Write Good or Die

SELF-PROMOTION
    By Dean Wesley Smith
    http://www.deadwesleysmith.com

    The myth simply is: “All self promotion for a writer is good.” Nope. Completely false. The truth is sometimes self promotion of your own book can hurt you, sometimes it can help you. The key is not falling for the myth that all self promotion is good.
    Right now, in late 2009, the publishing industry is changing so fast that it is often hard to keep up for a writer with his head buried in writing the next book. Things are changing month to month, and the major publishers in New York and around the world are struggling to even stay a year or two behind. Where exactly is all this change happening? In the distribution system, which in turn is causing changes throughout the rest of the system.
    For a very easy way to understand publishing, write at the top of a piece of paper the word WRITER. Then draw a line down the center of the page a few inches and write the word PUBLISHER, then continue the line a few more inches and write DISTRIBUTION, and then continue the line to the bottom of the page and write the word READER.
    WRITER
    PUBLISHER
    DISTRIBUTION
    READER
    Everything flows from the top to the bottom. For hundreds of years, that was, and still is, the basic structure of the publishing business. The writer supplies product to a publisher, who then creates the book product, promotes, and gets the books into distribution (which includes bookstores), finally ending up in readers’ hands.
    On your slip of paper, draw a line across the page between the writer and the publisher. That’s the contract between a writer and a publisher, the paper that defines the terms between the supplier of product and the producer of the product. For a long time, the common knowledge was that a writer never crossed that contract line unless a publisher asked for their help on a tour. And, of course, the publisher always paid all the writer’s expenses for such help. It still works that way with major book tours for writers.
    Then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a few romance writers decided they could help their sales by talking to the truckers, handing out treats early in the morning to truck drivers, creating bookmarks, and so on, including paying for their own book tour. It worked for a few early on, then every writer seemed to jump on the bandwagon and in short order the bookstores didn’t want to see a writer come though their doors with more crap. Mail boxes were full of junk produced by writers and mailed to everyone they could think of. That sort of self promotion of a book basically became worthless. And very expensive for a writer to do.
    And thus, the myth of self promotion was born. Writers coming in since the early 1990’s have heard over and over that you have to self promote your own book or fail.
    Hogwash. Let me simply say that what sells a book, both to an editor and to a reader, is a well-told story written well and presented well. The better the book, the better it will sell. If your books are not selling, learn how to write better books and learn how to write better proposals, and then mail it all to editors. It really is that simple.
    Now, that said, here we are in late 2009 and the world has shifted once again. Kindles, Nooks, ebooks, POD, and a dozen other ways of getting a book from a publisher to a reader has arrived. Finally.
    Why do I say “finally”? This change has been thought about and talked about for almost two decades. It was just slow arriving, but when it did finally arrive, it hit the system with an impact.
    No one, including me, is sure how or where all these changes are leading. All we can do is follow the news and keep learning. But does it change the fact that a good story, well written and well presented will sell? Nope.
    Do the changes in the industry change the self-promotion thinking? Yes, some.
    So, at this point, in late 2009, what can an author do to help a book get better sales for their publisher?
    Before I get to a few ideas on that question, let’s talk about how return for self promotion is measured for a writer. It’s a simple formula, actually.
    Time Spent + Money Spent = Total cost.
    Compare Money Returned in Sales to Total Cost.
    Remember that every moment you are spending self promoting an old book is a moment you are not writing a new book. So just as with any business, figure time lost and put an actual dollar figure on that time. (Say it took you three months to write the last book and your