writing

 by Jon F. Merz

The Freedom of Choice

By Jon F. Merz

One of the best things about being an author in the 21st century is the freedom of choice. For years, writers have been forced to accept whatever terms NYC publishing houses deemed generous in order to get our books out to the masses. Since NYC houses had a monopoly on the distribution system (unless an author could afford to print and distribute their own work) authors, if they had any hope at all of achieving their goals of being published, had to accept those terms as part of doing business.

No more.

With the advent of ebooks and both the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook, authors now have the freedom to choose how they get their work to readers. They can opt to stay with NYC houses or they can go the indie route. Both options have their pros and cons. Let’s look at them:

Traditional or Legacy Publishing Route – PROS

  • Public Perception: the reading public still tends to think that self-published work is of lesser quality. (This, of course, is erroneous and the perception is changing albeit slowly.) A book “vetted” by NYC still looks better to consumers than an indie one.
  • Paper Distribution: your book is available in major chains like Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Powell’s, and a few others. Indie bookstores might order it or they might not.
  • Marketing: this is a BIG MAYBE. There’s always a chance your book is gifted with marketing dollars and the publisher actually puts some muscle behind you in order to move copies.

Traditional or Legacy Publishing Route – CONS

  • Advances: the average advance for a debut novelist AND a midlister with experience is now just $5,000 bucks. That’s it.
  • Royalty Rates: digital is becoming king but publishers still try to take as much as they can. The ebook royalty rate is 25% NET, which equals a measly 17.5% after your agent takes a cut.
  • Accounting: Ever seen a royalty statement? They’re virtually impenetrable unless you know what you’re looking at. You get two of them each year. If your book is selling well, that means you get paid TWICE each year. That’s it.
  • Reserves Against Returns: since publishing uses this bizarre business model that should have been abolished eons ago, they hold back a large chunk of any money you made in case bookstores return unsold copies of your book for credit. Your royalty statement might show that you earned our your advance and are due say, $3500, but since your publisher think stores might ship back unsold copies of your book they’re just going to hang on to that $3500 for now. They *might* release *some* of it in the next statement, or they might hang on to it a little while longer. That means they’re earning interest off of your money.
  • Reversion Clauses: your print book might go the way of the dinosaurs, but that doesn’t mean it’s out-of-print anymore. Nowadays, your ebook will be available pretty much forever. That means any hope you have of getting your rights back one day is about as likely to happen as you suddenly tripping over a spaceship.
  • EBook Price: most NYC ebooks are horribly overpriced. No one should be paying $16.99 for an ebook. No one.
  • Editing: if you have any hope of being edited by some prestigious editor, think again. Editors don’t edit anymore. Of the 30 novels I’ve published – exactly ONE of them got any edits at all.
  • Time: publishers can take up to TWO YEARS from the time you sign the contract until the book actually makes it out into stores. That sort of time span might have worked before the dawn of the Internet, but things move MUCH faster these days.
  • Cover Art: You don’t have any say over cover art. Get rid of this fantasy right now. When St. Martin’s picked up THE KENSEI and I talked to them about the branding we were doing with the TV show and how it would make perfect sense to have brand continuity between the book and TV show to help build an audience, my suggestions were completely shot down and overruled. They presented me with a cover I hated and I demanded changes. They made a few slight changes. But the point here is that if they couldn’t even see the rationale behind building brand continuity for a series heading to TV, there’s no chance in hell they’re going to listen to you.
  • Attitude: The publishing industry is full of people who *think* they know what the reading public wants. And they like to prattle on endlessly about their skill in picking new bestsellers and all that related horse crap. The fact is, NYC editors have no greater understanding about consumer mentality than you or I do. After all, these are the same wizards who brought you novels by Snooki. When my novel THE NINJA APPRENTICE was making the rounds in NYC for eighteen months, my agent heard all manner of astoundingly stupid comments like “boys don’t read,” “this would be great if the hero was a girl,” and “this doesn’t have any commercial appeal.” THE NINJA APPRENTICE, since its debut on May 8, 2012, has gone on to sell over 1300 copies, garnered nothing but 5-star reviews, and been selected as summer reading choices for several high schools and literacy groups.

