books, authors and other interestingness

Last month I put together a brief survey to find out how people find new books and authors. One of the biggest challenges facing new authors, regardless of whether they are self-published or going with a traditional publisher, is getting the word out about their work. Increasingly, authors are having to do a significant amount of legwork in terms of promotion as marketing and advertising budgets are slashed, whether we like it or not.

The trouble is, most self-published authors don’t have a particularly detailed understanding of their market. Either they haven’t thought to find out, or simply don’t know where to start. It’s understandable – we didn’t get into writing in order to become expert marketeers – but something that we just have to get to grips with.

So I thought I’d start my own journey towards understanding by asking people where they find out about new books and authors. Here are the results. Note: In the original question, 1 meant “frequently” and 5 meant “never”, but I inverted it during analysis so that the graphs made more sense.

Question 1: What genres of fiction do you enjoy reading?

The first question asked people to rate how often they read particular genres. As you can see, respondents were fairly evenly spread, but the most popular genres were Science Fiction and Fantasy; the least popular were Western, Chick Lit, Romance, and Horror.

Question 2: Where do you find about about new books and new authors?

The second question asked people to rate how frequently they found new books or authors via different methods. There’s bad news for self-publishers here: The most popular ways to find new authors remains word of mouth (but not via Twitter or Facebook), browsing in a bricks and mortar bookshop, browsing in an online bookshop and newspaper reviews.

Least popular sources were Kindle forums and Amazon forums, which isn’t a surprise as much of the content there is for authors trying to figure out the vagaries of Amazons physical and ebook stores. Disappointingly, GoodReads and Library thing fared poorly too.

Now, my sample size was quite small, just 238 responses. But it echoes Verso Digital’s 2011 Survey of Book-Buying Behaviour, released last month, which polled 2,200 respondents. Verso Digital found that most of their respondents found new books through personal recommendation (49.2%), bookstore staff recommendations (30.8%), advertising (24.4%, and a source I forgot to add in), search engines (21.6% and ditto). Only 11.8% found new books through social networks and 12.1% via blogs. Book reviews accounted for 18.9%.

There are a lot more interesting nuggets in the report, so it’s well worth a flick through the slides.

Conclusions: Personal recommendation most important for self-publishers

The results of this survey are a bit of a mixed bag for self-publishers. For most of us it’s impossible to get our books into prominent positions in bookshops either offline or on, and even harder to get newspaper reviews. The places where it’s easy for us to gain access, such as GoodReads, LibraryThing, Twitter, Facebook and on our own blog simply aren’t that influential. It’s disappointing, because these are places where authors can be very proactive.

My suspicion is that whilst the people who use book-focused sites are avid readers and buyers, there are few of them in the broader population. Given the lack of referral stats for Amazon there’s no way of knowing how many people find my book from Goodreads, but I know that few make it over to my blog from there.

So what are we left with? Both my graph and the Verso Digital figures show that self-published authors should focus on encouraging people to make personal recommendations for their work, as that is still the most important way that people find new authors and books. Simply telling your friends that you recently read a book and loved it appears to be the single most important thing you can do to help an author along. Plus ça change, eh?

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I belong to an internet forum populated by a right bunch of weirdos some lovely people, and in the course of discussions about my survey, the one in which I’m trying to figure out how people discover new books and authors (it’s still open, please answer it!), the question was asked:

So what the hell is Literary Fiction? Is everything else is non-literary fiction?

The answers were far too insightful to just leave them hidden away in our little corner of the web, so I’m happy to say that I have permission to share them with you. Names have been redacted to protect the innocent.

Serious books that aspire to be literature. Full of high falutin ideas and not many knob gags.

You mean books that the reviewer and/or marketer didn’t understand (or finish?) and couldn’t place elsewhere?

And a lack of death-rays, super-villains etc

What’s the difference between “classics” and “literary?”

Classics is old. Literary is new stuff pretending to be good.

I reckon literary fiction is where the prose is so good the plot can afford to be poo. They make great reads but lesser films.

So can I assume “literary” is “everything left over without a genre”? You know, books about people and their problems who aren’t aliens/knights/spies/criminals/women?

Some are good, but some are a navel-gazing wankathons. Try The Finkler Question. Great prose, but sod all happens.

The stuff that wins awards, but nobody actually reads?

I think some of those definitions are pretty much spot on.

Today I stumbled across a blog post by KB/KT Grant about how authors who can’t handle negative reviews should really stay away from reading them, and certainly shouldn’t throw a hissy fit about any criticism they get. I hadn’t previously seen any of the examples of authorial meltdown that Grant refers to, but she is absolutely correct to say that writers should never, ever respond badly to reviews. Not in public. Not in private. Not ever.

Negative reviews are part and parcel of putting stuff out there, and if you can’t handle reading them you should ignore all reviews all the time. It’s really that simple.

