e-books, two of the biggest game changers for authors who choose to go their own way have been Author Solutions, a parent of six self-pub imprints which, together, brought 21,000 new titles to market in 2008, and the print-on-demand service Lulu.com, which adds 8,000 new titles each month.

“If you’ve never published before, most people are surprised at the amount of effort that they have to do to market [their book],” acknowledges Keith Ogorek, vice president of marketing for Author Solutions.

“If you’re not J.K. Rowling, good luck these days [going the traditional publishing route],” says Gail Jordan, former director of public relations for Lulu.com. “You’re not going to get the marketing behind you. We really empower authors to promote and market themselves.” But, Jordan adds, it’s important for authors to keep their own goals in mind. “Success is defined by numbers, but everybody’s bar is at a different place,” she says.

Christine Marks, a professor of equine science in Owen County, Indiana, who publishes fantasy novels such as Elfhunter through one of Author Solutions’ brands called AuthorHouse, says she started with a modest goal. “Initially, all I wanted to do was bring them to life,” she says.

But over time, she has built an audience by interacting with readers at gaming conventions and book signings and by making the most of what she calls her “secret weapon” — her cover art. Along with wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the images, Marks has turned her cars into roving billboards by wrapping them with custom-made decals splashed with her books’ art. The cost? Just under $1,000 each. “I hand out cards at drive-up windows because everybody goes, ‘Oh my gosh, what is that?’ ” she says. The cards include her book titles and, for easy ordering online, the ISBN numbers.

AGENTS TOLD LISA GENOVA, a Chatham, Mass., native who has a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard, that she should write nonfiction. But Genova was determined to forge ahead with her novel about Alzheimer’s, Still Alice. She sent a copy of the manuscript to the National Alzheimer’s Association.

“This was the beginning of my marketing,” she says. “There are five million Americans who have the disease, and they have children and wives and husbands and grandchildren and people who are deeply affected by this. So I knew that there was an audience.”

The association gave the novel — and Genova — their seal of approval by offering to help her promote it, contributing an all-important blurb for the cover, and asking her to blog for them. It was a sturdy foundation for her publishing platform. She continued to reach out, mostly online, to people in the Alzheimer’s and medical communities. She published her book on iUniverse in July 2007, and between sales from speaking engagements, online sites, and even the trunk of her car, Genova moved 1,300 books in 10 months. “By January of 2008, I had received [lots of online] reviews, and independent book stores were picking it as staff picks,” she says. “Alzheimer Association chapters were finding out about it and asking me to give keynote speeches at their conferences, and that was huge.”

Then, still determined to get a traditional publisher to notice her — and inspired by a Boston Globe story about self-published author Brunonia Barry, who went on to get a $2 million publishing deal — Genova shelled out four figures to hire a public- relations firm for a three-month publicity push.

The PR firm made sure the book landed in the hands of influential reviewers. Agents and publishing houses finally took notice. Simon & Schuster bought Still Alice for just under a half-million dollars and published it in January 2009. By the fourth quarter of 2009, there were 410,000 copies in print.

“If I hadn’t self-published, I like to think that at some point someone would have taken the chance [on me], but maybe it wouldn’t have sold with such excitement,” Genova says. “The book deal was helped very much by the fact that the book had this level of excitement already out there.”

To Market, to Market

Use these 10 strategies to get your book sales going.

The experts at Author Solutions and Lulu.com, as well as the successful self-published authors we interviewed, have found success with the following strategies:

1 Know your audience — it’s the only way to market properly. “When I talk to an author and I say, ‘Who is the audience for your book?’ and they say, ‘Everybody,’ I know that it won’t be successful,” says Author Solutions’ Keith Ogorek.

2 Give readers a choice of book formats — offer e-books, hardcovers, and paperbacks simultaneously.

3 Set a price that allows readers to take a chance on a first-time author.

4 Go viral. Post a video book trailer on YouTube to introduce yourself and your book. But don’t make it all about you — it should provide a service (or humor) for the viewer. Ask friends and the people on your e-mail list (see number six) to pass it along.

5 Whether online or in person, interact with your target audience. Give them a chance to know and care about the person behind the book.

6 Collect names and e-mail addresses. Use the list to update your audience about new books, updated editions, and events in their area.

7 Ask your audience for help so they become invested in your success. Let them help choose the final cover art or a character’s name.

8 Contribute to the conversation. If you blog about your topic of choice, don’t just wait for people to come to you. (They won’t.) Comment on other blogs, and don’t forget to use your URL and book title in your signature.

9 Put the book in the hands of influential readers and reviewers. Consider hiring a professional publicist for a short-term stint to help you make those connections.

10 Advertise on websites and in newsletters that target your audience, or, as author Christine Marks does, on T-shirts and car wraps, everywhere you go.