SALLY SLATER » Digital Hollywood

Getting the word out there.

Sally — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 18:48:00 +0000

Happy Saturday, y’all! In the, er, 8 days since we last met (and by “met” I mean my last blog post), not all that much has happened on the writing front, unfortunately, and I confess I’m growing impatient — I’d take a definitive “No” over an I-don’t-know. I did hit 2.4 million reads on Wattpad (which is awesome, i.e. you guys are awesome). I’ve been getting about 100K new reads every day since Paladin was featured a little over 2 weeks ago.

I’m beginning to seriously consider the self-published route, for a few different reasons. For one thing, Paladin is my debut novel…and hopefully not the best book I’ll ever write. Am I wasting my time trying to get my first attempt at writing a novel published? I’ve read in a hundred different blogs that your first book is crap; it’s the second book that sells.

But I’ve put so much time and energy into Paladin, and I really do believe in it. Heck, I’m somebody’s favorite author! The primary benefit of self publishing, as far as I see it, is then this whole publishing business is done and over with. I can stop editing (I think I’ve seriously spent like, 200 hours editing this thing); I can start thinking about the sequel to Paladin or a new series entirely. I’m itching to write something new (although a new world has yet to pop into my head, which scares me a little).

The thing is, self publishing would be taking a huge risk. I’d have to invest some of my own money–and let me tell you, I’m not rolling in dough–and a lot of time. I would need to find a cover artist (and likely pay them), and if I were to produce hard copies (vs. ebooks) of Paladin, the money would come out of my own pocket. I would need to either hire a copy editor ($$$) or go through the whole novel again with a fine tooth comb…which will take me another 20 or 30 hours. Any way you slice it, the journey to getting published will take a loooong time.

But what I think will be the biggest time suck is getting the word out there. I’ve got an amazing 2,400 followers on Wattpad — and presumably significantly more readers than that — but not all of my followers and readers are going to want to purchase my book. The biggest mistake I think authors on Wattpad make is that they only focus on the Wattpad community. Us Wattpadders are accustomed to reading books for free, and actually paying for a book is a cultural shift that authors are trying to force down Wattpadders’ throats. (Don’t get me wrong — when Paladin is published, I’ll ask you to buy my book. But I won’t condemn you if you don’t. You’ve already paid me in encouragement, and that counts for a lot).

The real opportunity lies with the readers who haven’t already read Paladin–and I think limiting myself to the Wattpad community would be silly. There are 5 million registered users on Wattpad…but there are over 7 billion people in the world! Okay, that’s a bad comparison, because the whole world isn’t literate, or fluent in English, or flush with money in order to purchase a book, but you get my point. The world is changing, too — ecommerce (in other words, online sales) is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2016 and Juniper Research forecasts that purchases via mobile devices (tablets, smartphones) will outpace shopping on desktops. Research also shows that YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world, after Google.

Why am I citing all these random stats? It impacts how us authors (and publishing houses) have to target potential readers. Advertising your book in a newspaper or on the side of a bus? So 1990. Authors need to find a way to tell the new reader about their book. The new reader is digitally-savvy, likely on their mobile more often than their laptop, and consuming information via lots of different channels — Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Goodreads. Maybe Wattpad.

So what the heck does all this have to do with self publishing vs. traditional publishing? Well, if I self publish, I have to do all my advertising myself! And what used to be pretty straightforward–send your book out to a few review blogs, maybe fork out some $$$ for an advertisement in the newspaper or an online news site–is now super complicated. To really get the word out there, you need to have a presence and strategy on all those different channels (mobile, Internet, traditional, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, Wattpad, YouTube, etc.). Multimedia is the wave of the future. Unfortunately for me, I’m a technological dunce.

At the Digital Hollywood panel I spoke at last week, Brittany Geragotelis talked about the makeover videos she posts on YouTube, to tie into the magical makeover her main character gets in her book (seriously, check them out). Another great example of creative marketing for books is what the folks at Rigler Creative are doing — they’re launching a new book review web series on YouTube aimed at 11-16 year olds (the lower spectrum of a YA audience) called “Best Friends Book Club“. Each week, they air a 3-5 minute segment featuring four teenage hosts who review a YA book in an informal talk show setting. The series is syndicated on Tumblr and Wattpad.

I checked out the first episode, which premiered today. The four teenage hosts–who are way cooler than I was at their age–reviewed The Journeys of John and Julia, which you can actually read here on Wattpad (it’s also available in print and as an ebook on Amazon). I have yet to read the book, but did notice that each chapter has a little video embedded in the page. I didn’t even know you could do that on Wattpad!

Anyway, here is the first video — it is adorable.

