Hey Writer! What's Your Brand?

Most of us are cynical enough by now to see that life is all about branding, whether we're being bombarded by ads for colleges, books, cars, shampoos, or a new designer line of t-shirts ($90 for a white GOOP t-shirt, Gwyneth Paltrow? Really?). Brands are built via movie placements, billboards, your Kindle's sleep screen, your radio station, your Twitter Feed and Facebook page. Sure, you can DVR your favorite TV shows and zip through commercials, but there's no hiding from the marketing trolls.

I know this. Yet, somehow I was still shocked when a writer friend recently asked me to change her quote after I interviewed her for a magazine story.

“I can't say that sort of thing in print,” she explained. “I've worked hard to build my brand, and I need to be consistent.”

“Uh, okay,” I said. I edited the quote, but I was stunned. When did writers start being brands?

This question led me through a maze of other squirrely musings. If you write a memoir, are you forever a memoirist? Is a writer of so-called “women's fiction” always doomed to have a slender woman's body parts on her book covers? What happens if a thriller writer dares to try his hand at romance?

Did Mark Twain have a brand? Was it “Southern novelist and humorist?” What about Hemingway? “Lion hunter, womanizer, and minimalist?”

These questions really made my head spin as I was redesigning my web site. (These days, a writer without a web site is like a McDonald's without the golden arches.) I had a perfectly lovely web site—one that I paid to have built when my first book was published--but it was constructed using a software program that made me sob like a napless toddler every time I tried to navigate it, so I decided to switch over to every writer's best friend, WordPress.

In the process, I had an identity crisis. What was my brand? Who was I?

I hadn't felt this confused since trying to follow the plot of those Bourne movies. My first book was a memoir. My second one was a novel categorized by some reviewers as literature, by some as women's fiction, and by others as that poor stepsister of women's fiction, “chick lit” (which everyone knows is sexier and will probably catch the prince's eye at the ball).

My third book, The Wishing Hill, is being published by Penguin in spring/summer 2013. It, too, is a novel. This one, though, is decidedly not chick lit, and more women's fiction/literature. However, my next book—the one I'm writing right now--is a paranormal novel featuring a dead voodoo priestess.

Oh, and I also write humor essays and feature articles for national magazines--usually about parenting, psychology, or health.

So, who am I? What's my brand? Do I have to spell it out in a theme of five words or less?

It would certainly be a lot easier for marketing purposes if my work could fit neatly on one shelf in a bookstore (even a virtual one). Think of bestselling writers who have household names, and you'll see what I mean: Elizabeth George writes British mysteries while Toby Neal sets hers in Hawaii. Stephen King writes books that make you look under your bed at night. John Grisham is known for his legal thrillers; each of Jodi Picoult's novels is women's fiction with a contemporary news hook; and Elin Hilderbrand writes books about women falling in love on the beach. See what I mean?

On the other hand, what about writers who ignore the rules? I've just finished two splendid books by writers who dare to scribble outside the lines. One was Wild, a terrific memoir by Cheryl Strayed, whose first book was a novel and who is widely known as an advice columnist by the name of “Sugar.” Another is Carsten Stroud's skin-crawlingly creepy book, Niceville, a horror novel along the lines of Stephen King, but one that reads like a police procedural with snappy bad guy dialogue worthy of Quentin Tarantino or maybe even Raymond Chandler. Previously, Stroud was known for his nonfiction and more standard crime novels.

What about Tom Perrota? His early novels, like Election and Little Children, were satirical edgy domestic dramas. Then he gave us The Leftovers, which crosses over into another realm ( literally), as he explored what would happen if there really was a Day of Rapture where only some residents of a certain town were chosen to be whisked into the heavens.

How do you brand Tom Perrota, other than calling him “brilliant?” And don't even get me started on writer Neil Gaiman, a man who grinds through every genre like a happy kid with one of those multipacks of tiny cereal boxes. Gaiman has one quote on his Amazon page that says what I feel: “I make things up and write them down.”

At the end of a good day, that's what any good writer hopes to do.

Ultimately, I decided to stop worrying about my brand and just put myself out there. What I want people to be able to do is find me—and find out about me. I chose the tag line “Writer and Red Dirt Rambler,” because my favorite place on earth to write—and ramble—is Prince Edward Island in the Canadian Maritimes.

Whew. Thank heavens that's over. My new web site will be live soon. Meanwhile, I can go back to making things up and writing them down.   

Do It Yourself or Die Trying

     My husband came upstairs last night sporting a satisfied smile.

     “Did you fix it?” I asked.

     “Yup.”

     “How?”

     “Paper clip,” he said, and we both laughed.

     What my husband had done was mend our broken toilet by using a paper clip to reconnect the flush lever to the flush valve, thus proving once again how we're not only surviving this Do It Yourself time in our lives, but getting better at it.

     We have never been rich, but once upon a time, we had a little extra money every month. That was before we put four kids through college, my husband was laid off three times, and we had to pay for our own health insurance. What did we do, back in those heady days of plenty?

     We paid other people to do things for us: the plumbing, the house painting, the carpentry, the snow plowing, the lawn mowing. When I look back at those days now, I think, wow. What a waste. Think of the fun we missed.

     Why did it take me so long to get into the whole DIY thing? I blame it on growing up with a father whose motto was “Do It Yourself or Die Trying.” My father was a Navy officer who dreamed of becoming the world's most famous gerbil farmer. After a popular magazine hailed gerbils as “America's Newest Pets,” Dad spent his shore duties secretly raising them in our garage. He was still in uniform when he bought a remote, rundown farm and built a gerbil dynasty.

     As Dad's first employees, my brothers and I posed with gerbils for photographs he could use for pet books. We cleaned cages and doled out green food pellets. Meanwhile, Dad constantly reminded us that “frugal” was our new middle name.