But whilst Grant says that sites like Goodreads are for readers, not for authors…

At no time in Goodreads’ mission statement does it state that their site is for authors to promote their books

…and whilst that might be true of their mission statement, when signed in to the site as an author it is very, very clear that Goodreads does indeed think that the site is for authors to promote their books. On my author dashboard it says:

Check the stats for your books and giveaways, and learn more about how to promote your books on Goodreads.

That’s right up at the top of the page. In the sidebar, it says:

Learn more about how to promote your books with special tools on Goodreads.

Clearly, Goodreads does want bring authors and readers together. And there’s a risk in that, for both parties: Readers risk learning that a particular author is a moron and authors risk being harangued by moronic readers, for it is an undeniable truth that both moronic authors and moronic readers exist.

But you just have to get over it and move on.

I also think that reviews, even negative ones, can be really useful for authors, if they have the maturity to read them with both an open mind and a pinch of salt. A review is one person’s opinion and it may well be that that person is a douche. It may also be that your book really does suck, or that you really did mess up the ending, or that your characterisation isn’t as crisp as it should be. The truth to be found in negative reviews varies from ‘all of it’ to ‘none of it’, and only if you are honest with yourself as to the potential for flaws in your work will you be able learn something from them.

It’s also important to know when to ignore criticism. I have had one person criticise (not in a review, but in a comment on G+) Argleton, but they also told me that they had read only half the book. I had hoped that they would finish it and then either stand by their point or let me know that actually they now thought their initial assessment to be incorrect. They didn’t, which rather robbed their criticism of validity.

But these days, authors cannot completely escape contact with readers, particularly as authors both new and mid-list have to do a lot of their own promotion and a lot of that work is done online and in social media.

I personally believe that we should not even try to avoid contact (although if you’re wildly successful you will have to limit it simply because of scale: you simply cannot spend the time that would be required to reply to everyone). Even I, as an almost entirely unknown author, get people saying hello on Twitter because they have read or are about to read Argleton. I always try to reply politely, although as with all things digital sometimes I miss messages. But if someone were to say something negative, I would either respond gracefully, ignore it, or block them, depending on the nature of the message.

And that’s the key thing to remember. As authors, we do have some agency here. We choose who to follow on Twitter and who to block. We choose whose comments to allow on our blog, and whose to block. And if someone posts an abusive review on Amazon (as opposed to one that is simply negative), we can choose to report it and let Amazon deal with it. And the rest we can choose to ignore.

There’s something always Darwinian about the kind of stupidity Grant describes. If an author is going to wig out at their readers, then it is going to come back to bite them on the arse in the form of “Do Not Read” notices, more negative reviews, and the rapid creation of very bad reputations. Authors at any stage of their career except ‘already wildly successful’ will do themselves irreparable harm by such ill-considered actions because, by all accounts, publishers and agents do have a tendency to notice these sorts of things. Freaking out over a bad review isn’t just bad for one’s blood pressure, it’s also bad for one’s career.

As they say, Karma’s a bitch.

It was with great sadness that I read today of Anne McCaffrey’s death.

I remember the very moment that I discovered Anne McCaffrey’s work. I was standing in my aunt and uncle’s dining room after some family gathering, almost on the way out of the door, when my uncle picked a book off his shelf and offered it to me, suggesting that it might be something I’d enjoy. It was Anne McCaffrey’s The White Dragon. I can’t remember the year, but it would have had to be after 1979, when I was 8, and given the already well-thumbed nature of the book, I suspect it might have been a couple of years later.

I was hooked. McCaffrey’s writing was amazing. The story flowed so beautifully, I really couldn’t put it down. I’d always been one for reading books under the bedcovers with a torch and with McCaffrey’s books I had found a writer whose work spoke to me in a way that other writers didn’t and kept me reading long into the night (and much to the consternation of my mother).

I often joke that I moved straight from Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys to Asimov and EE Doc Smith and Heinlein, but that’s not far off reality. I never throw books away and have very, very few from that age that are traditional children’s or YA books. In fact, most of the YA books in my collection are ones I’ve bought as an adult (e.g. Susan Cooper’s Dark is Rising series). I didn’t get pocket money to speak of, so my reading was pretty much constrained by whatever my Dad had about. So, Night of the Trilobites it was, then.

But, as good as all that was, I can’t really say that I identified with many of the characters I found in those books. In fact, these days, I’m hard pushed to remember any female characters that I could genuinely admire at all. I mean, Friday is a great book, but it’s hard to identify with an artificial, genetically engineered woman who works as a combat courier.

McCaffrey, on the other hand, had strong female characters at the centre of many of her books that were believable, admirable, and the kind of people that I could aspire to be. They weren’t Mary Sues either. Lessa, one of McCaffrey’s key female protagonists from the Pern series, is smart, sassy, brave, but also arrogant, stubborn and grumpy.

