Authors Hate Marketing Gimmicks Too (But Nothing Else Seems To Work)

There was a film I saw forever and a day ago. In this film a male character dresses as a woman, and so women (including a woman he's very sweet on) let their guard down around him and speak their minds openly. Our lead's crush says something along the lines of, "All this dancing around the subject is exhausting. I wish a man would just say to me, 'I think you're beautiful. Would you like to have sex?' Get it right out in the open and cut to the chase." Then, when no longer dressed as a woman, our protagonist says exactly what she told him she'd like a man to say to her. Rather than finding this forward, open way of speaking engaging and enticing, though, she slaps him for being a cad and stalks away.

This scene (which I believe is from the film Tootsie, but my search-fu has failed me so I can't be sure) comes back to me time and time again whenever I try to market my books to a broader audience. Because everyone says they'd rather have creators who dispensed with the gimmicks and just made a straightforward pitch as to why people should buy their books... until we do that, and get metaphorically slapped for being nothing but a bunch of crass, jaded sell-outs who are only interested in the money.

Seriously... what do you want from us?

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Trust Me, We Hate Marketing, Too.

Every writer I've ever met got into the profession because they liked writing. While many individuals have other passions, or other parts of the job they like, I have never met anyone who writes books just because they need something interesting to challenge their marketing skills.

Put another way, most of us like writing books. Most of us hate actually selling books.

Yeah, we like money. We just hate marketing.

Writers, by and large, are people who just want to tell our stories. Most of us are happy enough to be interviewed (rare as that seems to happen to a lot of us), and if we're feeling particularly bold we might be willing to go up to a microphone and do a reading. Some of us can even afford to get a table at a convention, trying to catch the eye of people walking by, judging on a split second from their conversation, tee-shirts, or cosplay whether our books are the sort of thing they'd like to read.

Then there's social media marketing... which is what those of us with little to no budget and a relatively small or niche audience can afford to do. And it is where the frustration of this mixed messaging cranks itself up to 11.

Because if you listen to the majority of people on the Internet, they tell you there's nothing they hate more than deceptive marketing ploys. They don't want creators using giveaways to get their information, they don't want articles and videos on one topic to act as backdoor segues to make a sales pitch, and so on. Those who acknowledge that creators are people with bills to pay (which isn't everyone, of course) usually say they'd rather have a creator just out-and-out pitch their project so they can make a decision on if they want to buy it. No elaborate promises, no big commercials, just say what it is, what the price is, and let them know what they're buying. If they want it, they'll buy it. If they don't, they won't.

In practice, though, nothing gets you more hate as a creator than just showing up and saying, "Hey, I wrote this thing! I think it's pretty cool, so check out the free sample, and consider buying yourself a copy if you like what you see?" It doesn't matter if you follow the rules of the group/forum you're in regarding how often you post. It doesn't matter if you just make a single post about your project. Even when you follow all the niceties and requests set forth in the rules, the surest response you're going to get is people calling you a spammer and demanding you be banned from ever darkening this corner of the Internet again. Because while they might say they just want you to be upfront with your intentions, that is rarely true in practice.

You Catch More Flies With Honey Than Vinegar

While this saying isn't technically true (as I pointed out in my How To Make an Apple Cider Vinegar Fly Trap for those who like DIY content), the metaphor works well enough when talking about marketing. Because as soon as you make it clear you're selling something, people will cover their ears and walk away (or berate you because you expect to be paid for the time and energy you put into creating something). Which means that we often have to pull an Odysseus, and wheel out the Trojan Horse in order to get people to actually consider what it is we're trying to sell.

This video is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I've spent the past year and change writing books for my "Sundara: Dawn of a New Age" fantasy RPG setting, but it can be like pulling teeth trying to get people interested in the project. Even if they play either Pathfinder Classic or Dungeons and Dragons 5E. Even if they've complained they wish they had a different setting to play in. Even if they're fans of my past work. As soon as you say, "Hey, I have a new setting for sale," they scroll on by like I tried to reach for their wallets through their monitors.

That's where this video comes in. It's content marketing, plain and simple.

