Wow, a lot of LONG comments today! I will get to all of them eventually, but not today.
Today, I’d like to talk about branding your blog. This is critical, because people need to know what your blog is “about” or they’ll find a reason to visit one of the other 60 million blogs and skip yours.
This blog has a pretty simple brand. It’s the Advanced Fiction Writing Blog, and it’s about fiction writing. But there are plenty of blogs about fiction writing. What’s different about mine? Several things:
First, it’s well integrated in with my web site, which already had a strong brand as a quirky, high-content site with a sharp focus on “how-to”. The look and feel is almost identical. Gerhi noticed this today and asked the obvious question:
One question for you Randy. Your blog and site match in design. Obviously its not a standard WordPress theme. Who made up your template for the WordPress side of your site?
Randy sez: I took the default WordPress theme and modified it by going into the PHP code and editing it directly to look as much like my own site as possible. This is easy if you are familiar with the usual suspects: HTML, PHP, and CSS. If you aren’t, you can always pay somebody to do it. It took me about an hour to tweak things the way I wanted them, starting from a cold start with the default WordPress theme. That was because I had already created the template for my web site first. (Gerhi asked if Arteculation Designs did that for me. The answer is no. They created the graphic design and sent me an image file, with color codes for all the colors, and the names of the fonts. Then I turned that into HTML, PHP, and CSS. I like this kind of geek-work.)
Second, near the top of the blog is my “success formula,” (which is on almost every page of my site). This formula is:
Successful Fiction Writing = Organizing + Creating + Marketing
I developed this “success formula” last summer because I realized that those three elements were the main categories that I’ve been teaching in the last year, and they are the main foundation of my own efforts as a writer. Everything I do falls into one of those categories. My e-zine has three major columns per month, each focusing on one of those topics.
Third, I resolutely resist all attempts by people to talk about anything else or get off track on nonfiction or politics or religion or even my own fiction. I get emails from people all the time who want to advertise on my site. I tell them that my policy is not to accept ads. I only recommend products that I have created myself and which I can feel proud of, or products that I use myself, or products that are very similar to ones I use myself.
Fourth, I have a particular style of writing. It’s quirky (even a little crazy at times) and sometimes opinionated. It’s me. I don’t claim it’s the best style. But it’s my style and it’s consistent. If I were ever to hire a ghostwriter to write my blogs (I can’t imagine doing that), it would be obvious to everyone right away, because my goofball style is hard to copy. The important thing is that it’s consistent. You know what you’re going to get. That’s an important part of branding. And it’s authentic. I don’t have to pretend to be anyone else.
Camille asked:
But to be very honest, there are tons of writing blogs that review books and interview authors, and while I’m interested in hearing and learning about them, there is a glut of the same info out there. I don’t want to glut, so I’ll keep marinading until I come up with that special something that will make a must read for someone besides my mother.
I think it is a mistake for a novelist to write a blog about “fiction writing” or “author interviews” if your goal is to promote your novels. You will note that I almost never blog about my fiction. The reason is simple. The purpose of this blog is NOT to promote my fiction. (I will have a different blog for that when the time is right.) The purpose of this blog is to promote myself as a teacher of “how to write fiction.” This makes sense for me because I do a lot of teaching. For several years, I’ve routinely taught at 4, 5, or 6 conferences per year. And for the last three years, I’ve had various teaching products for sale. This blog helps me with that business, because it draws traffic. (The more traffic, the more sales.) And this blog gives me a great chance to interact directly with you, my loyal blog readers. I listen to you, and that tells me what I should be teaching about, what products I should be creating. Finally, this blog gives me a chance to hang out with writers that I may never meet in person, because some of you are a long way off. Writers are fun people.
Andie asked:
What content can an author blog or write about that would really sell potential readers of one’s fiction books?
This problem has consumed my thinking for ~six months.
Not to put Randy on the spot, but I wonder what the conversion rate of readers of Randy’s blog (RORBs) or non-fiction products buy his fiction?
Not that there should be any percentage as Randy’s blog/website are not setup to do this converting but how would one go about getting non-fiction writing to sell one’s fiction books?
Randy sez: I don’t know how many of the readers of this blog buy my fiction. I know that some do, because I sometimes get emails from folks who found this web site and wound up buying my novels. But that was never the purpose of this site, and it would not bother me if the conversion rate were zero.