     Whether my father had wanted to make it big by selling gladiolas or garage doors instead of gerbils, the bottom line of any start-up company is microscopic. Small business owners don't expect bailouts if they fail. Dad reminded us that sweaters were cheaper than heat. His office floor was a flotilla of coffee cans crammed with recycled screws and rusty nails. If something needed doing, we were to do it ourselves or perish in the process.

     We put our backs into making that old farmhouse a home. We built a stable for our horses out of an abandoned barn that we tore down and hauled across the street on a wheezing, Dr. Seuss tractor. Meanwhile, Dad's gerbils went about the happy business of breeding. When they'd multiplied enough to need a home of their own we built that, too, turning sheet metal siding and bags of bolts into the nation's first gerbilry.

     With me, Dad was a total stop-spending vigilante. I had already cost him more money than his other children combined; at age 12, my horse bucked me off and I landed mouth-first, losing seven front teeth. The year that Dad built his gerbilry, a dentist crafted a pricey, permanent set of teeth for me. I was thrilled. No more dental humiliations, like the time I laughed at a cute boy's joke and sent my false teeth flying onto his shoe. 

     The down side was that Dad now materialized at my elbow if I did anything more extreme than sleep. “Watch out for your teeth, Holly!” he'd cry, trotting after me. “Teeth don't grow on trees, you know!”

     Dad monitored my hot showers to the minute. I turned the toilet paper roll as stealthily as possible, because if Dad heard me using it, he'd come pounding up the stairs to knock on the bathroom door. “No more than three squares!” he'd call. “More than three squares is wasted!”

     This penny-pinching paid off. By my third year of college, Dad had nearly 9,000 gerbils housed in three buildings. He proudly announced that we could afford a family vacation. “It's a celebration,” he said. “This year, I made as much money as the governor of Massachusetts.”

“Wow,” I said. “You must have sold a ton of gerbils.”

“Of course, the governor enjoys a few more perks than I do,” Dad added generously. “A mansion. A staff. A secretary. A car at his disposal, and so forth.”

“You have a secretary,” Mom reminded him. “Grandmother's right upstairs.”

Given my history, you can understand why, even when my husband and I started struggling financially a few years ago, I dug my heels in when he suggested that we become DIY sorts of people, taking on projects like reshingling our own barn and putting in kitchen cabinets from Ikea rather than pay a carpenter.

The more we did things for ourselves, however, the more I realized that we were doing more than just saving money. When we dug an entire garden bed and laid the stone paths, when we stripped bedroom wallpaper and repainted the walls, when we shoveled out the old pig sty to create a pond, my husband and I felt, if not invincible, at least like a strong enough team to face nearly any economic or emotional challenge. Instead of drowning every time the economic tide turns against us, we know that we're going to bob to the surface of whatever happens, because we're both paddling like hell and getting stronger every day.

So far my husband has rebuilt that same toilet flush mechanism using dental floss, paper clips, and strips of aluminum. Meanwhile, I've become adept at street picking, gardening, painting, and refinishing. Each DIY victory is sweet indeed.

These days, frugal is the new cool. Boxed wine is in. Fashion magazines trumpet vintage finds. Waste not, want not, is the new reality--only it feels like old times to me, the daughter of a gerbil czar who wanted to do it all himself.

Don't Do What I Did: Make the KDP Select Program Work for You

Self-publishing is about as democratic as anything else, in the sense that 1) anyone is free to try it and 2) it takes money to make money.

I have one self-published friend who recently admitted to spending over $15,000 to market her Indie novel. She's doing well and has more than tripled her investment. In addition, she has built a platform of readers who are now eagerly awaiting her next novel.

That story has a happy ending. But what if you don't have $15,000, or even $5,000, to spend on publicity? What if just getting your book published wipes out your savings, because you already had to cough up a few thousand for the cover, the design, the ISBN number and an editor, too? What do you do then?

That's the situation I was in when I published my novel Sleeping Tigers.

Fortunately, there is advice aplenty for authors on how to advertise cheaply. Check out web sites for Novel Publicity, Ereader News Today,World Literary Cafe, Digital Book World, TeleRead, and The Book Designer for useful tips. These all offer great advice on book marketing—and, yes, it's all free! Indie authors J.A. Konrath and John Locke also have helpful blogs.

Now, after three months of testing out book marketing strategies, I can honestly say that probably nothing can help you market your book more effectively than the KDP Select Program.

What is the KDP Select Program?

Read the fine print on the Kindle Direct Publishing web site, but here are the bare bones: if you agree to participate in the KDP Select Program, you sign up for a three-month exclusivity term. This means that you agree to sell your ebook only in the Kindle format, but you can continue selling your paperbacks however you wish.

In exchange for this exclusivity agreement, you are granted five free promotional days during your three-month term. Your book is also included in the lending library for Amazon Prime members; this means that people with Amazon credit cards can borrow your book for free—and Amazon will pay you a royalty for each borrow.

Many authors object to the KDP Select program. Indie authors are a crowd of wild Mustangs and we hate being reined in—that's why many of us self-publish. We object to some of Amazon's monopolistic business practices. Plus, why would anyone want to give a book away for free?

I was one of those resisters. On the other hand, despite my steady blogging and my shiny new Twitter account, I was selling very few books. The first month after publication, Sleeping Tigers sold just enough books for me to take my husband to a movie or dinner, but not both. My novel was a cross between literary fiction, chick lit, and romance—no zombies, vampires, serial killers, cowboy lovers, or psychic detectives. In other words, there wasn't the usual genre crowd to rely on for sales.

