Hey,

Last Friday we began talking about How To Sell Books in 2022, where I tried to untangle the complicated mess that is book marketing by broadly identifying three key things that authors should focus on: Product, Promotion, and Platform. (Read last week’s email here if you missed it.)

Over the next three emails – while we talk a short break from Facebook Ads – I will dive into each aspect of that in more detail, sharing all my favorite resources to help you improve on each aspect. And today we are focusing on Product.

Beg, Borrow, Steal

Let me kick off by noting that some authors are loath to use the word “product” about their cri de coeur. It’s a stage we probably all go through at some point – learning to swap our artist beret for a snappy business fedora – but all creative types must wear a bunch of different hats if they want to succeed in today’s world. If it makes you feel any better, just think of yourself as a modern-day Renaissance person. (That doesn’t work for me personally so I just imagine I’m Tony Montana in Scarface talking cryptically about “product”).

I’d certainly like my product to be as addictive, and good books can do that. We’ve all experienced those moments where you were so lost in a story that you missed your stop, burnt your toast, or stayed up until three a.m. just wanting to read “one more chapter.” And we’ve all felt that horrible emptiness when you finish a book and realize you are never going to hang with your book friends ever again.

We all certainly want to write books which have that kind of effect on people. Of course, actually doing that is much more difficult and there’s another stage which we all have to go through as writers – that often-awful stage where our taste is exceedingly well developed, but our execution is not, leaving us to feel like everything we create absolutely sucks. Meaning we suck. And then the rum happens.

That feeling often never goes away completely, but finishing things, publishing things, selling things, all helps. Especially the finishing things part, which rather handily helps with the other parts too. Also: remembering things like the fact that you have to hack up some furballs first before you learn how to write gooder. And then keeping in mind that no one has to see the crap you are currently writing unless you show it to them… and you can probably improve it in the next pass anyway.

Learning how to write better books, ones that readers will appreciate more and recommend to all their friends, is hard. Some might even say that it’s a lifelong process of learning, one which is never truly completed.

But if you are an author seeking to make a living from those words of yours, there are some fundamentals about the marketplace, and readers, and what they like and so forth, which you can embrace to make the process of making money from books a little easier.

Because readers have fairly well-defined likes and dislikes. Genres have pretty clear conventions. Someone buying a novel in a certain niche will have a set of expectations – on a meta level – with regard to how the story is going to play out. (Of course, you can subvert expectations and conventions in clever and interesting ways, but you must understand and respect them first – just like the “rules” of grammar and style.)

Readers usually like stories to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They like fleshed out characters who mostly act in ways which generally make sense in terms of that character’s personality, as defined by you, the overlord of this universe. They like plots which make sense, twists they didn’t see coming, resolutions which feel satisfying, mysteries which slowly reveal themselves, a will they/won’t they romance, and so forth.

At the most fundamental level, readers want a story to have a certain pace, and be a certain… shape. There’s an emotional arc to a story which makes it satisfying at its conclusion. Or not, if you mess it up. We’ve all read books – or watched movies – where you were totally going along for the ride, until the ending enraged you so much that it completely undermined everything which went before. And it’s maddening, even though all of us know how difficult endings can be.

It's quite a challenge, especially for newer authors, and the best way of grappling with it is simply to read lots and lots and lots of books in your genre. Read good books. Read bad books. Read your favorites again, but this time as a writer. Pull them apart, figure out how they work (or why they don’t). Tug at those seams. Imagine what you would do with those characters instead. Break down why you find them appealing, how that scene shocked you so much, where that ending could have gone.

Reverse-engineer your favorite book bits, disassemble that scene-chewing cameo, picture how you could have raised the stakes for the hero even more. And when you are done stealing, copying, and remixing, throw everything you have learned into something new and original of your own… which still respects those genre conventions (or toys with them cleverly, if you prefer).

Improving Your Craft

The first recommendation I usually make to anyone interested in writing a book is On Writing by Stephen King – which is part memoir of his early years, and part instructional guide on how to get going on a novel of your own. It was the book that got me to finally start writing a book, instead of just endlessly talking about doing that… one day.

Of course, most of the writers reading this are well beyond needing that book, but I specifically mention it here because many of you will be familiar with it, and King’s idea of an author’s toolbox – filled with all the different techniques and literary devices that we need to tell a given story.