Indie Publishing – PROS

  • Complete Control: Over everything. Cover art, layout, editing, copyediting, price, everything. You get to write what you want, when you want, knowing you can always publish it. Want to write a novel about brain-eating pixies from the alterna-Earth Paleolithic Era space twinkies? You can. And even if you only sell a few copies, you can still make pizza money writing it.
  • FREE to publish: It doesn’t cost you a damned thing to sell your work. There are no upfront fees with Amazon or Barnes & Noble. You *should* invest in a good cover design and ebook formatting, but in terms of actually publishing fees, there are none.
  • Monthly Paycheck: This is huge. 60 days after you start selling your book, you will start getting paid every single month via direct deposit into your bank account. March sales show up in your account at the end of May.
  • Royalty: If you price your book between $2.99-$9.99 on Amazon, you earn a 70% royalty rate. That’s a better rate than ANYONE who has ever been traditionally published.
  • Changes: Spot an error in the book? Open the file, make the changes, and re-upload it. That’s it fixed.
  • Time: Your book enters the upload pipeline and is available within 48 hours – as compared to up to TWO YEARS with traditional publishers.
  • Distribution: your book is available all over the world, depending on the platform. You now have global reach. With traditional publishers, you’d need to wait until you sell foreign rights in order to get that same distribution.

Indie Publishing – CONS

  • Public Perception: consumers might think your book quality is not good enough without a stamp of approval of NYC publishing. This sentiment is changing, however, and you can help further that change by ensuring that your cover looks as good or better than what NYC covers look like, your book is as error-free as you can get it, and your price point is reasonable.
  • Distribution: you don’t get a presence in stores that carry print books.
  • Many Jobs: You do it all: write it, edit it, promote it, check sales, etc. It can be overwhelming if you don’t discipline yourself on how to make time for all the tasks.
  • Stupid Commentary from the Entrenched: Clueless authors who have gotten wealthy from the old way of doing things are some of the most vociferous defenders of a failed system. They don’t want these changes because it represents a threat to their way of life (hmm, sorta sounds like the political landscape in this country right now…) They know that the digital revolution levels the playing field and they’ll no longer be at the top of the heap. So they write dumb letters (Scott Turow, president of the Author’s Guild, wrote a stunningly stupid piece defending the old publishing model – crazy since it was coming from an organization ostensibly devoted to protecting authors NOT publishers.)

So there’s a quick breakdown of the pros and cons of each. There is one more PRO to the indie publishing movement, however, and that is technology. Technology continues to move forward and more players are entering the publishing world all the time. Just this morning, Kobo announced its own self-publishing portal along the lines of Amazon’s KDP and Barnes & Noble’s Pubit! program. Along with Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, and iBooks, there are now FIVE platforms indie authors can use to get their work into the hands of readers and earn a decent living doing so. I expect we’ll see more platforms arriving soon as well.

It’s a great time to be an author. The freedom of choice is something we’ve never had before, but thanks to the technology of the 21st century, we can now do what we love to do and earn a decent living doing so.

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / Uncategorized / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Advice for New Indie Authors

By Jon F. Merz

I chimed in earlier today on Brian Keene’s blog about guest poster Glen Kirsch writing about his success with indie publishing and folks wondering whether Brian would be well-advised to think about a similar route. I posted a few of my own experiences to-date, but it got me thinking about what my advice would be to new writers and older, established writers who are considering the indie route. So here, then, are my thoughts on the topic. Bear in mind, this is my opinion only, but it’s based on roughly eighteen months worth of sales data.

NOTE: for the purposes of this post, I’ll assume your books are thoroughly awesome and reader-ready. No need to rehash the tired old maxims of “rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.”