I wasn't trying to get rich on this novel—in fact, I didn't even imagine making back what I spent on publishing it. But I am a writer who longs to reach out to readers. I had tried everything but the KDP Select Program to market my novel, so I signed up for the three-month term and chose my first two promotional days. Then I sat back and waited.

Don't Make the Same Mistake I Did

That was my mistake: I sat back and did nothing.

While I did have more downloads during the first two days my book was free—the book ultimately reached a rank of #18 in Kindle's contemporary fiction and a rank of 185 in the free Kindle store—after the promotion I was still selling only one or two books per day.

“What did I do wrong?” I asked a friend who also happens to be my guru in the Indie publishing world.

“Did you advertise the fact that your book was free?” she asked.

Uh. No.

By the next month, my book was back down in the ranks, sliding as low as 70,000 or so. I was getting desperate; I had always sold my book at $2.99, but many Indie authors who make it into the Amazon stratosphere sell their ebooks for $.99. My next experiment was to try this strategy. I decided to lower the price to $.99 to see what would happen. (This is called a “price pulse” and you can find lots of authors discussing this strategy online.) I even did a mild book pimping run on Twitter and Facebook to see if I could garner interest in a week-long $.99 promotion.

The result? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. In fact, my book rank plummeted, languishing around 134,000 or so.

“You have to do another free promotion,” my friend urged. “But advertise it this time.”

Do This Instead

For my second KDP Select Promotion, I waited until I had that magical tenth positive review on Amazon, courtesy of a generous book blogger in England. Then I set my promotion for three days, choosing the end of tax season, April 15 to 17, as my dates, figuring people would finally be finished with nasty paperwork and be ready for a fun read.

A week ahead of time, I emailed some of the big e-reader sites that my book would be free on those days, like Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today. Then, to take the “layered marketing approach,” as the saying goes, I bought a (very cheap) ad on Digital Books Today to run right after the promotion.

As I waited for April 15, I began second-guessing all of my efforts. Was I making a mistake? April 15 wasn't just tax day, it was Patriot's Day, and the day of the Boston Marathon! Who the heck would want to download books if there was a holiday to enjoy? Why didn't I wait?

Plus, even by April 14, I still couldn't bring myself to blog, tweet or Facebook about the promotion. Authors who spend their time sending out book pimping messages make my teeth hurt. Yes, everything these days is “soft” marketing, but I prefer content with my advertising. I didn't want to inflict sales spam on people I'd come to know through social media channels.

I nearly pulled out of the second free promotion for another reason as well: I was having a crisis in confidence as a writer. How many readers are left in the world? In my most pessimistic moments, I imagine everyone sitting around in sports bars or lying on the couch watching American Idol or YouTube videos. Maybe everyone who would be interested in reading my book had already downloaded it.

On April 15, I could barely bring myself to check the downloads, but bam! There they were, and they were coming fast! In the very first day of the second promotion, I had as many downloads as the first two days combined! By the last day of the promotion, my book had hit #1 in contemporary fiction and #3 among all free Kindle downloads—with twenty times as many downloads as during my first promotion.

What's more, sales have declined but have remained steady. Thanks to the KDP Select Program, I may actually make a small profit from Sleeping Tigers. More importantly, I am creating an audience of readers and book bloggers who I hope will be interested in the next novel I publish.

What the heck happened to make this possible?

The answer is easy: I took full advantage of KDP Select Program's free promotional days. You can do it, too. Here's how:

1. Before joining the KDP Select Program, check your book sales. Are you selling more on Smashwords or Kindle? If the answer is Kindle, then you have nothing to lose by going with the KDP Select Program—you can opt out again after three months.
   
   
2. There are two schools of thought when it comes to deciding when to go with KDP Select: one is that you should wait until you have at least ten positive Amazon reviews (4 or 5 stars). The other is to do it right away, when you launch your book. That will give your book a higher ranking from the start. However, sites like Pixel of Ink are less likely to pick up books without customer reviews, because so many authors contact them, and of course it's in their interest to publicize the best free books possible. I'd advise contacting reviewers early, before your book is out, and waiting until you have the reviews posted on Amazon before advertising your free promotion.
   
   
3. Remove your book from Smashwords and other sites at least two weeks in advance. I ran into a slight snafu, because I thought that removing the book from Smashwords meant I'd successfully made my book exclusive to Kindle; however, Smashwords distributes to a number of other sites, like Barnes & Noble, and it can take 2-3 weeks for them to remove the book.
   
   
4. Once you sign up for KDP Select, make use of all five free promotional days, but don't do them one at a time—spread them out between a two-day and a three-day promotion. That gives readers time to see your book and download it.
   
   
5. Follow up your free promotion with some modest paid advertising.

And that, my friends, is it. Simple as can be. Will I sign up again for KDP Select? I already have. I'll let you know how the next round goes. I'd love to hear your experiences, too. What has worked for you?

Why One Aging Hippie Mom Loves Twitter

My friend Melanie finally lured me into joining Twitter Nation by bribing me with scones and tea.

“It's really easy, and it's great once you get the hang of it,” she said as we buttered scones. “Come on. I'll show you how to set up an account.”

“Next, you'll be pressuring me into smoking cigarettes and trying Botox,” I muttered, following her into the office, where she had already coerced another friend of ours, Anne, into Twitter Nation.

Melanie's rationale was simple: we're all writers. Writers must tweet if we're going to build name recognition. “You're building your brand,” she said.

“I'm not a cereal,” I said, still muttering.

Melanie is a tech-savvy journalist currently working on a nonfiction book about the oil business as well as a novel. Anne writes historical fiction. And me? I work as a magazine writer and celebrity ghost writer; I just self-published a novel and sold another one to Penguin. All three of us are old enough to have launched (or ejected) our kids out of the house; I still have a young teen at home, but he's already taller than I am.