Well, if you want a really great guide to that author’s literary toolbox, which goes through each technique in much more detail – and rather helpfully doing so by quoting from lots of books and authors you will have read, then I strongly recommend How To Write A Novel by Harry Bingham – which I think authors at any stage will find interesting, but will have particular value for authors who have written a few books, but now want to sharpen some of those skills before taking on their next project.

That emotional shape of a good book is something which is particularly tricky to get write, as there are so many moving parts to it. One book that explores that concept in great detail – and again does so by discussing books across a range of genres and styles you will be familiar with – is Take Off Your Pants by Libbie Hawker.

It's a really great book for plotters (but I can comfortably recommend it for pantsers too – even just for those discussions on why readers find certain books emotionally satisfying). For those who want to get further into different plotting techniques, I recommend checking out the work of James Scott Bell also – who has all sorts of craft books which are consistently recommended. I also saw him speak at a conference in the Before Times, and it was simply fab. (Anyone who quotes from John Fante is alright by me.)

Writing a good book is extremely difficult, in my opinion, which is always my favorite thing to say before this next part: it’s also not enough. Not anymore.

If you want a sustainable career – in most genres at least – you must also write books which are connected to each other in some way. A series is the most obvious example, but there are other ways that books can be connected.

Let me just note quickly that some authors can be a little too rigid with what they consider to be a bona fide series; it doesn’t necessarily have to have a story directly following along from the last book, containing the same protagonist. If you can present a set of books to a reader as a series without blurring the lines too much, then you should absolutely do that because selling a series is so much easier then trying to flog a disparate collection of standalones.

The most basic reason for that is simple, but perhaps not universally internalized by all writers: when a reader finishes Book 1, the obvious place for them to go is Book 2, right? But if they complete a standalone of yours, there is no obvious place for them to go. They could read another standalone, I guess, but they are equally likely to move on to a different writer. Perhaps one who has written a series… which then captures their attention until Christmas.

This phenomenon is also echoed by our friendly neighbourhood algorithms, by the way. If Amazon sees a huge percentage of Book 1 readers move on to Book 2 right after, it will recommend that sequel to anyone who buys the first book. And when it sees a small percentage of Standalone 1 readers buy Standalone 2, well, then it won’t recommend them another of yours, unfortunately. That can be nothing to do with the respective quality of the books.

This might be the worst news ever if you prefer reading and writing standalones. You can get mad at that, or you can embrace the creative challenge instead. For anyone in that boat, I recommend Sara Rosett’s How To Write A Series.

Act Like You Belong

It’s not enough to write a good book, or even a series of them, you also must package it well.

What does that mean?

You must present your book in a professional way which, once again, respects genre conventions (another reason, if one were needed, to read voraciously in your chosen genre).

To put it another way, you must package your book in a way that seduces your target reader – you know, the ones who read voraciously in your genre too. Your book’s cover, blurb, title, and sample should all be a clear signal to your target reader that this is exactly the kind of book they normally enjoy.

Thrillers are packaged very differently to romances. And romantic suspense is packaged very differently to historical romance. Each genre and niche has its own characteristics which you must know and then reflect in your packaging – often right down to things like the font style for your author name, or how long the title is, or whether you go for an illustrated cover, or a manipulated photo, or something very text heavy, or even something more abstract than that.

My free book marketing course Starting From Zero has an entire module on how to research your genre and then transmute that knowledge into your book’s packaging.

​This blog post is a very deep dive into covers, what works, what doesn’t, and how to put together a design brief for your cover designer so they don’t just produce something that you like but also one that your target readers specifically will respond to.

While your cover is the most important part of your packaging by far, it's not the only aspect you must pay attention to. For more advice on writing effective blurbs, choosing your book/series title, or any other aspect of publishing your book professionally in a way that readers will respond to, my guide to self-publishing is free on all retailers.

Look At You Now

You have all the resources at your fingertips now to nail down the product said of things, specifically to improve your craft, to understand what readers want from a story, to build a series of books they can devour, and then to package all that in a professional way that will grab readers’ attention.

Next time we will look at how to drive traffic to all those perfectly packaged books of yours.

Dave

P.S. Writing music this week is Bob Dylan with In My Time of Dyin’.