Helpful Organization for Authors Who Publish Their Own Books

By Elaine L. Orr

About 16 months ago, I joined the International Book Publisher Association (IBPA), and it's taught me a lot, and I've saved money.

IBPA's stated mission is "to lead and serve the independent publishing community through advocacy, education, and tools for success." Except for a few books of others' poetry, I publish only my own work. I've done a few of the free webinars, and there are a few authors like me, but mostly members seem to publish more than their own work. Some are in the small press category.

Because I'm on my own and there were few author/writer conferences for a few years, I wanted something to keep learning about my industry. Joining was a great decision.

I've put books in the IBPA display at the American Library Association and added them to a catalog sent to independent bookstores. These cost money, but it's reasonable.

My favorite components are the discounts. I needed to buy another batch of 100 ISBNs, and my membership saved me 15% -- about $70 as I recall. 

I place my books with Ingram for distribution. While it's now free to do that, there is a charge if you make revisions after 60 days. That's not something I would usually do, but I did need to revise a book last winter. Ingram charges $25 to do this, but IBPA members can update one book per month at no charge.

Check out all the member benefits.

I don't usually promote organizations beyond a casual mention. But if you are a self-published author or small publisher, check out IBPA.

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Sizing Up Your Audience

By Elaine L. Orr

Authors think about their audiences from several perspectives. Yes, we want a lot of readers. But we have to write (and market) to a type of reader or our fans will be limited to friends and family. 

That doesn't mean we only write to please readers. But we have to decide who those readers are as we start a book. Then we can write something that we, and they, like. 

Audiences can be stratified by age, interests (including hobbies), sex, marital status, occupation, residence, and more. Picking an audience is important, affecting everything from vocabulary to book length to types of sexual interactions. Unless you're writing for pleasure and not income, you need to target a given audience.

You aren't writing to readers' characteristics, you're writing to their interests or preferences. In mysteries, is a lot of violence okay? Do they want fast-paced action or prefer to focus on background and/or the sleuth's internal thought processes? Do they want to escape the real world or read about crimes that sound like something that could be on the news each night? 

I believe a fiction author writes more easily if something interests them. That's possibly why many mysteries deal with a sleuth's occupation or hobbies. I was an economics minor, so one of my sleuths is a real estate appraiser and pays attention to business interests and community development. (Plus you can find bodies when appraising houses.)

On the other hand, I like to garden so another sleuth is a gardener. I've spent a lot of time on genealogy research that I could have spent writing, so I finally made a sleuth a family historian. In both professions you dig up stuff. (Lame joke.)

There are writers whose writing is so diverse they use pen names -- that's generally because the audiences for the two types of writing can be very different. The person who picks up a cozy mystery (no on-stage violence, usually small towns, and amateur sleuth) might not like a faced paced international thriller whose hero kills people in varied ways, which may be described in detail. That reader could be really annoyed to pay for a book from a cozy author that's not at all like that genre.

Yes, they can read the book blurb carefully, but if a reader likes an author they may automatically buy anything they see. (That's the hope!)

There are authors who appeal to diverse audiences. I'm thinking of how Kirkus Reviews characterizes author Carolyn Haines. “Stephanie Plum meets the Ya-Ya Sisterhood...featuring sassy Southern private investigator Sarah Booth Delaney." Haines also write's other series under her name, including Pluto's Snitch books, but uses a pen name (Caroline Burnes) for a romantic suspense series Harlequin publishes and R.B. Chesterton for some stand-alone thrillers.

If we don't use separate series by pen name, how do let readers know they may like some of our books better than others? I'm not talking so much about advertising as describing a book accurately so readers know what they're getting.

I try to write the blurb soon after I start writing the book. It keeps me from meandering as I write, but it also helps me know what more I need to tell prospective readers. I ask members of my critique group for comments, and revise the blurb as I write more. I generally don't look at it for weeks before publication, so I have a cold eye review. 