In other words, all three of us are aging moms and, in my case, a bonafide aging hippie mom. Examples: I marched on Washington for various causes throughout the 1970's and into the 1980's; I worked as a Vista Volunteer; and I still prefer wearing natural cotton.

Another example: I hate carrying a cell phone. In fact, most of the time I hate having a cell phone. Why would I want anyone to know where I am at all times? Why would I want to answer the phone when I am, say, walking on the beach or sipping tea with my aging hippie friends?

Yet, I followed Melanie into the thick, mysterious, shrieking Twitter jungle, and guess what? I love this crazy busy place—but not for the reasons she thought I would.

As a book marketing tool, Twitter is fairly useless. Maybe it's because I'm not one of those people who tweets all day long about my books—I don't ever tweet great lines from my texts, I don't announce giveaways, I don't pester people with book reviews. Not because I think these things are necessarily a bad idea, but mainly because I don't find these kinds of tweets very interesting.

Instead, I delight in Twitter for other reasons:

1) I love checking in with Twitter as a ticker tape kind of news service. I receive updates from various news feeds--yep, you guessed 'em, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and The Daily Beast are right at the top of my hippie news feeds.

2) I use Twitter to drive traffic to my blog posts on Huffington Post, Open Salon, and guest blogs.

3) I rely on Twitter to gain professional insights on the rapid upheavals in book publishing, mainly by following writers, publishers, business journals, and book reviewers. Twitter leads me to all sorts of fascinating blogs and news articles, and has been enormously useful in helping me both think about my writing and decide where to sell it.

4) Most importantly, I use Twitter to support other writers—and to be supported. In this way, I have discovered that writing doesn't have to be a lonely business, despite the fact that I work alone in a barn about eight hours every day (dressed in my hippie cotton pants and flannel shirts, a cup of tea at my elbow). In fact, through Twitter, I have made great new friendships, like the one with a mystery writer in Hawaii. This writer and I now exchange manuscripts for critique and chat on the phone. We hope to meet some day. Our friendship never would have been possible without Twitter (unless there's some kind of Match.com for women writers that I haven't found yet?)

I still wonder about those people on Twitter who have gazillions of followers. Where did they get all of those followers? Do they ever interact with them? Do they have interns who post tweets for them? Maybe they're outsourcing their tweets?

Another friend once suggested, as we were sitting in a restaurant with relatives, that I should get a better cell phone so that I could tweet from it. “Just think, you could be sitting here right now and tweeting about what we're having for lunch.”

Really? And why would anyone care what I'm having for lunch? I'm not Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber. Thank God.

“You could even use a service that schedules your tweets,” she added. “You know, write them all at once and then have them sent out on a regular basis to stay in constant contact with your followers.”

No, thanks. I'll keep tweeting in real time, venturing into Twitter for a few spare minutes here and there during the day. I love Twitter—especially for the friendships it has brought me. Otherwise, you can find me alone in my barn, pondering sentences and sipping tea.

That Chipped Teacup Feeling: Life after Breast Cancer

Nine years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This wasn't the “do something or die” kind of cancer that my friends Rachel and Kim went through last year. It wasn't even the “lump the size of a grapefruit” breast cancer my mom had removed after getting her first mammogram at age 78. It certainly wasn't the wildfire kind of breast cancer that killed my son's English teacher in high school, when my son and her daughter were both just sixteen years old.

Nope, my breast cancer was, thankfully, the “almost missed it” variety. I had a lumpectomy (described by my nurse as “the size of an orange”--why do they always use fruit metaphors?) Clear margins, no radiation or chemo. Nothing much to go through, by almost any medical standard. Why, then, was I so terrified?

I'd heard a lot about breast cancer—I am a journalist, after all, and I've known plenty of cancer survivors (and others who were less fortunate). But nobody told me about the fear. For several years after my lumpectomy, I felt as damaged as a chipped teacup. I worried that one more time through the dishwasher might shatter me completely.

As a mother whose youngest son was in kindergarten when I was first diagnosed, my biggest fear was that the cancer would return and kill me while my kids still needed me. I had other, lesser fears, too: losing what's left of my boobs, having my husband lose interest in me.

Gradually, though, I have somehow stopped being afraid. I had a couple of new scares, resulting in biopsies. My husband was diagnosed with diabetes, my stepsister with colon cancer, my mother with emphysema. Another good friend just found out that her son—the same age as my oldest boy—has lymphoma.

All of this was scary, but it also made me realize that each of us carries sleeping tigers inside us. That's what it feels like to me: that my cancer is this capricious jungle animal asleep inside me. It could wake at any moment, sharpen its claws, and slash my life to bits. Never mind feeling like a chipped teacup. Now I visualized a caged and potentially lethal animal inside me!

Somehow, though, this image has given me the strength to live without fear. There are some things you can't control in life—you can only accept that you, like anyone else, might experience disease, loss, grief, survival, death, surgery, whatever. We all go through something. Why worry about it until it happens? Let sleeping tigers lie, and get on with your life in the meantime.

After breast cancer, I became resolved to do things I'd always put off. I took a pottery class with my husband and finally made a solid commitment to write fiction and get it published. Our family traveled to England and Spain, and we bought a farmhouse on Prince Edward Island near my favorite beach. I bought a membership to AMC and started hiking in the White Mountains and joined a knitting group. I restored the old garden behind our house and, this summer, I'm going to try laying the paths through it myself. I'm also going to buy a new bicycle and map out some routes through my favorite small towns north of Boston.

No matter how short your life might be, or how deliciously long, why not cram in as much as you can? Sure, live in the moment, but glory in your past and plan for the future, too. Take on every adventure that appeals to you—and you're sure to embrace new opportunities to live with love, grace, humor, and compassion.