1. Buy Scrivener: Scrivener is a fantastic word processing program that I now use for all of my writing. Coming from MS Word, it was a bit of a learning curve, for sure, but Scrivener boasts some excellent video tutorials that explain everything. Scrivener’s best feature is “compile,” which allows you to take your manuscript and turn it into an ebook, perfectly suitable for uploading to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as any other platform (iBooks, Kobo, etc.) that use the .epub file format. Scrivener formats both for Kindle (.mobi format) and regular .epub format. It’s quick, easy, and saves you a ton of money that you’d otherwise have to pay a professional ebook formatter. You can order Scrivener using these links (and yes, I am an affiliate, but only because I love the product so much!) Buy Scrivener 2 for Mac OS X (Regular Licence) | Buy Scrivener for Windows (Regular Licence)

2. Find an Artist: Find a great cover artist who can turn out NYC-quality cover art for your books. The goal is to NOT look indie. You don’t want consumers passing your books by because of sub-standard covers the scream indie publishing. Like it or not, many readers still equate indie publishing with self-published vanity crap. Your goal is to visually align yourself with the stuff coming out of New York, even if you’re doing the indie route. To that end, you need a damned good cover artist to render some great covers for you. I have a fantastic graphic designer who handles my Lawson Vampire series covers, re-did a cover for my horror novel Vicarious (I did the original), and even created the look for my latest release THE NINJA APPRENTICE. Consider the fact that paying for a great cover is an investment in your business. People tend to be visually-oriented, especially when it comes to online book shopping. You want something that really looks great, still looks good shrunk down to thumbnail size, and excites readers.

3. Write a Series: Seriously. If readers like your series, they will be anxious for more and that means you now have a built-in audience ready to buy your next adventure. So if you intend to create a series, get with your cover artist above and develop a “look” for the series. Going back to my Lawson Vampire series for a moment, you’ll notice that all of the covers feature Brandon Stumpf, the actor who plays Lawson in THE FIXER TV series. The font is the same, the design is the same. My graphic designer and I have built up brand awareness with these covers, even going so far as to do color overlays to help readers know at a glance that the blue overlay means it’s a novel, green for novella, and red for a short story. This is the kind of thing that you, as an indie author, now have complete control over. Use it to maximize your new business.

4. Build Your Personal Brand: Okay, you’re an author. So what? So are a veritable ton of other people. A bestselling author? Again, so what? In this day and age, you need to find something about yourself that is hopefully unique (or at least rare) and then use that to help you establish your author brand. I thought long and hard about what I do and who I am and eventually distilled my platform down to three things: writer, producer, ninja. I obviously write books, but I also have a production company with my good friend Jaime Hassett. And then I’ve been studying authentic Ninjutsu for over twenty years. There aren’t too many other authors who can say the same thing. So it works. Now, if you go to my Facebook fan page, or my Google+ page, or my Twitter account, or my LinkedIn page, or pretty much everywhere else, you’ll see that tagline: writer, producer, ninja. It’s been working very well for me and helps people quickly gain insight into what I do.

5. Study Social Media: The indie publishing route is far more effective today thanks to the rise of social media. You absolutely, positively NEED to study this stuff. I know, I know…so many of you are going to whine about not having time to write and all that related bullshit. Get over it. If you’re going the indie route – even partially – then you need to understand what the hell is going on with social media. It’s not enough to have an antiquated Livejournal account: hardly anyone is there anymore. (Don’t believe me? While Livejournal might have just over 37 million accounts, of those only 1.7 million are “active in some way” according to Livejournal’s own stats. And only a bit over 125,000 have updated in the last 24 hours.) You need to have a Facebook Page, a Google+ page, and a Twitter account at the very least. Then you need to know how to use those platforms to their maximum effect. Each is different. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. Also, you need an active blog and a well-designed, visually-attractive website. I know a lot of horror authors who think that the bleeding eyeballs are the coolest thing ever. Maybe. But not on your professional website. Remember, this is a business now. Those days of doing the writer/hermit thing are over. You want to do indie and make a good living, you need to get out there and press the social media flesh.