This video lets the audience see me, the creator. It lets them hear my voice, and makes them acknowledge that a real person was behind this product. I kept it conversational and low-key, just like I was talking with someone around a gaming table. And while my purpose is to get people interested in the Sundara setting, and buy links are provided in the description, I focus on talking about how I removed alignment from the game, and on showing players the possibilities this creates, while also discussing how difficult this would have been to do in a setting that wasn't being built from the ground up. All of that because I want people to engage with the discussion about this setting, and to get them interested in seeing what it has to offer.

You could argue that's less than honest, as at the end of the day the goal is still to get people to buy copies of these splats. However, Shakespeare gotta get paid, son, and if just saying, "I made this cool RPG setting, please give it a look and consider buying a copy of your own?" doesn't move books then I have to do something else. And if that something else is learning how to make videos (a skill I am still trying to come to grips with) in order to come at my potential audience from an unexpected angle, then that's what I'm going to have to do.

Do I want to do that, necessarily? No, not really. It takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to write scripts, rehearse, set up my space, get my cat to be quiet, figure out my tone, edit out flubs, do reshoots, and so on, and so forth. If I had 500-1,000 people (not really a big audience) who were willing to buy a copy of every RPG splat, novel, or collection I released whenever it dropped, chances are good that I wouldn't be making videos on the topic. I probably wouldn't write as many blogs trying to boost my own signal, or spend quite so much time sharing links to all my stuff on social media hoping to bump my earnings high enough to pay my bills at the end of the month. Instead I'd be banging away on the next splat book, the next novel, etc.

But I don't have that audience. And since just showing up and saying, "I've written this book, this is what it's about, here's a free sample so you can decide for yourself if you like it," doesn't do the job, it's time to pull out a marketing gimmick. Because, and this is the truth of the matter, if they didn't get results then we wouldn't use them.

Incidentally, for those who did enjoy the above video, consider subscribing to the Azukail Games YouTube channel. It looks like I'm going to be putting up content their for the foreseeable future, and if we can hit that 1k subscribers and 4k watched hours of content in the past year mark then the publisher it going to be a lot more likely to let me do bigger, more involved productions than the relatively short videos I've been putting up there for the past little while.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Look Beneath A Story's Surface When Taking Lessons From Other Writers

Every writer out there has studied the works of those who came before, especially when it comes to the books that personally inspired their work. A lot of us could probably hold lectures on the things that really stood out and affected us, whether it was the tragic elements of Frankenstein, the unique interpersonal dynamics of Avatar: The Last Airbender, or the tone and gothic atmosphere of the 1980s/1990s Batman comics.

With that said, a lot of us can enjoy and be affected by stories without really popping open the hood and getting at what makes them work (or what made them work in their time). This can often lead to writers learning the wrong lessons when analyzing these works, which is why it's a good idea to dig a little deeper to be sure that you're putting the right tools in your toolbox going forward.

Oh... oh there's a LOT going on in here...

Before we get started, remember to sign up for my weekly newsletter if you want to stay on top of all my latest releases. If you want to help me keep the wheels turning and the lights on, consider becoming a Patreon patron. And lastly, to follow all my followables check out my Linktree!

Now then, let's get to it!

Knock-Offs and Genuine Articles

A long time ago I wrote an entry titled Your Fantasy Novel Probably Sucks, and Professor Awesome's University Explains Why. The short version of that post is that a lot of people who want to write fantasy novels grew up influenced by Tolkien. While not a bad thing in and of itself, they often wanted to follow the blueprint he'd laid down with an epic trilogy of books, big world building ideas, etc. The issues was that these stories often lacked characters to act as audience focus; characters who have the same heart as Samwise, the same mystery as Aragorn, or the determination of Frodo.

Put another way, a lot of folks end up copying the style, the sound, and the aesthetics of arguably the most famous trilogy in fantasy at this point, but their vehicle lacks an engine. And without that drive, the story just sort of sits there, doing nothing, and going nowhere.

Hmmm... why isn't it moving?