Wrestling with Point of View in Your Writing

When I was in first grade, I had an art teacher who shamed me into crying in front of the entire classroom.

She had given us an easy assignment. Handing out blocks of wood, she asked us to draw faces on them. I loved art, and happily got to work drawing a man's face. When I'd finished with his features, he looked more like an alien than a man, so I painted his face bright blue. (I blame my mother: she always read to me from her science fiction novels rather than from any of those boring children's books.)

The art teacher went down the row of student desks, nodding and smiling as the children held up their wooden faces for praise. And then she got to me, and nearly went into one of those whirling fits of rage I now associate with Roald Dahl characters.

“You painted your face blue?” she shrieked. “You can't paint a face blue! What kind of face is that?”

“It's an alien's face,” I said, tearing up.

I might as well have said “Satan.” The art teacher hauled me over to sit in the corner and made me paint another face while the rest of the kids tittered.

Now, this story happens to be true, but if I were writing fiction, I could have chosen to relay it from a different perspective. For example, I might have written it in limited third person from the teacher's point of view, or from the point of view of the town sheriff, who is called into school after the art teacher is found dead. Or I might have chosen to begin the narrative after an alien invasion, during which the art teacher and several other people in town are abducted! Then I probably would have used multiple points of view.

Wrestling with point of view is something that writers do every day in fiction, and it's one of the most frustrating—and fun—aspects of writing. Sometimes it takes several drafts before you get the point of view that works for a particular story. For instance, if you're writing about an alien invasion, you might want what's called an “author omniscient” point of view, which basically means that you're relaying the story from on high, from multiple points of view or even in multiple time frames.

In Sleeping Tigers, my first novel, I chose what's called a “limited third person” point of view—this means that I can only be inside the main character's head, and nobody else's. I did this because I wanted to create a tight emotional connection between my protagonist, a young woman named Jordan, and my readers, while still having the literary freedom to write lush descriptive passages of other characters and the setting (San Francisco and Nepal, in this case).

For my next novel, The Wishing Hill, to be published in spring 2013 by Penguin, I created the story of two women who are bound in ways they don't suspect, so I decided to alternate points of view between them. That lets the reader discover their complex interconnectedness even before the characters themselves know what's going on. I had to be careful to differentiate the voices. One speaks in longer sentences while the other has more hyphenated, staccato thoughts.

Now I'm writing a paranormal mystery. For this one, I initially tried a third person point of view for the first two drafts. I'm contemplating a first person point of view for the next draft to see if that will help ramp up the scare factor. Maybe the reader will be more likely to feel something cold and damp behind her in the hallway if she is the “I.” Using first person is an avenue for getting even deeper into the protagonist's psyche; at the very least, if I try it, I can always go back to the third person point of view, having learned new things about the character, right?

Take a closer look at the book you're reading or writing. What would have happened with another point of view? Try it—you might be surprised.

A Cat Living a Dog's Life

I never meant to adopt two cats instead of one, much less to fall in love with a cat that thinks he's a dog. But sometimes life surprises you. Or, in cat terms, sometimes life is a ball of yarn that unwinds into unexpected pleasures.

It all began when I gave into my son Aidan's request for a kitten. Aidan had a tall order: his kitten had to be gray, white-pawed, and female. After weeks of driving around New England, we finally found a shelter with the perfect gray kitten, snowdrop paws and all.

As we waited for the paperwork at the animal shelter, I glanced into a cage across the aisle. There, all by himself, lounged a cat as long as my arm, butterscotch gold and with a kinked tail. On impulse, I scooped him into my arms.

“Put him back,” I scolded my own impulsive self. The last thing I needed was another cat, much less two more. We already had two dogs and a gerbil.

On the other hand, I thrive on animal chaos. I grew up on a gerbil farm—at the height of his career, my gerbil czar of a father had 9,000 of these endearing rodents housed in three Sears prefab buildings behind our house—and my mother raised horses. Just for fun, we also had pygmy goats, sheep, geese, chickens, barn cats and house cats, a furious parrot, at least three dogs at a time, and peacocks that could scare the life out of you because their cries sounded like somebody being murdered in the back yard. In many ways, I get along better with animals than with most people.

At the animal shelter, the big yellow tomcat was as languid in my arms as he'd been in the cage, purring like a motorboat as he nuzzled my neck. He didn't care that he'd been abandoned. Life at this moment was a good thing and he was going to make the most of it.

Just like that, I was in love. Aidan and I walked out of the shelter with two cats instead of one.

It soon became clear that my new cat, Mini Wheat, was no ordinary feline. He is a CatDog like that hybrid cartoon animal on Nickelodeon, the one with a cat's head on one end of his body and a dog's on the other. If I walk our dogs on leashes, this CatDog struts between them as if he's on a leash, too. When I call the dogs to come inside, Mini Wheat comes running, tail wagging. If I toss a toy, he fetches it for me, purring. Our clever Cairn terrier wisely snubs Mini Wheat for his doggish antics, but our Pekingese lovingly accepts this CatDog into the pack.

As I write this, MiniWheat is curled in my lap, catlike. But I know that he's waiting expectantly for three o'clock, when it's time for our afternoon walk: me with a Cairn, a Pekingese, and one enthusiastic CatDog, who shows me how to think and live outside the box.

Pimping Your Book, Indie or Traditional

Now that I've got feet in both camps, I have a unique perspective on the good, the bad and the mysterious truths about book marketing. My memoir, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, was published by Random House. I leaped into the indie world when I self-published my first novel, Sleeping Tigers, a couple of months ago. My second novel, The Wishing Hill, will be published by Penguin in spring 2013. These experiences have taught me a lot about book publicity, but I'm still learning new things every day. There are some differences in how traditional and indie books are publicized, but those differences are shrinking by the nanosecond. The truest thing I can tell you is that, no matter how your book makes it into the world, you'll need to take an active part in the publicity. Here are a few tips to get you started.