6. Study Celebrity: You might laugh at this, but there are lessons to be learned from people who make their living in the public spotlight. They know how to interact with people, get their fans excited, and more. Writers have typically shunned such things in the past, but again, the indie route necessitates at least some interaction with the world at large. So the next time you attend a writer awards function, leave the Wrangler acid-washed jeans and death metal T-shirt at home. Instead, opt for a button-down shirt, blazer, dressy jeans, and shoes. Make sure how you present yourself in public matches up with how you portray yourself online.

7. Go Global: Understand that the indie route means you are going global. Amazon has storefronts in a half dozen countries right now with many more to come. Barnes & Noble has also talked of its intentions to go global. That means your book written in English is available in countries where English is not the first language. That’s great because it enables you to reach more consumers than previously possible with traditional publishing. It should also prompt you to think about getting your work translated. You’re no longer limited by the traditional distribution of foreign rights – meaning that if you sold rights to a German publisher, your book would only be available in Germany and anywhere else that particular publisher had the ability to distribute it. Now, you can get that book translated into German and sell it on Amazon’s German store platform and in every other Amazon country platform (potentially reaching many more German-speaking consumers than you would with a traditional subrights deal).

7a. Open Your Mind: This goes along with #7 above. The marketplace is global, so that means you will interact with people from all over the world. To that end, make sure you don’t come across as a raging racist xenophobe extremist homophobic piece of puke. Seriously. Cleanse thyself of such nonsense. Understand there are crazy people everywhere on this planet – but that there are also great people everywhere on this planet. Their views, religions, lifestyles may not be what you think is “correct” or “right” or what have you, but you need to respect them regardless. Don’t let yourself be known as a small-minded pinhead. There’s nothing unique or appealing about it.

8. Get a Newsletter: While social media is great, nothing beats having a newsletter list that is consistently growing and enables you to talk directly to thousands of people on a weekly or monthly basis. People who have subscribed to your newsletter are giving you implicit permission to talk to them directly via their email. Don’t abuse that privilege. Offer newsletter subscribers something each month – special exclusives like news, fiction, etc. I run a serialized Lawson adventure each month in my newsletter. It’s a freebie that I include as a way of saying thanks. That’s bundled around news, blog posts, advertisements of my books, shout-outs for friends of mine who are doing good for others, and more. Get a professional newsletter design, pay a monthly fee for an email service provider that offers up stats like open rate, click through rate (and URL destinations) and more. It’s another investment in your company that is well worth the cost. Then build up that list of subscribers. The more, the better.

9. Give To Get: Give more of yourself, not less. Talk to your fans and readers. Interact. The social media world means that people talk. A LOT. If they comment on your page, send you a Tweet, or an email, then you’d better be there to respond. I’m not saying drop everything and be available 24/7. But be ready to make an effort to communicate more readily. If these people are spending their hard-earned money on your products, you need to be willing to talk to them. Many companies are finding out the hard way that ignoring customers is about the worst thing you can do. And the companies who are succeeding are finding that the more they engage with their customers, the better their reputation becomes and the more people spend on their products, talk up the company, etc. etc. If one of your fans is having problems, try to help them in some way – even if it’s just taking the time to send a special email. Treat your readers and fans like gold, because they are. This isn’t something to fake – you have to be sincere in this appreciation or else people will abandon you for another author.

10. Study Tangential Businesses: More studying? Yep. Grab a few minutes of Bloomberg Television in the morning while you much on your Honeycombs. Pick up an issue of Fortune or Entrepreneur. Learn about emerging tech businesses that might impact digital publishing or spark an idea on how you can position yourself to take advantage of things long before anyone else does. Back when Myspace was relevant, I was the first author to reach out and partner with them on a serialized Lawson adventure THE COURIER. Myspace hyped it; I hyped it, and I accumulated a ton of new fans over the month-long project. That’s just one example. Savvy “authorpreneurs” (a phrase I’ve coined for this new generation of indie authors who are smart) are always on the lookout for new opportunities.

11. Set a Production Schedule: New material is essential in the indie age. A novel a year is not enough. I’m ramping my own production schedule up so that I have something new coming out every other month – whether it’s a short story, novella, novel, or non-fiction piece. If you’re still under contract for projects, split your time between working your contracted stuff and your indie stuff. Give the people what they want – and what they want is more stuff to read.

