"Gail, you're in the top 1% of Goodreads Reviewers"

I received an e-mail today from Goodreads telling me I'm in the top 1% of Goodreads reviewers. This seems somewhat unlikely to me, since I only review a few times a month. According to Goodreads, I've done the deed 265 times, which sounds like a lot. But that's over nearly 4 years, which sounds like a long time.

But, still, 99% of Goodreads are doing less than I am. That sounds like a lot, too.

Well, I'm heading over to Goodreads right now to review The Influencing Machine. Gotta keep up the good work.

Awards Provide Discoverability, And Here Are Two Award Winners To Discover

Finding readers is difficult for all books. There are so many of them out there, more than there are people to read them. The chances of any individual title being discovered by readers isn't that great. For self-published books, discoverability is even worse. They don't have as much access to reviewers, sales people, booksellers, you name it. What's more, there may be even more of them. So the chances of any individual title collecting a following is even less likely than for traditional books. And for self-published eBooks--worse yet. Those authors are limited in terms of making public appearances at book fairs, festivals, and stores because they have nothing the sponsoring agency/business can sell.

Book Awards And Discoverability

Book awards can help with discoverability by bringing attention to titles. Some awards bring more attention than others. There are all kinds of things that come into play. Some awards may bring prestige but not much in the way of sales. In children's literature, for instance, the state readers' choice awards don't carry the kind of prestige the Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz awards do, but I've heard that just being nominated can really generate sales. Public and school libraries buy copies, sometimes multiple copies, to have available for child readers during the voting period. State readers' choice awards may truly be a case in which just being nominated is the honor/benefit. I know I had a book go into a second printing because it was nominated for a state award just at the point when the first printing was nearly gone.

The Writer's Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards

All of which brings me to this year's Writer's Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards. I noticed the spread on this award in the May/June Writer's Digest because I republished Saving the Planet & Stuff as an eBook, and I'm dwelling on STP&S-related material all month long. So, there, I managed to squeeze it into this post. Now I'll move on to this award.

The Writer's Digest Awards are self-nominated and there is a fee, which is not unheard of. Various winners receive a variety of prizes that could include cash, review opportunities, and book marketing consultation. The award is described as "a competition that spotlights today’s self-published works and honors self-published authors." I don't know who the judges are, if there are different judges for each category, or how the books are judged. One interesting thing I noticed with the winners in this eBook division is that all but one of the winners had a paper-and-ink edition in addition to the eBook edition. Which makes me wonder what the criteria is for submitting.

Children's Lit Winners

The two winners we're interested in are:

Children's Picture Books: Nickerbacher, The Funniest Dragon by Terry John Barto with illustrations by Kim Sponaugle. While I find the marketing for this book a little heavy on self-esteem vs. story, I like the basic premise of that story. This is a book about a dragon who wants to be a stand-up comedian. That sounds promising.

Middle-Grade/Young Adult Fiction: Flicker by Melanie Hooyenga. Flicker sounds like another paranormal story. EXCEPT there is also a crime aspect that I find intriguing. Again, that sounds promising.

A Seemingly Unrelated Point, But Not

I'd like to note that both Barto and Hooyenga have professional looking websites, as does illustrator Sponaugle. I feel it's necessary to point that out, because sometimes self-published authors don't. Maybe more than sometimes. Sometimes they have nothing at all or they're limping along with a Facebook page or a blog. Maybe a blog they don't spend much time on.

Why is this related to book awards? Remember, my theory is that the big value of book awards is discoverability for a book and for an author. You get some attention because of the award, people take notice, and what do they find when go looking for you? Nothing. Or they find something that indicates you don't understand professional marketing.

I'm not a big fan of writers creating websites before they've even finished writing a book/story/essay/whatever their genre. But once you're published, it really is a professional necessity. And certainly if you're at the point of submitting your published work for awards, you need to have a website, as the people above do, in case you win.

Time Management Tuesday: Well, This Could Change Everything

Many plans for dealing with time management as well as procrastination (a different issue) lean on the belief that willpower is finite. It's strongest first-thing in the morning and becomes weaker over the course of the day. Thus we're advised to break our work time into increments or units, with breaks in between them. When we go back to work, we feel closer to our more powerful morning selves. It's a mind game

Willpower Is Finite. That's Science!