With electronic sales (which includes paperbacks advertised on retail websites) the keywords matter, and it's up to the author to use the right ones. I look at what authors who write similar books use, and I hope they feel free to consider mine. What you can't do (really) is use keywords bestselling authors use if those descriptive terms don't truly apply to your book.

I sometimes put "Cozy Mysteries With..." in the Amazon search box. There's a fairly new category -- Cozy Mysteries With a Little Paranormal Help. This describes my family history series perfectly. There's a ghost, but he's more a character than a spooky element. The new phrase is not an option for categories to select when entering or updating the book, but I now have it in each of the books' keywords. Great.

On the other hand, I found Appraisal for Murder (first Jolie Gentil book) on the site and looked at the book rankings (just below Product Details). All of the terms were related to real estate! None for cozy mysteries. I went to that book's KDP page and changed some keywords and (since I had not updated categories recently for this 2011 book) changed some of those.

It would be more fun just to keep writing and not think about how to describe books, but in this age of search engine optimization (SEO) it's essential to stay current.

It also helps you describe your books and think about ideas for future ones.

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Who is Where in the Room?

By Elaine L. Orr

Though I wrote stories and poems as a young person, when I began more serious writing I went with plays or (how bold of me!) movie scripts. I realized books could have a wider audience. While I've written a one-act play fairly recently, I veered to novels.

However, the play-writing taught me something valuable. Two things, really. The first was how to write dialogue that said what I wanted when I wanted it, and nothing more. That doesn't mean a character can't be long-winded, only that if s/he is, it should be who they are -- not simply that I can't write concisely.

Perhaps even more important is blocking a scene -- yes, in a book. In a play, the writer has to be aware of where every character is and what they are doing on stage. You can't just leave someone sitting on a couch while all action focuses on two or three other characters. You can if the couch sitter is meant to eavesdrop. You can't if you simply don't know what else to do with them.

I learned to keep track of every character in a novel's scene and -- more important -- let readers know what s/he/they were doing even if they weren't the focus of the action. 

For example, my WIP is Phoning in a Murder, set in the fictional Ocean Alley and the 14th book in the Jolie Gentil series. The partial scene below is in the high school auditorium, just before the start of a contentious meeting about the school band. 

From Jolie's point of view:

The few people in the room were talking loudly enough for me to hear snatches of conversations. Generally, it was male voices that came through.

“…expects us to drive the kids to practice every…”

“…I haven’t missed any of the competitions…”

“…a lot of nerve to cancel…”

“…raised more than $500 for those buses…”

Scoobie had been listening, too. “Oh, boy.”

I shrugged. “It’s what I expected. You and I work at the co-op day care. We know how to tell people to pipe down if they get too rowdy.”

“Pipe down? Rowdy? You sound like Aunt Madge.” Terry looked toward the back of the room. “There’s George.”

“Is Ramona with him?”

Terry craned his neck. “I don’t think so. I see Kevin and some of the guys.” He moved toward a back corner.

“If Kevin’s here,” Scoobie said, “I wonder if his favorite uncle is.”

I turned toward the front. “I bet Sergeant Morehouse has better things to do.”

The scene establishes which of the key characters are present and mentions one who is not. Jolie and her husband Scoobie are together, initially Scoobie's brother, Terry, is with them. George is Scoobie's best friend, and Ramona (his girlfriend and Jolie's friend) could be expected to be there. Sergeant Morehouse is a key player in the book -- good to know what he's up to. (He shows up later.)

My offbeat humor has George explain why Ramona's not there.

“Where’s Ramona?” I asked.

“I’m not supposed to tell you she isn’t interested in high school food fights.”

“What are you supposed to say?” Scoobie asked.

George grinned. “Something about planning how to arrange paintings for the next showing at her art gallery.”

An author can simply say where a person is, but I prefer to show things through action or dialogue. That isn't always possible.

Note the above is written in first person, so the reader only knows what Jolie knows. If a book is in third person, there may be more description, or even a narrator who says who is where and what they're doing.  

I prefer to keep the reader guessing along with the sleuth.

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