We can see this in all sorts of creative endeavors, and from all kinds of creators. Another good example is Zack Synder's adaptation of Watchman, as it could be argued that his personal politics and opinions caused him to utterly miss the point of what the original creator Alan Moore was laying down. Snyder got the aesthetics of the story, and he understood the basic reversal (treating superheroes as part of the real world, and the implications thereof), but he utterly missed the commentary Moore was making on that power fantasy of superheroes that made it such an effective deconstruction of the genre. So we see characters like Rorschach portrayed as heroes, rather than as the monsters they were intended to be. We also see the glorification of the superhero, instead of how it is (arguably) something that wears one down, and rarely solves any problems. And so on, and so forth.

From romance novels to zombie stories, killer clowns to Viking-esque fantasy epics, the classics become classics for a reason. And if we want to tap into these tales and understand what makes them tick then we need to look beneath the surface to get to the heart of the matter.

Look Beyond Aesthetics

A lot of the time when authors miss a message it's because they were focused on the outward structure of the story, missing what was going on deeper inside of it. As a result, when they apply their own creative touch it feels like they perfectly recreated the wrapper around a Reese's peanut butter cup, but they completely neglected the delicious treat inside of it.

It looks right, it smells right... taste? Why bother with that?

Stories that stick with us affected us for a reason, even if we aren't always sure what it was at the time. And it's true that sometimes a story will hit us harder because of factors that aren't of the author's doing (it reminded you of someone you cared about who gave you the book as a gift, it was the first "grown up" story you read, etc.). The stories that we keep coming back to, though, and the ones that really stand the test of time, tend to have messages inside them. They have characters who are interesting and compelling, and they deal with themes that spark our imaginations.

Magic systems, sci-fi gadgetry, fantasy species, mood and storytelling flair are all nice things to have, but these things are often the icing on the cake. And while you can construct a cake-like replica made out of just icing, it isn't going to satisfy the audience the way a genuine cake would. So keep that in mind when you start drawing inspiration from authors who came before you, and asking what elements of their stories you're trying to add to your own repertoire going forward.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Direct Donations Really Are The Best Way to Help Creators You Love

 I talk a lot about how to best support creators on here, mostly because a lot of the content consuming public doesn't actually know the ins and outs of how their activity translates into funding for those artists they like. And this week I wanted to remind everyone that if you want to keep the creators you like in business, the best thing you can do is give money to them directly. It doesn't have to be a lot, but services like Patreon, Ko-Fi, etc. are your best bet when it comes to making sure your favorites can keep food in the cupboard and rent covered from month-to-month.

Incidentally, folks who get to the end of this and decide they want to help fund my efforts are encouraged to check out The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page in addition to my Ko-Fi!

Seriously, every little bit helps!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Eyeballs Versus Donations

When most of us think of supporting the creators we love, we think about following them on social media, sharing their posts, buying their books, reading their blogs/articles, or watching their YouTube videos. And all of that is helpful, don't get me wrong... but it's not always as helpful as just handing the artist you love a tip and saying, "You do good work, champ, keep it up!"

And to illustrate this point, I'd like to throw some numbers at folks.

- YouTube pays roughly $3-$5 per 1,000 video views.

- Spotify pays roughly $0.04 per every 10 streams (meaning you need more than 200 streams just to earn $1)

- Vocal (where I put articles like 5 Tips For Playing Better Evil Characters) pays $6 per 1k reads if you're a Vocal+ member. Half that if you use the free version.

- Sales for an RPG product like 100 Cults to Encounter can range from $0.15 to $0.40 each.

- Sales for a novel like my sword and sorcery tale Crier's Knife range from $2-$4 each.

Now ask how popular something would need to be to pay your rent.

Looking at this, there's no denying that your eyeballs and activity have value as a member of an audience. However, even if you leave a video, stream, or channel on all day, you probably didn't earn that creator more than a handful of nickels. Even if you spent hours every day digging through a blog or article archive reading everything you found, it would be worth maybe a couple of dimes. Even buying a copy of three dozen RPG supplements, or an arm load of novels, would only earn that creator a couple bucks.

Incidentally, this is the reason so many individuals have sponsors for their work. Even I was lucky enough to get a sponsor for my article How To Build The Catachan Jungle Fighters in The Pathfinder RPG, and that sponsorship was really the only meaningful payment I received for putting that guide together.