12. Expect Cycles: This is new territory and nothing is predictable…yet. 2011 started off amazing for me, but then I went through a sales slump. Even during my worst month, I was still selling several thousand ebooks and making thousands of dollars, but it was a far cry from Spring 2011. So expect that things may be up one month and down the next. The key is to never have to rely too heavily on any one single title. This is why #11 is so essential. If you can reasonably expect that each novel in your virtual shelf will sell, say, 50 copies each month then that is somewhat bankable. Multiply that across a half dozen titles and now you’ve sold 300 ebooks and made anywhere from $600 bucks to several thousand. As long as you reach that minimum threshold each month, you’ve got the makings of a fairly consistent income. And then every time you add a new title, you’re basically giving yourself a raise. Not bad.

Best of luck as you forge a path in the indie world. I hope this post has been useful to you. If you’ve enjoyed it, please share it around with others. Thanks for reading!

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / how I write / lawson / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / THE FIXER TV series / the ninja apprentice / Uncategorized / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

More Steps to EBook Success…

By Jon F. Merz

I’m having my best month of ebook sales so far in 2012 so I thought I’d share some of the steps I’ve been taking to increase my sales. I outlined a lot of practical steps – including the best piece of software you can use to help boost your ebook sales in my book: HOW TO REALLY SELL EBOOKS (which was written after I wasted five bucks reading another author’s account of how he sold one million ebooks but failed to list anything concrete that he did beyond a blog) but here are a few other steps I’m doing right now to help things along even more.

1. Production Schedules: Depending on how quickly you work, I think it’s vital to come out with new material at LEAST every few months. Debuting new material allows you to promote it and simultaneously call attention to your other works. I’m aiming for new stuff every other month. I’m not necessarily talking a new novel every other month – it can be as small as a new short story. The key here is consistency and an ever-increasing amount of ebooks for your growing fan base to pick up. People want new stuff faster and the old days of only a novel every year are well and truly gone.

2. EBook Anthologies: This is going to piss a lot of people off, but every time I see someone else soliciting stories for an e-anthology, my first reaction is “why on earth would I waste my writing for it?” The fact is, any writer can put that story out themselves at a 99 cent price point and earn 35 cents and 40 cents (Amazon and B&N respectively) with each sale. And rather than getting lost in the table of contents with other authors (who may or may not help sales depending on the quality of their work) you can put it out yourself, increase your own virtual shelf space, and help further your own brand. Royalty sharing among ebook authors (unless it’s a novel collaboration) is no way to generate any sort of income. Of course, if Stephen King drops you an email and asks you to be in his anthology, that might be a different story.

3. Free Ebooks: Stop. Just stop. Everyone is doing this now, which means you absolutely should NOT be doing it. Further, while I know everyone wants to get exposure and introduce the world to your writing, the simple fact is, if you’ve labored long and hard on your book, then you shouldn’t give it away for free. Perception is reality and if people see you don’t value your own work, then they’ll never value it either. It’s worth something – even if it’s only 99 cents. But free? No way. There’s such a glut of free ebooks out there now, you’ll never get any sort of exposure anyway. It’s wasted effort that you could be using to sell copies of the work in question. Want exposure and reviews? Recruit a few keys friends or fans and give them a copy in exchange for them talking it up and posting reviews about it. Yes, it’s free to them, but there’s an exchange of value going on – they get the ebook and you get some definite exposure and reviews out of it.

4. Stop Book Launch Events on Facebook: Learn to use Facebook Pages for your author stuff. Creating a new event every time you have a book launch splits up your audience and then forces everyone you invite to receive email every time you post an update on the event page. It gets annoying very quickly. Announce your books on your Author Page and if you need help setting them up properly, I wrote up a few posts in the past on how to do it here and here. Remember: your goal is to build your audience, not annoy them. Plus, the more things you invite people to, the less likely they are to attend. Give them one page on Facebook to focus on, not thirty.