In Everything Is Crumbling in Slate last month, author Daniel Engber describes how willpower gets used up by describing the results of a twenty-year-old study. Two groups of test subjects were asked to spend time solving an impossible puzzle after they were left alone with a plate of quite luscious chocolate chip cookies and not so inviting radishes. One group was told it could only eat cookies. One group was told it could only eat radishes. The subjects who were allowed to eat cookies spent more time on the impossible puzzle then the subjects who had to use their valuable willpower avoiding the cookies because they were instructed to eat radishes.

"The authors," Engber says, "called this effect “ego depletion” and said it revealed a fundamental fact about the human mind: We all have a limited supply of willpower, and it decreases with overuse. Eating a radish when you’re surrounded by fresh-baked cookies represents an epic feat of self-denial, and one that really wears you out. Willpower, argued Baumeister and Tice, draws down mental energy—it’s a muscle that can be exercised to exhaustion."

According to Engber, scores of studies using similar procedures supported these findings.

And that supports everything I've read about willpower, time management, and procrastination.

Or Is Willpower Finite After All?

Engber goes on to report that a paper is going to be published in  Perspectives on Psychological Science that "describes a massive effort to reproduce the main effect that underlies this work. Comprising more than 2,000 subjects tested at two-dozen different labs on several continents, the study found exactly nothing...No sign that the human will works as it’s been described, or that these hundreds of studies amount to very much at all."

Engber's article focuses on how the new study brings into question the old willpower study, and the significance of an established study and the established knowledge it provides being called into question. My interest?

Were these studies the basis for the time management programs developed around working in short increments of time in order to replenish willpower? If so, what does this mean for time management?

Of course, the problems with these studies may not mean that willpower isn't finite and isn't depleted over the course of the day. It may just mean that these particular studies don't prove it. But if these studies were used by time management people, are we just left in limbo?

What? "Landforms And The Environment?"

Check out the Landforms and the Environment section of the ALA Science-Themed Novels list. You’ll find the hardcover edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff there.

This isn't a new list, and I did mention it here a couple of years ago. But I'm married to a third-generation engineer. This is the kind of thing that gets me big points around here.

The Weekend Writer: You Really Can't Say Too Much About Developmental Editing.

Yeah, I know I’ve written about editing, particularly developmental editing, before. But it is one of the most important aspects of professional-quality writing, so I’m going to mention it again. At Prolixme a new, unpublished writer discusses developmental editing. She is interested in whether or not it is necessary before submitting a manuscript to agents. I’ve heard this question before over the last few years. But only in the last few years.

Because the eBook edition of Savingthe Planet & Stuff is self-published, I’m more interested in the question of developmental editing for books that don’t go the traditional route of agent to editors at publishing companies to the public. STP&S did receive professional developmental editing when it was originally published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. An issue my editor brought up? In early drafts, the adult characters were more interesting than the YA main character. Yet this was supposed to be a YA book. Good catch, Kathy.

Having been through the the developmental editing process with eight books, myself, I think it's pretty clear when a book I'm reading hasn't had developmental editing or has had the wrong kind. I've read a self-published book in which the title only connected with the last quarter of the book. If the last quarter of the book was what the story was about, it took way too long to get there. A developmental editor would have pointed that out. I've read a self-published book that described itself as YA in which the YA character disappeared for a third of the story. That portion focused on an adult character we hadn't seen before. The author's note sounds as if there may have been developmental editing for that book. I wonder if the editor was familiar with YA. Long, unnecessary passages...characters who sound too much alike...awkward point-of-view switches...all these things should be pointed out by a good developmental editor.

I don't think developmental editing is necessary before submitting to agents, but it's certainly necessary before publishing. From what I've read, knowledgeable self-publishing writers realize this.

What Did You Do This Week, Gail?

Goal 1. Adhere to Goals and Objectives. After enjoying ill health over Easter Weekend, I was slow getting back on task. Then a lot of Friday went to another family member. I'm hoping to spend this coming Sunday the way I spent last Sunday--sacking out with books and doing some minor work I didn't get to last week.

