TARGET AUDIENCE

I am guilty of suggesting this to my clients, but now I wonder...  When I was much younger, a great teacher ( hi there, Sister Mary Andrew) told our class that the average reading level was grade 6. I have read, or heard, this same comment many times over the years. Most magazines, newspapers and best selling authors accept this fact and write accordingly. Now, I'm not so sure that we are doing the right thing.

As writers, do we have a responsibility to improve the quality of our work and thus raise the bar in the reading public, or does our responsibility end at the number of copies sold? I am talking to those authors who target the mass public audience and not to the academic writers who target a much smaller group of people who can appreciate the fact that they use words with more than two syllables.

Is it good enough, for those of us who write to the great unwashed, to cater to the lowest common denominator or should we assume that our audience can handle something a bit more challenging? I ask you - do you have the courage to write for an audience that will be challenged by your use of language arts? Can we all rise slightly higher and reach for better vocabulary and drag the average reader along with us? Should we? Is the economic risk too high to even bother? What would happen if popular writing was targeted at a grade 8 level - would the reader give up, or move up?

I guess what I am asking is, should we accept the fact that education seems to be changing and the standards (at least, on an anecdotal basis) seem to be dropping? Or, should we support the education system by attempting to push the readers a little higher?

GOOGLE BOOKS

 I am trying to learn more about Google Books and whether or not it is a benefit for authors like you and I. I see that one of my first books is listed there, without a cover, and I am not sure whether I authorized this or not.

• Have you used Google Books to promote, list and and market your books? 

• What kind of experience have you had?
• If you decided against listing there, why?
• What kind of sales increase have you had - or do you know?
• Do you know any good, independent information sources about Google Books?

On the surface, anything that helps an author market his or her books would seem to be a good thing but there seems to be a lot of controversy surrounding Google's entry. At one point, they wanted to digitize all the books on the planet and make them accessible. I think this project has been tempered somewhat but frankly, I'm unclear where this is going. I have gone on the Google Books site but there is not much information other than the requirement to create yet another account and then upload your books. If you have experience, I and I'm sure everyone else, would benefit from your sharing in the comments area.

Thanks in advance and please consider forwarding this request to other writers that you know so that we can all learn.

Just a quick note for my friends - if you have wanted to read MY SECRET MOTHER: an adoptee speaks to the girls who went away, and didn't want to pay $4.99, then go to Smashwords now and get it for 75% off!

here's the link

The sale ends March 10.

BOOK PRICING

The science of pricing a book is evolving. In the good (?) old days, publishers decided what an author's book would sell for and they pre-printed it on the cover. They would often show different prices for different countries on the same label and assume that the exchange rate wouldn't change. All of this was tantamount to price fixing, but the bottom line was that the content creator had no control over what the reading public paid, and their own income was decided by someone else.
The internet has changed all of that, along with everything else it touches. As authors have begun to find new ways to connect with their audience, and new formats ( e-readers), they have taken pricing into their own hands. The old-line publishers are resisting the change, and in many cases they are keeping their author clients in check by maintaining an artificially high price for e-books. However, as bestselling authors from the legacy publishers discover the freedom and economic advantages of controlling their product ( that is, self-publishing) the pricing of books will begin to find a common ground.
Jackie Collins announced today that she is re-releasing one of her best sellers as an e-book at $2.99. I think we will find that the pricing will almost always be under $9.99 as we move forward. It is just a guess, but I think the "big guys and girls" will start offering their new releases around that price and the rest of us will begin to slot ourselves around that standard.
Once the Stephen King's, David Baldacci's, Dan Brown's and J.K. Rowling's break from the legacy publishers and decide to strike out on their own, the price formula will become much more obvious, to the great good fortune of the reading public.