Now, does that mean you shouldn't listen to music by bands you like, watch YouTube videos of creators you enjoy, or read blogs? Absolutely not! We all create this content for it to be enjoyed by people like you. However, in order for traffic alone to pay our bills we would need a truly massive audience who were all tuning in and reading/listening/watching every single day, sharing the links on their socials and making sure our signal got boosted to hell and back.

Most of us don't have that. We probably never will, no matter how hard we work.

Direct Support is What's Most Effective

Do you have $1 you could spare to help keep a creator whose work you enjoy flowing? For most of us out there (even those of us with very limited budgets) the answer is probably yes. We could scrounge 4 quarters from the couch, and pass that along to an artist we love.

We could. But most of us don't.

So come on... help a fellow out here?

Consider this. I have just over 800 people following my Neal F. Litherland Facebook page at time of writing. That's really not a lot of followers for a professional creator. However, if every person who has elected to follow me all went to my Patreon page and pledged $1 a month, my monthly bills would go from, "Making me sweat bullets as I struggle to make ends meet," to, "Everything's paid for, I can actually save a little bit, and maybe splurge on a pizza on game night."

Hell, if even half of the people on that page all became $1 patrons, my bills would be covered. Things would still be close, but I would worry far less than I do now. I might even be able to take my foot off the gas a little bit to work on larger projects that don't have a 1-month turnaround because I could financially survive long enough to get new novels, RPG campaign paths, or equally big projects finished and ready for my readers to check out.

Again, the lesson here is not that we should all stop streaming music, watching videos, or reading blogs. Rather that we need to all acknowledge that if we really want to help the creators we love actually cover their bills that it's better to just give them a little tip, in addition to watching, listening, sharing their content on social media, buying merch when you can, etc.

Because it just makes the bigger impact... even if all you're giving is pocket change.

Also, before I forget, if you haven't subscribed to the Azukail Games YouTube channel yet, please do so! Audio dramas, world building, game discussions, and more are going on over there, and we're trying to get the thing monetized by the end of the year. We need 1k people and 4k hours of watched time in the past year, and we're nowhere near that level.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Key To Grimdark Fiction is Showing How Things Could Have Been Better

From A Song of Ice and Fire to the far future of Warhammer 40,000, grimdark fiction takes many forms. However, while the details of the settings, worlds, and stories may vary from one book to another, the key to really making these tales work is that they're tragedies on a whole other level. But for a tragedy to really hit home, and to resonate with the audience, it's important to show the audience how things could work out... to make them really wonder if maybe this time characters will get a happy ending.

They won't, of course, but the reader needs to at least think it's possible.

They need to drop their guard for you to land the blow.

Before we get started, remember to sign up for my weekly newsletter if you want to stay on top of all my latest releases. If you want to help me keep the wheels turning and the lights on, consider becoming a Patreon patron. And lastly, to follow all my followables check out my Linktree!

Now then, let's get to it!

The Spoonful of Sugar Helps The Poised Pill Go Down

I've been thinking on this topic for a good while now, especially while working on some Warhammer 40K tales of my own like Field Test, which is about an experimental deployment of a previously untested weapon by an inquisitor, and Waking Dogs: A World Eaters Tale, which is about one of the fallen legionnaires deciding he's had enough of his lot in life. And something I realized while I was doing all that thinking is that a major flaw in a lot of grimdark fiction is that a lot of writers mistake bleakness for tragedy. This really undermines a story, and it can stop readers from getting invested in what's going on.

What makes grimdark fiction (and really any tragic story) work is that the audience has to actively want the tragedy to not occur, even if they're reasonably certain that it will. If things start bad, and only get worse with no suggestion that they could ever have been better, then there's no contrast for the audience to be impacted by. It's just a parade of rakes to the face as they try to walk across the yard.

A perfect example of what I'm talking about is slasher movies. While neither grimdark nor tragic (usually, anyway), a good slasher movie gets the audience invested in the survival of the protagonists. We watch them being stalked by an implacable, masked killer, and we know they're in a bad situation, but we're hoping they will make the right decisions and survive (if not triumph) because we've developed empathy for these characters. Even if everything in the story, the score, and our experience says they're going to fail, we hope they don't. In bad slasher movies (much like in bad grimdark fiction) we often have characters that bad things continually happen to with no reprieve or chance that they might not happen. And because it feels like there's no chance things could turn out better, it creates a sense of bored Nihilism; why bother getting emotionally invested when it feels like there's no point?