Goal 3. Generate New Short Work/Programs. I spent some time revising an essay I was planning to submit to a particular publication. Then I decided not to submit it. Now I'm thinking again that maybe I'll submit it. I'm also thinking of doing a second essay with the material I cut out of the first essay. Though I don't know where I'd submit that.

Goal 4. Marketing Saving the Planet & Stuff eBook. I hope to be able to make an announcement this month about the negotiations for a STP&S excerpt in a Scandinavian textbook I've mentioned here a few times. I also started the STP&S April promotion.

Goal 5. Community Building/General Marketing/Branding.

• CCLC--Promoted to Facebook & Facebook Communities, listserv, Twitter, Google+
• TMT-- Promote to Facebook, Google+, Twitter
• Evil Librarian Post--Promote to Google+, Facebook community, Twitter, Goodreads review
• STP&S eBook Marketing Post--Promote to Google+, Facebook community, and Twitter
• Goodread's Weekly Post--STP&S eBook Marketing Post.

Goal 6. Generate New Work. I did do some work on the adult draft of Becoming Greg and Emma.

Just How Long Should A Self-Published Author Keep Promoting An eBook?

The big reason for self-publishing an eBook edition of Saving the Planet & Stuff back in 2013 was the experiment aspect. I knew enough about self-publishing to realize it isn’t a money-making deal for the vast majority of people who get into it. I was interested in what would happen. How would the life of a self-published eBook be different from that of a traditionally published paper-and-ink book?

So Little Time

One of the things I found particularly frustrating about publishing is that there is a very small window for new books to become successful or even to generate sales and attention. It’s not as bad as television, where programs often have just a couple of weeks before they’re pulled from the schedule, or movies, which have only a weekend before they’re written off as failures. For books, it’s more like a few months. Then the traditional publishing world is on to what’s being published right now or this fall or spring. This is true of litbloggers, too. Most don't have a great deal of interest in last season's offerings, forget about the offerings of a few seasons back. Everyone wants to be part of the publishing establishment, and the publishing establishment is a bullet train that stops for no one.

Perhaps I have mentioned that a week or two after my first book, My Life Among the Aliens, was published, I naively went up to the information desk at my local Borders and asked why the book wasn’t available. The woman there looked it up on her computer. “We had a copy,” she said. “But it didn’t sell, so we sent it back.”

I’ve read marketers advising writers to give up promoting their books after three months and work on their next one. There’s nothing more that can be done for the "old" book at that point.

So Little Space

Paper-and-ink books are real objects that take up space on shelves and in warehouses. That’s a big factor shortening their sales’ lives. Bookstores can’t carry every book published every year, forget about books from past years. And they can’t sacrifice space to books that aren’t bringing in money fast. A book can’t sit on a shelf while it builds up a readership. Even warehouse space is costly. There is a logical reason new books are pushed aside so fast. You might call it the publishing world’s space and time continuum problem. (If I knew something about physics, I’d try to carry that analogy a whole lot further. Or just maybe make it work in the first place.)

EBooks And Space And Time

EBooks, do not take up space. It doesn’t cost anything to store them because they are not objects. They are pure thought! They are…Wait. Don’t go there, Gail.

My point is, it doesn’t cost anyone anything to store eBooks in warehouses or place them on store shelves where a John Green book that would sell by the end of the day could go. So now the question arises, if space is not an issue, does that mean that time isn’t an issue, either? Shouldn’t an author/publisher be able to market an eBook indefinitely?

Testing that theory is why every now and then I get out the ol’ lab coat and do a marketing push for Saving the Planet & Stuff. I love planning work for month-long periods (look what I did with Lent), so this is my second year assigning said marketing to the month of April, home of Earth Day.

For this year’s marketing push, I wanted to do something different. So I’ve changed my publishing platforms so that I can offer Saving the Planet & Stuff for free during Earth Day week. I’ll remind you as the free days come closer.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing posts here this month related to Saving the Planet & Stuff, or environmentalism, or self-publishing. Or anything else I can think of that beats this horse.

I love a plan.

Anyone had experience with this kind of marketing?