Mine the Free Resources
The Internet is a wonderful tutor. There are more free resources out there about marketing your book than you'll ever have time to read. Google anything from “picking a book cover” to “social media for authors,” and you'll get enough hits to last through a few thermoses of coffee each time you do it. Make good use of these resources. One of my favorites is Novel Publicity's “Free Advice Blog” at http://www.novelpublicity.com/publicity/

Prepare Your Platform
No matter who you talk to in publishing—agent, editor, publicist, or sales team—they'll tell you that their ideal is a good book written by an author with a “solid platform.” Basically, that means that they want you to be famous before you even give them a manuscript—or they want some hook, like you chewed off your arm during a battle with a grizzly bear. (Even then, they hope you've been blogging about it.) One easy way to start building your platform is by crafting a virtual identity. Social media tools are free and easy to use. Start a blog, create an author facebook page, get a twitter account, and set up a Goodreads page. Give people useful information—don't just pimp your book. If you know how to do something—anything from fly fishing to quilting—blog about that, guest post on other people's blogs, and people will start following you. Yes, it's time consuming, but it's also incredibly fun to connect with people. If you're trying traditional publishing avenues, it will help your editor sell your book to the publisher if she can prove that you have an active presence online. Indie or traditional, you're cultivating a loyal readership.

A Publicist Is Just Part of the Picture
If you're traditionally published, expect to be assigned a publicist. It is that person's job to advocate for your book with print media, radio and television stations, bookstores, and online sites. Make yourself part of the publicity team. If the publicist suggests that you do something, do it! The more you help your publicist, the more she can help you. On the other hand, don't take it personally if the publicist is too busy to do more than a few early rounds of marketing pushes. She'll probably have a minimum of time and an even smaller budget to devote to your book. You'll have to keep up the momentum. Likewise, if you're an indie author, be prepared to devote part of every week to promoting your books. Writers with deep pockets may find it easiest to hire a publicist; even then, log the hours if you want results.

Your Book Launch Is What You Make It
Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, a book launch in traditional publishing was a Very Big Deal. Authors were sent on book tours to do readings and signings on the publisher's dime. The pre-sales of books, both online and in bookstores, determined pretty quickly which books were hits. That's because they knew that shelf life in bookstores was brief. This is all changing. Sure, it's great to gain traction the minute your book is available. However, with the advent of online book sellers and e-books, your book will stay around forever. Don't despair if it takes weeks, or even months, to see sales results. Keep at it, and eventually the numbers will climb.

Give Away Your Books
Traditional publishers know that the best way to sell a book is to give it away first. They target who they give it to, of course—book reviewers, TV producers, book clubs—but, ultimately, the idea is to “seed” your book around the country so that people start talking about it. You can do the same thing on your own. Participate in giveaways on your own facebook author page or through Goodreads, or ask book bloggers if they'll host giveaways for you.

Befriend Book Bloggers
Book bloggers are fairy godmothers for writers. Without their support and generosity, many of our books would never be read. Check out as many book blogs as you can find. When you discover a book blogger who reviews books like yours, write a personal note and ask if you can send a review copy. You might want to send her an e-book because it's cheaper than mailing a paperback, but if she says she'd rather have a paperback, send it! Media mail is cheap postage and print-on-demand paperbacks are inexpensive, too. Remember: she is the one doing you a favor, and it's a good investment. Most book bloggers post reviews on Amazon and Goodreads; once they're up, be sure to tweet and post those links on your own pages. Add them to your Amazon Author Central page as well.

Look for Out-of-the-Box Marketing Opportunities
Just like parents know their own children better than anyone else can, you know your book: its content, style, and target audience. Use that expertise in thinking about out-of-the-box marketing opportunities. I contacted pet groups when I published The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, for instance, and found a loyal following. For Sleeping Tigers, I'm contacting breast cancer groups, because my main character is a breast cancer survivor, and I know other cancer survivors will connect with this story about hope and starting over.

Lasting Impressions
All of your marketing efforts will eventually come together. If you're a parent, think about how many times you had to show your toddler peas or carrots before that child stopped thinking of veggies as too weird to eat. The same is true of your book: keep putting it out there, and pretty soon people will start saying, “Hey, I remember that title. I meant to read that book!”

How to Sell a Novel in Just 25 Years!

When my agent called a few weeks ago to say that an editor at Penguin wanted to buy my new novel, The Wishing Hill, I literally had to lie down. Otherwise, I might have fallen out of my chair. After all, I've been waiting for this call for 25 years.

How did it take me so long to publish a novel? And why was this novel chosen, but not one of the other half dozen my loyal agent sent out?

I don't really know. I was doing what all writers do, really: I was writing fiction around the edges of my life. I've been married (twice). I've had children (three of my own, plus two stepchildren.) I've done some traveling. I've renovated old houses and summer cottages. I've made a good living as a nonfiction writer.

Despite having so many people to love and things to do in my life, however, I never stopped trying to write a novel good enough for an editor to say, “Hey. I want to publish that.” I got so frustrated with the wait that I finally published my own novel, Sleeping Tigers, just a few weeks before I got the call about Penguin wanting to buy The Wishing Hill. I'm delighted that not just one, but two of my novels, will now be in print. To those of you longing to do the same, I hope it takes you less time than it did me. Meanwhile, here are a few tips for outlasting the rejection letters:

Watch Reality TV
Shows like American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance can be just the antidote you need to a crisis in confidence. That single mother with the lip ring, the doughy girl who thought she'd never be a dancer, and the guy with the cowboy hat all have talent. But, just like writers, they have to hit the audience and judges at the right time to win the gold ring.