5. Write a Series: if you’re only writing standalone novels, I suggest you start writing a series. Now. Why? Because if your series is good and people like it, you will have a built-in audience for future installments. Plus, new readers will discover your series and you’ll keep building it. But if you keep writing standalone novels, then maybe the subject matter doesn’t click with certain folks. A series is a definable product and provided they like the characters, readers will keep coming back for more. I would argue there is more inherent value in continuing a series than there is in a standalone. My Lawson Vampire series now stands at seven novels, five novellas, and seven short stories. Each month, the series earns me roughly 85% of my income as compared to my various standalone novels. It is well worth your time developing a series.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll share it with others!

in Build a Bestseller / ebooks / how I write / lawson / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / short stories / Uncategorized / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

Clone Your EBook Success

By Jon F. Merz

Imagine if you were a corporation and you sold several products, one of which sold better than any of the others. That one product was responsible for bringing in more revenue than any of your other products. Looking at your numbers each month would hammer that home and probably make you wish there was a way to clone that product so you could double the revenue it brought in. Or pretend you make good money at your job and wished there was a way to double that income. Before, you’d have to take on a second job, but you could only do so much until you burned out. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day.

For writers, books have traditionally had this feature built in to them. When you sold North American rights, you, as the author (or your agent), could then turn around and sell those rights to foreign publishers who would translate the book and bring it out in whatever market they operated in. Many times, the sale of foreign rights brings in staggering sums for bestselling authors and much more modest sums for midlist authors. Perhaps the book earns out enough to generate royalties, but that isn’t often the case.

With the advent of ebooks, however, the author has far more control over that “cloning” process. Entrepreneurial authors – or as I like to call them “authorpreneurs” – who view their writing careers as a business will be keen to capitalize on the incredible potential that now exists. Let’s take a look at it in-depth.

This is the cover for the Spanish-language edition of the first book in the Lawson Vampire series, THE FIXER. EL EJECUTOR is nearly finished being translated by a fantastic friend of mine and should be on-sale the first week of June. THE FIXER consistently sells hundreds of copies each month on its own and its impact on my bottom line is huge. It is a solid earner, and as such, I want to clone that success. So I paid to have it translated into Spanish, which is one of the largest market demographics in the world. According to recent statistics, upwards of half a BILLION people speak the language globally. That’s a market I want a piece of!

The translation costs were an investment into my business. In order to make money cloning the success of THE FIXER, I had to first invest the capital to pay for its translation. I consider that money well spent. As more and more people turn to ebooks, the number of people who will start reading my Lawson series will also climb. And if the series is available in multiple languages, then I can exponentially increase my profit potential on each book I write. After several months of strong sales, the translation cost will be earned back and then the real fun starts.

Here’s one of the coolest things: even though El Ejecutor is written in Spanish, it will be available in every single one of Amazon’s Kindle stores. Think about that for a moment. Using the old business model of publishing, if you sold Spanish rights to your novels, then the books would only be available wherever the publisher had distribution. But with Amazon, El Ejecutor will be available in the US for Spanish-speakers, in Amazon ES, their official Spain site, as well as Amazon UK, France, Germany, Italy, and many more coming down the road. So now instead of a fragmented distribution that used to happen with foreign rights sales, you have the SAME global distribution that you do with a book written in English. Suppose there’s a Mexican ex-pat living abroad in Italy, for example, and he wishes he could read something in his native tongue but can only surf for ebooks on Amazon’s Italian website? No problem, El Ejecutor is sitting right there ready to be bought. BAM! Sold!