Many of McCaffrey’s female characters came from positions of disadvantage: The Rowan was an orphan; Helva, the Ship who Sang, was severely disabled; Menolly was socially outcast from her community; Killashandra was a singer with a flawed voice. As a bit of a loner myself, these were characters whose troubles I could identify with, yet their successes were hard won and their struggles never trite or contrived. These were women I could look up to, who were successful on their own terms and who saw men as equals. These were women I wanted to be.

I remember several years ago reading somewhere, in some sort of ‘dictionary of science fiction’, that some critics looked down on McCaffrey’s work, seeing it as some kind of sop to girlie teenage romanticism, and feeling angry without really realising why (other than that they had slated one of my favourite authors). Now, running Ada Lovelace Day, I know exactly why McCaffrey’s work was sometimes belittled and why it made me so angry: McCaffrey wrote strong, smart women in a genre that was horrendously male-dominated and, sadly, some men find the only way to cope with strong women is to undermine them and, in this case, that meant derogating McCaffrey and her characters.

McCaffrey’s contribution to science fiction and literature was tremendous. As Tor said, she was “the first woman to win a Hugo Award for fiction, the first woman to win a Nebula Award, and the first author to hit the New York Times bestseller list with an SF title (The White Dragon).”

But for me, and I suspect for many others, she was also the first author to speak so directly to my experiences growing up as a girl on the edges of community. She was the first science fiction author I read who I truly believed would have understood, completely and implicitly, what it was like to be me. It was her writing, more than anyone’s, that shaped my view of what the world could be and, more importantly, what I could be. It was Anne McCaffrey who told me that I could be myself, could be outcast and still be successful.

I’m much less of the social outcast now than I was growing up, but I wouldn’t have grown up to be the woman I am without Anne McCaffrey’s fictional role models to light my way. All those long nights, reading her books under the covers, gave me strength and inspiration that no one else at the time seemed able to provide.

The whole discussion about what the British Fantasy Society could morph into after its recent crisis set me to thinking about what, as an emerging author, I need and where I get those needs met (if I do at all). I’m a bit of an edge case, because right now I’m more interested in getting my stuff read by giving it away and binding my own books than sending manuscripts off to agents and publishers. (Not that I wouldn’t welcome that conversation should it occur, but I’m not actively seeking it at this point.) So that possibly makes my list rather different to that of other writes, but I thought i’d share it anyway.

1. Readers
The thing that I need the most – and I think this is quite a common need amongst writers of every genre and at every stage of their career – is readers. Most of my readers so far have come via my Kickstarter project and Twitter. It’s tough getting your stuff in front of enough people to build a significant readership, and anything that helps with that is useful. Of course, I can pimp Argleton to as many people as follow me on Twitter, read my blog, or whathaveyou, but a recommendation by someone else is worth so much more. (Which is why, if you’ve read Argleton and liked it, you should feel free to review it on Amazon. )There’s a lot still to do in terms of reaching more people, but finding readers will always be my biggest challenge.

2. Design and editorial
One thing I learnt doing Argleton is that I’m rubbish as design. The cover for Argleton looked awfully amateur, but I didn’t have the budget to hire someone to do a better job. My next book project will correct that error. I’d also love to hire a professional editor at some point, but I think that might have to wait.

But there’s a big trust issue, because you could easily spend a lot of time and even money working with someone only to discover that they really aren’t right for the project. I will likely start trying to find a cover artist via my existing contacts, but if that doesn’t work out I’ll have to investigate other options.

3. Peer review
If there’s one thing that’s incredibly valuable for any writer, it’s having a handful of people willing to read your first draft and tell you when you’re doing something wrong. There’s quite a lot of websites, like Zoetrope, that allow you to exchange your reviews of other people’s work for getting reviews of your own. It can be a bit hit-and-miss, however, as not everyone has a good feel for stories and ill-considered reviews can led you on wild goose chases. I’m lucky that Kevin has a really good head for story – it was he that pointed out that my original ending of Argleton sucked, and it was through discussing it with him that I figured out what needed to happen.

4. Technical expertise
If you have ever done battle with the epub format, you’ll know what I mean about sometimes needing a bit of technical expertise to drawn on. I’m quite a geek, but even so it takes a bit of a while to get your head round the tools you need to whip an ebook into shape. When you know what you’re doing, reformatting into mobi etc., is easy, but when you don’t it can be a bit of a pain. I’ve happily accepted help from a friend on this.

5. Typesetting oversight 
If you want your book to look good, you need to properly typeset it. Sticking it in Word and picking a pretty font isn’t good enough – it needs to look professional. I’m lucky in that I know the basics of typesetting and again, I have a friend with mad ninja skills whose experience I can draw upon.