If You're Writing, You're a Writer
Lots of people say, “Oh, if I had the time, what a book I could write!” It's true that everyone has great stories to tell—but only a few of us actually write them down and revise them again and again. If you're writing, you're a writer, and you will get better as you go.

Every Rejection Is Just One Person's Opinion
We've all heard the stories about various novels being rejected, like, 800 times, before editors taking them. Every rejection letter is written by just one editor. Tear up the short, nonsensical notes (I once received a rejection that said, “This does not amuse.”) Editors send those out because they have to say something. Keep sending your work out. It can only get published if it's out there.

There Really Is Such a Thing as a Good Rejection
When a friend called recently, despondent because she'd received a rejection letter, I asked her to read it to me. The editor had clearly taken the time to read her novel carefully and had made constructive comments. Even better, the editor said she'd take another look at the novel if my friend rewrote it. There really are editors out there willing to take the time to do that. My advice? Put aside your ego and do it, then send your book back out.

Be Not Afraid of Young Pups
Pick up an issue of Poets & Writers magazine, and you can't help but envy all of the babes-in-arms out there winning fiction contests and earning publishing contracts before they're old enough to need their author photos digitally enhanced. Yeah, well. Some people are talented and lucky, and some of us are talented, but don't get sprinkled with lucky stardust until later in life.


Never Equate Being Published with Being Rich or Happy
What did I do after I sold my first novel? I celebrated, of course—but only after picking my son up from school, throwing in another load of laundry, and doing the supper dishes. The thing about publishing a novel is that it won't make you rich, especially now that advances are lower and publishing companies are paying out in thirds or even fourths. Plus, don't forget to subtract your agent's commission and taxes on earnings.
As for being happy? My contented writer friends were happy before they published their novels. And my writer friends who are unhappy? Yep. They were that way before they published their books, too. Being published really won't change your life, unless you happen to become as well-known as Stephanie Meyer or J.K. Rowling—and my guess is even those two could shop at the local Market Basket for eggs without being recognized. They just drive better cars.

Surround Yourself with People Who Believe that Writing Is Worthwhile
Writing is a long and sometimes lonely business, so it's key to have a constructive writing group, writer friends, and a spouse or partner who believe that the act of creating a story is a worthwhile use of your time. Without my incredibly supportive husband and my LIW (Ladies in Writing) group, with whom I swap not only manuscripts, but stories about rejection letters and agents, children and spouses, I never could have made it through the past 25 years of crafting stories and surviving doubt. They helped me remember that the creative journey itself is worth savoring and sharing.

Why Do Writers Need Readers? Not for the Reason You Might Think.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine asked if I'd like to participate in his “Books, Authors, and Wine Tasting” event. I had just published my novel Sleeping Tigers, so I said yes. I wasn't expecting to sell any books, really—I hadn't started marketing the novel yet, and this was the kind of event where the authors sit at tables displaying their wares, like a craft fair, while potential readers wander around with glasses of wine.

As I lugged my box of books up the icy driveway that night, part of me was longing to be at home, sacked out on the couch and reading or watching TV. Imagine my surprise, then, when one woman, and then another, and then a third—twelve in all—found my table and excitedly said, “This is the book I was looking for!” as she picked up a copy of Sleeping Tigers and, miraculously, bought it.

“Really?” I asked in shock.

One of the women explained that there were two book clubs attending the event, and the members had all agreed to read my novel. Then she leaned forward and confided, “I've had breast cancer, too. That's why I want to read your book.”

She told me her story, then, of her diagnosis and surgery, of her recovery and good fortune to have survived the ordeal. Then she walked away, my book in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, held aloft like a torch.

The stories that many of the women told me as they stopped by my table lingered with me for a long time. We talked about breast cancer and motherhood, travel and books, husbands and jewelry, among other things. Afterward, as I toted my empty cardboard box back to the car, I was reminded again why being a writer is the most spectacular pursuit in the world: as you share your own stories with others, readers share their lives with you in return.

Of course there is a part of every writer that longs to be on the New York Times bestseller list. We would all love to make enough money from writing to put our kids through college, or even to put a dent in the grocery bill. More important than that, though, is our longing to connect with readers on an emotional level. Hearing someone say “I loved your book” is a great thing, but it's even better when a reader takes the time to say why: “My best friend is like your main character, only she's a tap dancer,” or, “You made me laugh because my mother used to cut my hair like that, too.”

After I wrote The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter, a memoir about growing up with a Navy father so obsessed with gerbils that he started raising them, I was stunned to discover how many readers had parents who were chain smokers. It was equally surprising to me how many people grew up with fathers who raised animals. I heard from one reader whose father hatched parrots in the basement, and another whose dad had tropical fish tanks in every single room of the house. Now, three years after that book was published, I still correspond with a thirteen year-old reader who is as passionate about horses and reading as I was at that age, as well as a woman in California who by now feels like a sister to me.

The point is that writers lead solitary lives. I work in a barn behind my house, usually in a flannel shirt and sweatpants. I finally get dressed and put on makeup (sometimes) when it's time to collect my son from school. Otherwise, I see few people and live inside my head, my fingers spinning stories on my laptop, never knowing if my plots and characters and settings will ever reach anyone beyond my best friends.

For most writers, every book takes months, even years, to write. We don't know how, or even if, that book will ever be published in the end, but something compels us to keep going. That “something” is the reader. In this age when so many bookstores have gone under and few books are reviewed in print, book bloggers and social media have become our lifelines. They let us reach readers, and we are forever grateful that they exist. Meanwhile, we'll keep seeking avenues to meet readers in person, especially the ones who aren't afraid to carry a glass of wine around as they shop for books.

We write, because we want to open our hearts and share our stories with you. We hope you'll do the same with us.