But the question remains: How can a novelist use a blog to help sell his fiction? The answer is, I believe, that you use a blog the exact same way you use ordinary publicity to sell your fiction. The only difference is that you are in control of your blog, while you are not in control of the usual publicity channels (TV, radio, newspaper feature articles, magazine feature articles). If you’ve ever worked with a publicist, you’ll know that they try very hard to get you on radio interviews. (You can do a radio interview over the phone at home in your pajamas. I did one once where I had been asleep until 90 seconds before the interview–one of those scheduling surprises that you learn to live with.)
And how do you get on radio? You figure out a way to connect your novel to one of the following:
1) Current events
2) Topics of general interest
3) Topics of special interest to certain groups
Then you approach radio station programming directors and pitch them with an idea. A few years ago, I wrote a suspense novel (DOUBLE VISION) in which quantum encryption played a major role. My publicist got me some radio interviews in which the “hook” was identity theft. So I’d go on a radio show, answer some questions on ID theft and what you can do to protect yourself, and then the host would ask about my book.
Publicity is publicity. If your book is “about” something, then you can blog about it, probably indefinitely.
Is your book “about” something? I’ll bet it is. Romance novels are “about” relationships, and dating, and love, the meaning of life, and a zillion other things. Suspense novels are “about” legal issues or politics or big science run amok or military hardware or a zillion other things. Fantasy novels are “about” the endless battle between Good and Evil or the human need to go on a quest or the longing for medieval chivalry or a zillion other things.
Your mission as a publicity-hungry novelist is to FIND A WAY to connect your fiction to the NONFICTION topic that your novel is “about”. Then you can talk about that forever.
A personal note to show you that I “eat my own dog food” on this issue: I am working on a novel now set in ancient Jerusalem during the first century. The series I envision is “about” Jesus in his social/political/economic/religious setting. It is “about” the history of Jewish people in a cataclysmic time. It is “about” archaeology, cultural anthropology, religion, and much more. It is “about” how we in the 21st century can read and understand a set of documents (the New Testament) that was written for people we barely understand, and how that set of documents might be relevant (or irrelevant) to our life today. It’s about a zillion other things. When I launch my blog, it will be “about” all those (nonfiction) topics. Some folks will be interested (they’ll find me via the search engines) and many more people will NOT be interested. All that matters is that my natural audience will find me. Those are the only people that I can effectively market my books to. The purpose of my blog will be to help those people find me long before my next book comes out.
To summarize: Branding is about making a promise of consistent quality. Your blog does that by defining itself sharply and then delivering consistently. You’re a writer! You have something to say! Make that the focus of your blog, and you will draw all the readers that you deserve.
If I want to blog to promote my novel, then apparently I need to be an expert on key element(s) in my story. I know, duh. That tells me I should probably study up on grief since there are a number of people in my story deeply affected by loss. I can imagine getting reader comments (let’s pretend I sell the novel) on this subject and answering back with, “heck, I don’t know. I was just guessing. I made all that up.”
The old adage “write what you know” gets a lot of flack now. Maybe it’s, “Know what you write. Especially if you plan to blog about it.”
Blogging aside—you really got me thinking twice about the story elements and amount of research I put into my next novel. It should be something I could talk about with some authority. Hmmm. Back to those author bios where we asked, “What am I an expert at?” and weaving it into our writing.
Randy says: “If I were to hire a ghostwriter to write my blogs, it would be obvious to everyone right away.”
Darn right! I can’t speak for others, but I’m prepared to wager good money that I will pick up a ghostwriter within 47 words at the very most. I didn’t come here to praise you Randy, and most certainly not to bury you, but it is that very goofball style I enjoy very much. Not only the blog, but also the e-zines and articles.
As for the current topic, I’m afraid I can’t submit intelligent comments, as I know even less about HTML and PHP than I know about time warps and wormholes.
“goofball” a ghostwriter would never use that word and make it sound right.
I can do html, am getting to grips with css but the php still trips me up. Someday soon. I suspected that you fiddled your code yourself. I do it the other way round. I take somebody else’s code and then fiddle with the colours and pictures and things.
There are lots of free webiste and blog templates about which you are free to adapt. Change a colour here and a line thickness there and you have your own unique template in a jiffy.
Thanks for the example of what fiction can be about. Since I know what my brand as an author will be, it’ll probably be pretty easy to find the overlap between me as a whole and each story.
