Off to London!

I'm off to London for the next two weeks. I'm taking my younger daughter, Danielle, with me. Steve gets to stay home and take care of the cats.

I must admit that after what happened to Indie while I was on my book tour, I'm going to worry about my old guys while I'm gone. Huck is 14 1/2 but hasn't been well for the last two years; Nora just turned 15: Angel is 16 1/2 and failing; and Thomasina is at least 17 and may be as much as 18 or 19.  So fingers crossed they'll be okay.

I used to go to England several times a year but haven't been since before I started writing the Sebastian St. Cyr series. This trip is all about Sebastian, with my list of "must see" places including such obscure sites as St. Helens Bishopsgate and the corner of Brook and Davies Streets. Expect lots of pictures when I get back!

A Great, Big Thank You!

A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to my last post. I received some great feedback, which I carefully assembled and fired off to my editor in four very long emails. I've learned so much. In the past, I've been arguing from a position of supposition; now I  have some "proof" I can point to.

My biggest takeaway is that reducing the price of the first book in a series is enormously important. I know publishers hate this because they feel it devalues books. But this is the world we live in.  Even readers who've heard good things about an author via word-of-mouth are still reluctant to shell out full price for an unknown author. I can totally understand this. I myself will first look for books by an untried author at our Friends of the Library book sale. I'm famous for "proctorizing" books and I get really annoyed when I give up on a book I paid full price for.  Personally, I'd love to see the price of Angels dropped permanently, but I doubt that will happen.

Many of you mentioned the importance of Book Bub ads and Kindle Daily Deals in finding new authors, and several said you'll direct friends to a sale when you see a reduction for an author you've been recommending. I intend to really, really push for at least a temporary price reduction on Angels in the lead up to the release of the next book in the series. Fingers crossed.

Many mentioned using Amazon.com's scrolling "Customers who bought this item also bought..." ribbon or being alerted to new books by Amazon emails. I don't think that's something publishers can control, but it's still good information to have. A lot of readers find books at Goodreads. Book blogs are another popular source, which is interesting because I've heard  authors wondering, "Do we really know if anyone looks at them? Are they a waste of time? Do they do any good?" Nice to know readers do use them.

I was also comforted to discover that many readers first discovered my books at their local library. Yay for libraries! But you know what else I noticed? Only a couple of people said they'd first stumbled upon my books at a bricks-and-mortar bookstore.

Social media doesn't seem to be nearly as important as publishers think it is in terms of attracting new readers. But several people noted that things like Facebook, blogs, signings, and newsletters are important for making personal connections and establishing loyalty.  Good to know.

So, thank you to everyone who took the time to answer my question. And if you've more to say on the subject, please feel free to let me know!

(And if anyone's curious, that's a picture of my daughter's dog playing the Game of Life. Yeah, he's spoiled. But then, he was horribly abused before she rescued him, so he deserves it.)

What Works in Book Marketing, and What Doesn't?

My publisher has asked me for suggestions on how they can best market the next book in the Sebastian St. Cyr series. I've come up with a few ideas, but I thought I'd ask what you think works.

Time was, publishers pushed their authors to be active on Facebook. But now that Facebook only shows an author's post to 3-10% of the people who follow her, even publishers are admitting it's really not very effective. (I'll swallow the rant I'd like to insert here.)

I usually make a book video for my books, even though I doubt anyone has ever watched one and bought the book because of it. I make them because they're fun and because they make my publisher happy because it looks like I'm doing something to promote my book. Which is a really stupid reason to do something, but the truth is, I suspect a LOT of what authors do falls into that category.

I have asked them to drop the price on What Angels Fear and run a Book Bub Ad right before the next book's release. They don't seem too enthused, but I plan to keep pushing the idea.

I just had the book tour for Who Buries the Dead, so that isn't in the cards again, at least not this soon. I did a virtual blog tour last March, but I'm not sure how much good that did and it took a lot of time to write all those posts. Who saw them? Did anyone try the books because of them? Who knows?

I am in the process of revamping my website, but that is more because after eight years I'm tired of looking at it myself, and because Google is being a pain (swallowing another rant here; if you don't have a special page for mobile devises, your site's ranking is now knocked way down on a Google search).

So, any suggestions? What makes you decide to buy a book--other than having someone whose tastes you respect say, "I read a great book you should try!" What have you seen authors/publishers do to promote a book that actually worked?

Ideas?

On Proctorizing

I am a notoriously picky reader.  I have such a reputation for abandoning books half-read that my writers' group has coined a word for the act of giving up on a book without finishing it: they call it "proctorizing." As in, "This book was so boring, I finally proctorized it."

I haven't always been this way. Time was, once I started a book, I'd plow through to the end largely I suspect because the idea of NOT finishing it--of judging it--never occurred to me. But once I started writing, I carried the habit of scrutinizing word choice and pacing, characterization and plot structure from my own work to the books I was reading. I grew impatient. My To Be Read pile was growing, my time for reading shrinking. I started proctorizing. Sometimes I would proctorize half a dozen books in a row--books by very successful NYT bestselling authors I won't name because this is a small business and saying nasty things about other authors can come back to bite you in the ass. The list of authors I enjoy is short. My editor once actually snapped at me for this, because editors like to ask their writers' favorite authors for quotes.

Then, about a year ago, I decided I needed to break this proctorizing habit. And so, when an author started losing me, I didn't allow myself to put the book down but would plow through determinedly to the end. As a result, I read a string of books by popular authors whose works I'd never been able to finish. And you know what? At the end of each one, I found myself thinking, "Well, that was a waste of time."

A couple of weeks ago, I gave myself permission to abandon my short-lived resolution and go back to proctorizing. Life is too short, and my TBR pile too high (piles, actually; that's a photo of one, above). Ironically, I then stumbled upon a book I thoroughly enjoyed--The Two Minute Rule, by Robert Crais. For years, one of the members of my writers' group has been singing Crais's praises, but while I'd added a couple of his books to my TBR pile, I'd never been able to bring myself to try one largely because this friend (sorry, Sphinx Ink!) also absolutely loves a certain other bestselling author whose popularity mystifies me. Crais does not have the literary inclinations of James Lee Burke or Martin Cruz Smith (my two favorite mystery/thriller writers); he's a Hollywood screenwriter, after all. But I found this particular book brilliantly plotted and emotionally satisfying. So I tried one of Crais's Elvis Cole books and found it, again, masterfully plotted, gripping, and frankly fun. So I've looked up his backlist and I'm dizzy with delight at the thought of all those books I now have to read.

So, what about you? Do you proctorize books?

Finished!

I've spent the past I-don't-know-how-many weeks rereading the entire Sebastian St. Cyr series and taking copious notes. And I'm FINALLY finished.

It was quite an experience, alternately fun, insightful, and (when I found mistakes) horrifying. The most hilarious error I discovered was one place where instead of "Mayfair" there was "Mayflower." Seriously! Apart from being a weird mindslip in the first place, how did that slide past my dozen or so rereadings, my editor, the copyeditor, and whatever minions are supposed to read the galleys after I go over them? Oh, oh, oh.

At any rate, the fat notebook you see in the photo above is the result of the last weeks' labors, all 100-plus pages of it. I even drew a family tree for Sebastian that stretches back 200 years (no,you can't see it!).

I'm now starting back to work on Where the Dead Lie. And one other thing I did last week was approve the new cover for #11, When Falcons Fall, due out in March of 2016. It's by the same illustrator as the last several books, and we have a new model who looks much more like my own personal vision of Sebastian. It'll be interesting to see if y'all agree. I've asked for permission to reveal the cover, so hopefully that will be coming through soon. Stay tuned.