30Apr

WANTED: A 21st Century Author Promoter

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• by Chris Orcutt
• with Comments Off on WANTED: A 21st Century Author Promoter

I love writ­ing.

I love sit­ting down with half a dozen fresh Black­wing 602 pen­cils, sharp­en­ing them to a razor edge and fill­ing up pages of a note­book with the words of a new nov­el. I love sit­ting in front of my Roy­al Qui­et Deluxe type­writer and bang­ing out pages. I love typ­ing those pages into my Mac, print­ing them, revis­ing them by hand, and then enter­ing those revi­sions back into the com­put­er.

I love spend­ing my morn­ings while my mind is fresh, sip­ping Suma­tran cof­fee and writ­ing the new long nov­el I’m work­ing on. I love work­ing more on that book over lunch in my favorite Asian restau­rant, Momi­ji in Rhinebeck, NY. I love using my after­noons, while sip­ping still more cof­fee, to edit the draft of anoth­er book.

I love read­ing my work to audi­ences and giv­ing inter­views to radio and news­pa­pers. I love meet­ing read­ers and teach­ing and encour­ag­ing young writ­ers. I love writ­ing the occa­sion­al blog entry when I have some­thing to say, and I love trav­el­ing to new places that inspire new pieces of writ­ing. In all, I love every­thing asso­ci­at­ed with the writ­ing part of being an author, and I even love some of the self-pro­mo­tion work—in small dos­es.

What I don’t love about being an author is all of the hav­ing-to-be-online-social-media-sales-and-pro­mo­tion stuff. I resent it because it pre­vents me from focus­ing on writ­ing new work. It also dri­ves me crazy because the new pub­lish­ing world is con­stant­ly chang­ing, and the time that I invest in it doesn’t help me to become a bet­ter writer.

Over the past sev­er­al years since I’ve inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished, I’ve looked crit­i­cal­ly at my tal­ents and deter­mined that mine do not lie in the areas of social media, sales and pro­mo­tion; my tal­ents are in the writ­ing; and there­fore I need to part­ner with some­one who is bet­ter at these oth­er impor­tant tasks.

I am a very good writer, and I know I have it in me to become a great one. I want to focus exclu­sive­ly on writ­ing, on becom­ing the best writer I can be.

But in order to do this, I need some­one great at social media, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, pro­mo­tion and sales. So, with­out fur­ther ado…

WANTED: Tech‑, media- and dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing-savvy bib­lio­phile to serve as the pro­mot­er and “lit­er­ary agent” of an inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished 21st cen­tu­ry author. As much as s/he loves my books, the ide­al can­di­date loves gam­ing the social media sys­tem, dis­sect­ing the Ama­zon algo­rithm, manip­u­lat­ing key­words and meta­da­ta, and com­ing up with new ways of being heard in a noisy dig­i­tal world. This per­son would man­age my social media pres­ence, tweak my pres­ence on all sales plat­forms, secure pro­mo­tion­al and adver­tis­ing oppor­tun­ties for me and my books, and, in gen­er­al, boost sales of my work.

In essence this per­son would serve as a 21st cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary agent, but instead of attempt­ing to sell my man­u­scripts to tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing hous­es, s/he would be mar­ket­ing my work to read­ers. This per­son would make his/her own hours, and would work wher­ev­er s/he want­ed. And for com­pen­sa­tion, this per­son will receive 20 per­cent of all of my book sales, with bonus­es for var­i­ous bench­marks (e.g., if one of my books made the New York Times Best­seller List).

Under the anti­quat­ed tra­di­tion­al pub­lish­ing mod­el, a lit­er­ary agent typ­i­cal­ly received only 15 per­cent of an author’s sales. Because the Author Pro­mot­er job would require the can­di­date to have and/or devel­op a mul­ti­plic­i­ty of skills in inter­net research, mar­ket­ing, social media, dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing and adver­tis­ing, and because the job pays strict­ly com­mis­sion and bonus­es, the Author Pro­mot­er would receive 5% more in com­mis­sion than tra­di­tion­al lit­er­ary agents.

Yes, the job pays only com­mis­sion and bonus­es, but you would be step­ping into work for a pub­lish­er with a good-sized cat­a­log already in place: four books in a mys­tery series, a lit­er­ary nov­el, a book of short sto­ries, and a col­lec­tion of plays. In the com­ing year, these will be fol­lowed by a book of mem­oir, a Paris travelogue/memoir, and anoth­er nov­el. You would not be stuck sell­ing one wid­get; there are sev­er­al prod­ucts to sell, and more will be com­ing all the time.

 

 

I am a self-taught writer. I do not have an MFA degree or a Ph.D., nor have I ever tak­en a cre­ative writ­ing class. Major­ing in phi­los­o­phy in col­lege and work­ing as a news­pa­per reporter after col­lege were my two train­ing grounds as a writer. Oth­er­wise I learned to write entire­ly on my own, or, as one of my writ­ing idols, Jack Lon­don, char­ac­ter­ized his own devel­op­ment as a writer, I had “no men­tor but myself.” I learned to write fic­tion by read­ing thou­sands of books, and by writ­ing mil­lions of words (most of them bad). I am a writer in the tra­di­tion of Ernest Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald, John Cheev­er, Anton Chekhov, and Mark Twain, in that I learned to write by study­ing the great writ­ers, and by writ­ing.

I men­tion my devel­op­ment as a writer because I want you, the poten­tial can­di­date to under­stand some­thing: I don’t care about pedi­gree. Whether or not you grad­u­at­ed from an Ivy League col­lege, or dropped out of one, or didn’t attend col­lege at all, or even dropped out of high school—I don’t care. All I care about are a will­ing­ness to work, the abil­i­ty to learn from mis­takes, and pos­i­tive results—book sales. I’m a prag­ma­tist. Good gram­mar and spelling are impor­tant, too, but more impor­tant is a desire to learn.

So, how about it? Do you have the vision, imag­i­na­tion and mar­ket­ing and tech savvy to make me and my books a house­hold name?

If so, and if you’re inter­est­ed in the job, here’s how you get hired: just start doing the job. Right now. Find my books on Ama­zon and oth­er online sell­ers and study their list­ings. Ana­lyze their pres­ence online and fig­ure out their strengths and weak­ness­es. Then start a guer­ril­la mar­ket­ing campaign—something clever, sim­ple and that does­n’t cost you anything—on social media or in anoth­er realm that makes more sense to you. When it’s in place, con­tact me and direct my atten­tion to it. We’ll then have a Skype meet­ing and dis­cuss your ideas, and see if our per­son­al­i­ties would be a good fit. If they are, and I hire you, you will receive 20 per­cent of all of my sales of all of my books.

That’s my pro­pos­al. I look for­ward to hir­ing my 21st cen­tu­ry author pro­mot­er in the com­ing year. Thank you.

Tagged: Amazon, author, author promotion, author publicity, bestseller, bestselling books, book sales, Chris Orcutt, Dakota Stevens, Facebook, Hemingway, literary agent, mysteries, mystery, New York Times Bestseller, novelist, novels, Orcutt, social media, Twitter, writer's life, writers, writing

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