I’d like to add a tip or two regarding setting up radio interviews (I’m an announcer on a NYC morning radio show, and we frequently interview authors and politicos):
1. In large markets (NYC, LA) it’s sometimes more advantageous to contact a show’s producer direct rather than the Program Director. The PD often has a lot on his/her plate, and will just pass you off to the producer anyway. Show producers on news/talk format stations especially are often scrambling to find guests, and will accomodate you if you’re anywhere near what they’re looking for. (The flip side of this is that if you do get the ear of the PD, he/she will know which show of theirs they can slot you into. So that’s still a good route, regardless.)
2. Since deregulation of the industry in the 90’s, more and more individual radio station are parts of “clusters” owned by a single company. Go to a station’s website and look to see who the owner is (Clear Channel, Westwood One, etc.). Contacting the programming department of the parent company can sometimes result in having multiple interviews scheduled at their various outlets in one fell swoop. It’s worth a shot.
3. If you do wrangle an on-air appearance, especially if you’ve never been on the radio before, PRACTICE FIRST. Write down questions you think an interviewer might ask, then answer them out loud into a recording device. Play it back and listen to your answers. You want to be conversational but succinct, without stammering or sounding like the question caught you off guard. On large stations with a heavy spot load you may only get 4 or 5 minutes to pique listeners’ interest. If you ramble on about every twist and quirk you encountered while trying to find the perfect agent (for instance) you’ll have less time to sell numerous other points. Don’t be brusque of course, but being overly expansive can be even worse. If you’re being pre-recorded the producer might chop you down later anyway – better to self edit beforehand so YOU can control content.
Whew. Talk about “do as I say, not as I do”. In my defense, I’m not normally overly expansive with blog comments. But this is one of the few subjects I can expound on with any authority at all, and I seem to have lost all self control. Not that I have much to begin with….
This is great stuff. It’s “cheering” to know I’m on the right track. I have found an extra bonus for my blog in that it is forcing me to keep a steady march on my path. You said your goal for your blog wasn’t to sell your books through it (which I too wondered about). I was drawn to your blog for the educational value. My mission for my blog was to track my journey toward publication, and I have found it is doing more than that – its keeping me accountable. Yes, this is indeed very encouraging material.
I am currently working on my masters in creative writing, which is basically perfecting my craft and equipping me to teach at the college level. However, I have drawn on several things I’ve learned from Randy over the years, such as active voice, MRUs, marketing, speaking, etc. I’m on a track with two rails: MCW and RORB (the aforementioned readers of Randy’s blog). The combination is fueling me forward with my WIP. I have also created a website (which I’m thinking is a little busy) and I just started a blog. Like one other reader, I’m still figuring out the blog bit, but what fun!
Thanks Randy, for sharing such great stuff.
(I first put this comment on yesterday’s blog by mistake, sorry!)
Randy, I took the Simpleology course on blogging, but I must say that what you have said here is so much more helpful! Part of it is what you say is specific to fiction writing, and I can’t expect Simpleology to make a course specific to that topic. Maybe we’ll see one from you? That would be great.
Randy,
I love that last sentence: Branding is the promise of quality. You sum up a fuzzy bear in a no-nonsense way. My blogs are about writing bioblogs, not about me, so I understand your position. (Which is why I won’t get into the Facebook or MySpace routine either.) Writers have a natural audience (mine are the 5-10% of job hoppers who want to really stand out, and know they are worth more than the average candidate), so we should not be worrying about attracting people who aren’t, so to speak, in our “cloud” anyway. This is a great blog.
With all the different blogs out there, I found a great way to start one’s brand is the blog’s name itself. I’ve gone with a couple of catchy but memorable titles. My first blog was titled “Plotastic,” and my current blog is “Write Damn Now.” Granted, they’re fairly ambiguous in description. But they’re not exactly forgetable.
Thanks for the tips! Timely and useful.
-Mark
http://www.writedamnnow.com
If I want to promote myself as a writer, my blog should show snippets of my writing style. I treat my blog like a editor’s column and write mini essays about everyday stuff – flash length – in my ‘writer’s voice.’
A blog should not be a diary, but each entry should show a definite theme, a beginning, middle and end, a hook, a plot and a solution. Such a blog can serve as a hook for what I want readers to look for and perhaps spark an interest in my published stories.