Did I Hammer a Nail into My Bookstore's Coffin?

I gave myself a book for my birthday this year: my own novel.

It's still tough to admit that I'm self-published, despite the fact that the publishing world is now a Wild West of rogue indie presses and bowlegged cocky ebook publishers firing their Twitterfeeds in every direction.

Perhaps it's tough to admit because I've been a writer for such a long time, always with the goal of having an editor and publishing house to call my very own. In fact, three years ago, I achieved that goal when my first book, The Gerbil Farmer's Daughter: A Memoir, was published by a division of Random House. It was a great experience. I had a savvy, smart editor; a darling and energetic publicist; and great reviews in all the right places.

After twenty-five years of working in the trenches as a journalist, essayist, fiction writer, and humorist, I had finally succeeded. My career as an author was launched! Hooray for me!

I didn't get a huge advance, but a reasonable one. Apparently, though, the publishing house paid me too much. I still haven't earned back a penny on that advance, despite selling more books than I ever dreamed possible. That was okay, though. I figured I could build my platform from there and do better with the next book.

No, no, Nanette. Publishing doesn't work that way anymore. These days, if your first book doesn't earn out, that's probably the end of your career—unless you come up with a Really Big Idea, and hardly anybody knows what this is, except that it probably sucks blood.

Over the next three years, I wrote a series of nonfiction book proposals and two novels. Everything was rejected.

One novel came close, however: Sleeping Tigers is an upmarket women's novel that my agent and I hoped would appeal to readers of Eat, Pray, Love. The book tells the story of a woman who starts her life over after a breast cancer scare. She decides to join her wildest childhood friend in San Francisco and track down her drifter brother, who harbors secrets of his own. And, when her brother flees the country, she follows him to Nepal, determined to bring him home.

This was a book with both plot and emotion. It had to make it, right?

Nope. After rejections from editors who were enthusiastic about many aspects of the novel, but “not getting enough support here to make an offer,” I put that book in a drawer. A really deep drawer: in despair over one particular rejection, I actually deleted the entire book from my laptop after consuming half a bottle of Grand Marnier and a box of dark chocolate truffles while watching that creepy movie, Moulin Rouge.

Unlike my other “epic fails,” as my skateboarding son would call them, however, this novel refused to lie quietly in the dark. I suppose that's because this novel had so much of “me” in it.

Like the main character, I survived early stage breast cancer and felt, as my narrator does, that I carried a sleeping tiger inside me that could, at any moment, wake up and use its claws to tear my life apart. I had lived in San Francisco when I finished graduate school and am still enamored of that city, so I sent the main character there to begin her spiritual and emotional healing. And, because I have two brothers and love them dearly, and because I once spent several months trekking in Nepal, I gave my character a brother and took her on an adventure in Nepal that would change her life forever.

When I reexamined Sleeping Tigers, enough time had passed for me to see it in a cold-blooded, critical way. I understood why the editors had turned it down. There were places where the plot dragged or became derailed by side characters who really had nothing to do with the story. There was some strained, self-conscious writing. Some of the images weren't as fresh or funny as I wanted them to be.

Decades ago, editors might have taken a chance on this book and bought it, then worked with me to rewrite it. That hardly ever happens anymore. Now publishing houses are short-staffed, editors are harried, and money is tight.

After tearing apart the novel and rewriting it, I had to figure out what to do with my new draft. Take it back to my agent? He's currently sending another novel of mine around to publishers, plus I have a third novel nearly complete that I'd like him to send out as well. I didn't want to overload the poor guy.

Plus, having been through the traditional publishing process before, I knew that it would take two or three years after the book was accepted for it to be published. Did I really want to wait that long? No.

Finally, a good friend of mine, Terri Giuliano Long, who self-published her well-received novel, In Leah's Wake—a book that falls into the same basic category of commercial women's fiction as Sleeping Tigers—convinced me to be brave and do the same.

I went on the CreateSpace web site, saw that designing and publishing the book on my own could cost less than taking a class at the local community college, and clicked the necessary buttons. If nothing else, I thought that doing this would be tantamount to giving myself a crash course in digital publishing, social media, and publicity—a course that could be valuable no matter how I publish more books in the future. The reality is that every writer now has to be her own publicist.

Publishing Sleeping Tigers through CreateSpace was easy, cheap, and efficient. The staff was remarkably helpful and willing to stay on the phone for as long as I had questions. The process was as user-friendly as sitting in your friend's living room and drinking tea. Or maybe even Merlot.

Still, when my first box of books arrived—a scant seven weeks after starting the process--I immediately got cold feet. Who am I to think that my novel is good enough to be published? Am I now as pathetic as those street poets I used to see in Berkeley, peddling their sappy, mistake-laden chapbooks for a dollar a copy? And how the hell does a writer act as her own publicist?

To make matters worse, it wasn't until after clicking on CreateSpace that I started to think about my good friend here in town, who owns Jabberwocky, one of my favorite independent bookstores. She held the book launch for my memoir, and it was as grand a party as I could have hoped for; she does an incredible job of hand-selling authors she likes. For many years, Jabberwocky has provided a lively space for readers and writers like me to enjoy each other's company, but Amazon has hit her hard. CreateSpace is an Amazon company.

On my web site, I offer people a button that will take them to the independent bookstore of their choice if they want to buy my book locally. Still, I worry that, by publishing Sleeping Tigers with an Amazon company, I've hammered yet another nail into the coffin of my favorite indie bookstores.

At the same time, I'm thrilled to have this option. The characters in Sleeping Tigers refused to die because they had a story to tell—a story I love, and one that I hope readers will love, too. And, in the end, that's why writers write, isn't it? Not for money or glory—admittedly nice perks--but for this simple reason: we want to share our stories.