Long story short, if I self publish, I won’t be able to do this stuff…at least not without paying someone to do it for me. I lack the technological know-how, and frankly, the time, to put something this elaborate together. The other big issue for me is that I really want an editor from one of the Big Six publishing houses to rip into my book. I feel like traditional publishing would get Paladin to the next level.

I have no immediate plans to take action either way. I feel like I should at least get rejected before I make the decision to go the self publishing route. For now, I’ll just sit back and wait…and wait…and wait.

Freakin’ Out

Sally — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 01:43:00 +0000

So the title of this blog post is a reflection of what I’m doing right now: I’m freakin’ out. Not in an omg-I-just-effed-up kinda way, but in a holy-!@#$-this-is-awesome kinda way*. It’s an important distinction.

As to the source of my freak out–last night I got home from welcome drinks with my new coworkers (I just started a new job last Wednesday) to a private message in my Wattpad inbox:

Hi Sally, I work for a company that books panelists for the Digital Hollywood conference. Our next one is March 5-6 and we wanted to see if you would be on a panel about modern book publishing and reaching your audience. As you can see we are currently booking the panel (we have a few TBDs to fill....)

http://www.dhcontentsummit.com/new-york/wednesday-march-6-2013/432-9--215-pm--300-pm

It’s probably worth reiterating that when I’m not moonlighting as a wannabe author, I work in public relations. Part of my job is vetting speaking opportunities for my clients, so of course when I receive a speaking opportunity myself the first thing I think to do is vet the event. I conveniently forgot that a) I’m not the CEO of a company and b) I’m not a renowned expert on anything. I don’t need to be vetting opportunities.

But while I was still pretending to be this vastly important person who gets asked to be a guest on panels all the time (I also conveniently forgot that the last time I was asked to be a panelist was, oh, never), I did some research on the Digital Hollywood conference…

Holy shit (shite? should I just make that my permanent staple?). This event is LEGIT.

I was looking through some of the previous guests they’ve had attend this thing, and they’ve had some seriously big names. People like the founder of Wikipedia, the EVP of Sales of Photobucket, the president of Scholastic Media…and you can see the March 5-6 conference’s impressive lineup in this link.

So this leaves me scratching my head. How the heck do I fit into this event? I mean, I know me. I hang out with myself everyday and I can tell you that I’m really very normal (well, normal in the sense that I’m not Mark Zuckerberg. Otherwise I’m arguably very weird). It’s not like you hear the name “Sally Slater” and you’re immediately filled with recognition (although let’s be real, my parents gave me a bad ass name). I feel like I just won the lotto, and you know how those stories always end.

But I’m no dummy–this is a great opportunity and there’s no way I’m passing it up. The conference and the panel itself are sure to be filled with folks in the publishing industry and I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of interesting people. Besides, I’m a total ham: I love talking to people. Stage fright shmage fright. This will be fun.

I did ask the event organizer why he chose little ol’ me to be on this panel, because in all seriousness I’m beyond flattered and am super excited, and I’m also a little shocked. He explained to me that my success on Wattpad with Paladin is an interesting and relevant addition to the conversation on modern book publishing. I can kind of see that–I recently attended a panel on book publishing myself, and while the panelists provided a lot of insight on the differences between traditional and self publishing, writers’ communities like Wattpad, Figment, Authonomy, etc., didn’t come up at all.

And sites like Wattpad are increasingly relevant, I think. According to their blog, Wattpad surpassed 10 million uploaded stories in 2012. I think Amazon Kindle–and don’t quote me on this–only has around 2 million e-books. Although as a caveat to those numbers, not all 10 million (and probably not even half) uploads on Wattpad are completed stories.

But what does success on Wattpad really mean? I’d like to think that the traction I’ve gotten is a result of Paladin being a good story. Certainly, publishing houses are paying more attention to the website–all of you on Wattpad have probably seen the advertisements for Simon & Schuster’s What the Spell?, which originated as a Wattpad story. Most of the books that do get traditionally published have upwards of 10 million reads (meanwhile I’m stuck around 1.2 million). And I hate to say it, but some of the books that have millions upon millions of reads are not good books. I think Wattpad can be about good stories, but it’s also somewhat of a popularity contest. Which is funny, because I’ve never been the popular kid before. I was always the popular kids’ nerdy friend, or alternatively, the loser. I doubt I’ve changed my stripes.

I’ll have to give some thought over the coming weeks as to what I’m going to talk about on this panel, especially as it relates to publishing. Would you consider having a completed book on Wattpad “being published”? Up until now, I haven’t, but now I’m not so sure.

*I really love portraying swear words as numbers and symbols. I have no objection to using actual swears, but I’m obsessed with !@#$. Well, that and the word “shite”.