One of the best ways to do this is to give the audiences glimpses of how things could happen. Show them how our protagonists might triumph, or what things they could do to avoid the terrible fate. Can our lead overcome their pride and make restitution? Could our coward nobly sacrifice themself to save everyone else? Would someone selfish give up their most prized possessions, or their power, for the good of others?

The answer to all of these is usually, "no," because we're still talking about grimdark stories here. However, if the audience sees the possibilities, it can be a lot like seeing the bomb under the table. They know what could happen, and because you've put that possibility in play they can't un-know it. The only question as they watch the tragedy unfold is will it be the road the story goes down? Or just a glimpse of what-might-have been that will make the grimness hit all the harder?

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my cat noir novel Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

If You Need Support as a Creator, Ask For It (You Might Be Surprised)

When you're an author you basically live or die on the support of your audience. It doesn't matter how much you write, what platform you use, or who publishes you... if you don't have an audience reading your work, at the end of the day you don't get paid. That's just the way it is.

Audience support goes beyond just sales, though. The algorithms on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter give preference to accounts that have the most subscribers. Books that have the most reviews, or videos that have the most upvotes, are the ones that get recommended to other shoppers and viewers, thus making it more likely for them to check out your work. So while buying books puts money directly into creator's pockets, reviewing books, following pages, commenting on and sharing posts, these things are all extremely important.

So how do you get people to help you out when you're a creator? Well... the easiest way is to just ask.

We've got to pump those numbers up! These are rookie numbers!

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Also, if you've got a bit of spare cash that you'd like to use to help keep the wheels turning, consider becoming a Patreon patron!

Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

It Really Is That Simple

There's are two, major schools of thought I've seen regarding building a following which I think are extremely silly, but a lot of people seem to buy into. First is the idea that people who see your work will be so struck by it that they will spontaneously follow all the things you release, give you good ratings, and binge all of your content. Don't get me wrong, those fans are great when you find them, but they are few and far between, so you shouldn't depend on them to do the work for you. Second is this idea that you have to be some kind of puppet master, using the proper keywords and oblique suggestions to plant the idea in your audience's mind that they should follow your channels, share your posts, etc. This school says that just coming out and telling them what to do is crass, and it's more likely to result in them not doing it because you weren't subtle enough.

Your audience is skittish, and you need to come at them sideways.

The idea that you need to be quiet about how your audience can help you reminds me of an example I was given in a textbook for a marketing class back when I was in college. You're at the mall looking for a new pair of shoes. There are two stores that both have the same model you want. The price is exactly the same, but you know if you buy from one store then a salesperson you like will get the commission. That knowledge that your actions are directly helping someone out can be the tipping point that sends you to their store, rather than somewhere else.

It's the same when you make content online. Because most people who consume our content don't think of things in terms of audience size, review numbers, traffic, and algorithm inertia. Generally it just comes down to, "Did I like that thing I just saw?" and occasionally the yes is strong enough for them to click the like button, or to subscribe to us all on their own. But if you don't want to leave it up to chance, take your audience's hand and tell them explicitly how they can help you keep producing content by liking, subscribing, sharing, buying copies, etc.

A personal example of this that I had recently was reaching out to the various communities familiar with my work to try to build the following on the Azukail Games YouTube channel. While grabbing around 40 fresh subscribers in a day is child's play for a lot of folks, it's probably the largest 1-day jump the channel has experienced in some time. While that only put it up to 195 subscribers (and it needs 1,000+ before it can get monetized) that's not a bad start. And all I did was tell people the channel existed, tell them how far we were from our goals, and asked for a bit of help boosting the signal and subscriber base.

Incidentally, if you're reading this and you enjoy world building, audio dramas, and listening to creators talk about their work, consider subscribing yourself to help boost the signal!

So if you want to get people to support your work, tell them how. Tell them often. Because it might feel repetitive, but a lot of people don't actually know how to support you, or even think about it at all while they're enjoying it. Be direct, be clear, and give people actionable instructions. Don't drop hints and hope for the best, because then you have no one to blame but yourself for your audience moving on without hitting any of the buttons you want them to.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!