Posts tagged: Marketing

Two fun announcements!

First announcement: 

Just so you know, because of you and all of your efforts, the American Cancer Society will get its first royalties check from Zellie's book sales.  Since I posted yesterday, the book sales JUMPED! She has now sold 32 print and 11 eBooks.  The check is pending– I will let you know when the first donation has been made! 

 

Second-

I've been emailing back and forth with one of Zellie's good friends who she called Tramz. He had some happy news to report, too! Here is his message verbatim! (back note- she has been fans of Super Number One [had done some work with them- they do podcasts about things like games, books, music, etc]:

I heard back from the Super Number One Podcast btw. They are going to have a special dedication to Zellie at the beginning of next episode, and Kevin (Rad Bear) let me preview (to see if it was appropriate) a song he wants to play there that both he and Zellie were working on. I don't know if you want to put up a post on either Zellie.info or Facebook once the new episode goes up, but it might be a cool way to let those who wouldn't normally listen to that podcast know that something about Zellie is going to be said there.

It can either be gotten on iTunes or directly from here

 

i am posting this now so you all can keep going to their page and look for it!! I'll do the same and when I know for sure it's up, I'll post the link as well. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up!!!!

 

I have also been reading your comments. Thank you to everyone who has ordered a book and who have promoted it! 

 

In other news, I was informed that Absolutewrite.com put Zellie's post in a remembrance section and her fans have been writing condolence notes here:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5314165#post5314165

The timestamps on the Zellie posts confuse me a lot, but anyway, this was one of the forums that Zellie worked on posting about LS right before she died. The times are wrong though, because she had already passed by then…

 

Anyway, keep your comments/suggestions for marketing coming! I like the idea about the cards, as someone suggested (Orin I think?).

 

Hugs to everyone

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categories Lightning Spliced, Marketing, On Writing, Uncategorized | Madeline | datetime September 8, 2010 5:04 pm | comments Comments (1)

The X-Factor - Find your High Concept

Novels don't require a Big Idea in order to be good but an idea that boils into a unique pitch is more marketable to the agent, publisher, and those readers skimming the back of books.  Far from selling out, this technique seduces readers into the book and isn't that the point of writing?  Sharing that world?

 
Big Ideas are so effective that they sell to publishers even when the writing itself is weak.  Before I buy books, I flip to the middle and check out the quality.  Sometimes a great idea comes with great writing, but too often I can't believe the manuscript got past a beta reader let alone an editor–until I read the back and the concept grabs me.  I'll even read through a book I don't like just because the idea is so damn cool!  Not that that's an excuse for poor writing, but it illustrates how valuable the Big Idea can be.
 
Ideally, a single sentence includes all you need:  personality, a problem, unique detail, and stakes.  
 
Jurassic Park:  An eccentric billionaire's amusement park collapses when its' genetically recreated dinosaurs escape.
 
Arthur C Clark's  “The Nine Billion Names of God:”   two programmers are hired by Tibetan monks to write software that will list all the possible names of God.
 
"Confessions of a Demon-hunting Soccermom" - the title itself is the pitch.  Combine the sale history of something like Buffy (demon hunting cheerleader) with another unusual hunter–the suburban mom.  
 
It's taken me far longer than I want to admit to sift my novel into a concept and I won't be sure I've really got it until I start getting responses to my query.  I had to delete and re-think the pitch hundreds of times…the novel didn't change, my thought process did.  
 
I started out by trying to condense my novel into two paragraphs but what I needed to do was tap into the essence of the overarching conflict and let the rest speak for itself when it's time.  I didn't even realize what I had until my coworker asked about the novel and the first sentence of my query fell out of my mouth ;)   When asked, I've always struggled to explain the story chronologically, making sure to hit all the cool parts but that just gets confusing.  But us long-winded authors don't  want to leave anything out!  
 
I need a "less is more" tattoo ;)
 
Rather than being intimidated by the need for a high concept, I'm enjoying it.  Once I've got the concept down, it keeps me focused and energized as I work.  I'm giddy with several particular secrets ;)

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categories Marketing, On Writing | zellie | datetime February 4, 2010 6:43 pm | comments Comments (0)

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