MEMOIRS - ONE MORE THING

I previously offered 3 tips about writing a good memoir and you can find that post here.
One thing that seems to help sales of memoirs is targeting a much smaller audience. Somehow, when it comes to writing a memoir, that seems like a crass statement - "targeting an audience." I didn't, or at least I didn't know I was, when I wrote, MY SECRET MOTHER, and I'm guessing that if you are writing your memoir, you aren't either. However, if you plan to publish, it helps to know that there are people who are benefiting from, or at least enjoying your efforts. For most of us, writing a memoir (or anything else) and hoping the entire world will read it, is nonsense - they won't. In most of our cases, 99.9% of the world don't even know we exist, let alone care to read about our lives. So, how much is .1% of the population - you figure it out. (hint: in the U.S. alone, that's over 350,000)
I have mentioned in other places that I continue to be surprised by the sales of MY SECRET MOTHER and that, other than the links on my blog pages, I don't do any actual marketing for it. Here's what I think has happened. I am an adoptee and have spent much of my life wondering about what that meant and how I should act, react and proceed, based on this fact. I wrote about my own feelings and thoughts around adoption, and I addressed the whole thing to the mother that I have never met. I don't think that many writers are writing specifically to birth mothers from the post WWII era, although there is lots of info out there about adoption in a general sense. Sounds like a very small market doesn't it? Maybe that accounts for the success, in terms of sales.
A few readers have passed on the title to other people they know who are connected to adoption in one way or another, and it gets mentioned in relatively (in a marketing sense) small groups of women, and so the word spreads among them. A small sliver of the population still represents a lot of people in a numerical sense.
You might consider looking at your memoir in order to find the unique part of your life and experience, and making that your focal point.
If you concentrate on the uniqueness and use even a small amount of SEO to create your title, or sub-title, and use similar search engine optimized phrases in explaining what your book is about (what your book is about - subject of a blog in the near future), then you should expect to make some reasonable inroads into that marketplace. If my personal experience is any indicator, it would appear to work.
You might want to look for the life experiences that may not be shared by many, or the little-known hobbies and interests you enjoy, maybe the small corner of the world that you grew up in, something that sets you apart, but not alone, from the teeming masses. It will give your memoir a unique flavor and ring a bell with a group of readers that share a curiosity about that slice of your life - and perhaps theirs.

3 THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT WRITING A MEMOIR

MEMOIRS DON'T SELL.    Anyone who has ever broached the subject of writing their memoir with an agent, publisher, coach, editor, anyone, has heard the same reply - "Don't bother, memoirs don't sell, unless you are incredibly famous." So what to do if you are not a former president, A-list celebrity, or much publicized convicted felon? What if you have an interesting story to tell, or you witnessed an event that you feel compelled to write about or simply want to leave a legacy for family and friends? What if you decide that you are going to go ahead and write a memoir, regardless of the advice of all of the so-called experts? First of all - good for you!
Heeding the advice of experts leads to committee-based decision making in which mediocrity becomes acceptable.
So, if you have decided to write your memoir anyway ( it's a great place for early stage writers to get their feet wet), then let's see if we can make it the best that it can be. Good principles of both non-fiction and fiction writing can be applied to help the process and we will deal with three of them here:

1. WHO WILL READ IT AND WHAT VALUE WILL THEY RECEIVE?    Before you start any writing, consider who will be your target readers and what should they expect your book to deliver in the way of value. How will it make their life better, easier, more interesting? What will it cause them to stop doing, start doing or do differently? Include this thought process even if you are writing your memoir purely for the benefit of your offspring and don't expect it to ever find a public audience. There's nothing worse than taking your children for granted with a boringly told tale without a purpose.
2. LIST FIVE HIGHLIGHTS THAT YOU WILL WRITE ABOUT.    Name the highlights or events and target your writing to revealing the interesting or unknown parts about them. I was once asked to work with a man who had written a 650 page family history but could not name the major events. He was also convinced that he didn't need an editor because he had "spell-check." I promise you that no one will make it through your opus unless you respect their need to be not only informed, but entertained, as well. If your life has been so eventful that it requires dozens of separate and unconnected events to be explained fully, consider a follow up book. "FIVE" is a target but a reasonable one to offer your readers a glimpse into your story. No, I didn't take on the "family history" project - he knew better than I.
3. USE DRAMATIC TENSION TO MOVE THE BOOK FORWARD - JUST LIKE A NOVEL.    So, you need to be careful here - if you make up something in the story that is not true - it's not a memoir, it's fiction based on real life events (see A MILLION TINY PIECES for what can happen here). The only way to keep the reader interested is to create, or reveal, the drama in the events so that they can understand that the protagonist ( you?) ran the risk of either losing something significant or not getting something that you really wanted or needed. Maintain the idea of suspense throughout your writing and let the reader be relieved or peeved with the results. They will want to read more if the outcome is in doubt.

Memoirs are kind of a hybrid writing project based on actual facts and events but in desperate need of a good dose of excitement, challenge and plotting. Start with an outline and look carefully for those ways of pacing your story like a novel with suspense, and the possibility that life doesn't always work out the way you planned. Have fun with it - who knows where it could lead.
One last thing, write from who you really are rather than that public persona you have been wearing and your readers, no matter who they are, will become your fans.

READING ISN'T DEAD, BUT...

Seth Godin, one of the pre-eminent marketers of our generation and clearly a thought-leader in the field of writing and publishing, has a few comments to make about the current state of reading.
As writers, we might want to pay attention.
Go here and read his brief blog - it's worth your time, if you are writing in this market.
As always, I welcome your comments and please forward this to people you think might be interested.