I’m not sure this list is complete, but it’ll do for now. If you have suggestions for how I can meet some of these needs, or if yours are different, do feel free to let me know in the comments.

I don’t know much about the British Fantasy Society, other than what I’ve gleaned from their website or at FantasyCon last year. In many ways, I’m in a poor position to pass any comment whatsoever on what they should or shouldn’t do after the recent controversy around the British Fantasy Awards. I’m not even in a good position to pass comment on said controversy. I’ve no inside knowledge, nor any great desire to fully read round accusation, counter-accusation, or response in order to form a considered opinion.

But what I can and want to do is think a little about about what the BFS might want to become. It’s clear that it’s at what could become an important inflection point, now that its Chairman has resigned over the awards. And it’s also clear that a number of people have questions about what the BFS is, or should be, or could be. And the only way we’re going to work out some answers is to have a public discussion about the issue, so here goes.

I’m not a member of the BFS. I hadn’t even heard of it until last year when Vince asked me if I was going to FantasyCon. I decided that, now I was taking writing more seriously, it would be a good investment and bought tickets. I knew that a few of my writerly friends would be there, so it seemed like a pretty good idea. And it was a lot of fun.

What it wasn’t was useful. At times, it struggled to be even interesting. It seemed to me that is was an event that didn’t really know what it was supposed to be.

The BFS is in the same predicament. It doesn’t know what it is or who it’s supposed to be serving. FantasyCon, I have heard, is theoretically a fan convention, but most of the people I met there were authors of varying degrees of professional. Who is the BFS for? Fans, or authors?

There’s a part of me that thinks, “Well, there’s no reason it can’t be for both fans and authors”. And it’s true that there is a valuable matchmaking role to be played between fans and authors, but can a single organisation fully provide for both sides of the coin?

What might fans want from an organisation?

• Readings and signings
• News about new book releases
• Freebies and discounts
• Content such as interviews, reviews and features in text, video, and audio, online and offline
• Exclusives
• Yearly booze-up where they can meet each other and authors
• An online space to talk about the stuff they like
• Probably some other stuff I can’t think of right now.

What might authors, at whatever stage in their careers, want from an organisation?

• Access to fans via readings, signings, other events
• Promotion of their latest works
• Advice from experts
• Content such as interviews, reviews and features in text, video, and audio, online and offline
• A community of peers to discuss the industry/their work with
• Access publishers, agents and other industry professionals
• Yearly booze-up where they can meet each other and fans
• Probably some other stuff I can’t think of right now.

There’s clearly some overlap. But any organisation wanting to serve both communities is going to be walking a fine line. The kind of content that authors want on a website, for example, is very different to that preferred by fans. But worse than that, serving both communities can create a conflict of interest.

Let’s take the idea of a convention. If your are a society of fans and you organise a convention, then you need to get in the biggest and best speakers to provide a compelling reason for the fans to buy tickets. If you are a society for authors, then your aim is to serve those authors by putting them in front of as many people as possible. An organisation trying to please both groups is likely to end up putting its own members in front of its own members, resulting in a small, cliquey event that doesn’t bring in or attract outsiders and thus doesn’t serve anyone properly.

This is a form of the Agency Dilemma and it is very hard to solve. Indeed, even with a single constituency, the Agency Dilemma persists, as can be seen by the current predicament that the BFS finds itself in: The goals of the organisation are at odds with the goals of its members, causing an inherent conflict of interest.

Indeed, this was at the heart of the issue with the BFS Awards. Having a publisher organise the awards was a serious mistake and would have been even if that publisher’s authors, publications and partner had not been involved as nominees. Any awards ceremony must be administered by people who are independent and unbiased, which means no publishers, publicists, authors, etc. Clearly, that’s going to be a real challenge.

It seems fairly clear to me that the BFS cannot be both a Fan organisation and an Author organisation without compromising its integrity. Which way it jumps is almost unimportant, as either decision would basically require the organisation to fork so that both constituencies can be served. I think it would make sense for there to be a British Fantasy Society which is focused on the needs of the fans and aims to be run by a majority of non-industry people, with the awards run exclusively by a non-industry committee.

I would then have a British Fantasy Author Society, run primarily by authors, publishers, publicists, agents and other industry people, and any dedicated fans who want to get involved. The two organisations could collaborate when it is appropriate, but would retain a sturdy dividing firewall whenever a conflict of interest might arise.

As for FantasyCon, well, that needs to decide what it is before it can decide who should organise it and how.

If I was the BFS right now, I’d be looking at a radical overhaul along these lines to not only regain credibility but also to retain some sense of relevance in this newly interconnected world. When I looked at the BFS site last year, I felt that it didn’t offer me anything that I couldn’t already get on Twitter. It would be a shame if I looked at the site again next year and felt the same way. This furore is an opportunity to examine what the BFS could and should be. We should all seize it.