The point is, with Amazon’s global storefront you not only have the opportunity to get your translated ebooks into the hands of the particular demographic you’re trying to reach in their home country, you can also reach them wherever they might be across the world! This is huge. It increases your chances of finding new readers in places you might not expect. Whereas before if you had a book out in Germany, you might only reasonably expect to find it in German bookstores and perhaps a few specialty shops here and there. Now, you can have that same ebook available to Germans in Germany as well as Germans anywhere else in the world – or at least anywhere else Amazon has a storefront at this moment. (But believe me, Amazon will soon have storefronts everywhere…)

You are truly cloning your success when you get your ebooks translated. And each time you add a new translation, you’ve just cloned it again. Instead of doubling your profit potential, you can triple it, quadruple it, and so much more. And you don’t have to worry about earning out advances, reserves against returns, or any of the other stupid antiquated business machinations left over from the decaying publishing industry. Amazon pays you net 60 days every single month via direct deposit. You’ve just potentially doubled your money without having to do anything beyond the translation! No extra work, you don’t have to write the novel again, you don’t have to devote any extra time. Translated. Done.

To say I’m excited about debuting THE FIXER in Spanish is an incredible understatement. I’m beyond excited. I don’t know how sales will go, obviously, but ebooks are a long-term investment. They earn forever. And as more and more people flock to ebooks, the profits will continue to escalate. Once the initial investment in translation has been earned out, that ebook goes on to provide income – passive income at that – forever.

And that ain’t too shabby.

in Build a Bestseller / common sense / ebooks / how I write / lawson / novels / promotion & publicity / publishing / Uncategorized / vampires / writing 0 comments
 by Jon F. Merz

The Greatest Fans In The World…

By Jon F. Merz

Last night I had the opportunity to interact with my fans on a whole new level – a virtual author event that brought video conferencing to a whole new level. Shindig, a company based in New York City, hosted me on its incredible platform that can handle thousands of guests in multiple rooms, as well as show video clips, pictures, and more all during the event. It’s a fantastic way for authors, musicians, TV folks, and producers to get in touch with fans and drive interest and buzz around their projects. After trying it last night for the first time, I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s easy-to-use and the learning curve is remarkably slight.

I’ve been pushing this event for about a month now and really cranked it up these last few days. We had a ton of RSVPs and around 50 people showed up for the actual event. I spoke for about 25 minutes on where Lawson came from, the evolution of the series, the trials and tribulations of publishing, and then into the production of THE FIXER TV series. And then I hit the audience with a never-before-seen clip from the show itself. 54 seconds of the flavor, feel, and look of the show and the whole cast. It was awesome seeing the reactions on the faces of the attendees as they watched and the feedback was immediate and intense. I’m still getting emails about it. Suffice it to say, THE FIXER is really going to blow socks off when we debut the pilot.

After the clip, I had a Q&A session and fielded questions on everything from cover art to ebooks to the cast from THE FIXER to my latest project THE NINJA APPRENTICE. And when folks had a question, the Shindig platform allowed them to “come up on stage” with me if they had a web camera operational and actually share the cyber spotlight. Otherwise, folks could type in questions and the moderator Eric would relay them to me.

This was new ground, but if you read yesterday’s post on creating your own opportunities, you’d see how this all dovetails together. I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hold this event if I hadn’t heard about it from my good friend who is very much in the same mindset as me about exploring new avenues and chances for exposure and success. Shindig is new technology and I think it’s incredible stuff.

The best part of last night was getting the chance to meet some of my many fans. And seeing the folks who showed up really made it clear just how lucky I am to be able to do this for a living. The time slot was tough on some folks’ schedules and a lot of my fans couldn’t make it. But despite the fact that they missed the event, they still wrote and told me how much they wished they could have been there. And that means the world to me.

I’ve often said that my fans are truly the greatest people in the world. I mean that. Some attendees last night were actually at work; some were in other parts of the world where it was either late at night or in the very wee hours of the morning; and still others had rushed home from work to attend. We had media in attendance as well as one or two high-level executives in some very interesting companies. It was a very impressive array of people in the audience and being able to speak to them was an honor and a privilege.

So thank you to everyone – ALL of my fans – whether you made it last night or not. I know you’re out there and I want you to know that I sincerely appreciate you counting yourself among my readers, fans, and friends. You’re the best. Absolutely, unequivocally the best.

We’ll do more of these events in the future and I can’t wait to meet even more of you face-to-face. Have a fantastic weekend and thank you again!

🙂

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