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Blogs by Richard French
A Book-Marketing Challenge 4/15/2017 5:05:35 PM
Experts at book marketing have recommended that writers promote their work by telling their personal stories in a way that will benefit the readers they hope to reach. That’s quite a challenge for people who like to focus on their work and aren’t accustomed to calling attention to themselves, but anyone can give it a try, including me. So here goes.
I’ve read a fair amount of material by authorities who recommend that writers study the market and write what a sizable portion of the market wants. As far as fiction is concerned, the bestsellers are romance, erotica, thrillers and mysteries – important information for people who want to make a living from their writing. I’ve read, for example, that more than 40 percent of all ebooks sold are romance novels, partly because of the marketing skills of the people who write them.
Myself, since I began writing long before the internet and self-publishing existed and earned my income in other ways, I didn’t follow the pattern of any popular genre but wrote what I thought I could do my best at. As a result, I have 13 literary fiction novels available as kindle ebooks and also as print-on-demand paperbacks from Amazon’s CreateSpace.
The question is -- if I follow expert advice and tell you something about my writing and my own story, what will you and other readers gain?
1. Persistence and a lot of work usually bring results. If I can work for decades on writing projects I cared about and still do, so can other people.
2. Some people who’ve read parts of my work have felt inspired to continue with or take on creative projects of their own. Maybe they thought they could do a better job. If so, good for them.
3. I suspect that my novels will bring readers into environments they haven’t experienced before. And offer new perspectives, fresh ways of seeing.
4. As much as I admire Shakespeare’s great tragedies, a dark view of life doesn’t come naturally to me. Many problems can be solved. Very few people live with calamity day after day. My characters pass through emotional, physical, and spiritual difficulties that they use their skills to overcome. I hope that my novels will encourage readers to be upbeat about life.
Here are a few characteristics of my work:
1. Some of our best novels – “Madame Bovary”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “David Copperfield”, “Pride and Prejudice” – focus on one character or situation for hundreds of pages. My novels often deal with communities rather than individuals – extended families, a theater company, people involved with a war in 17th century America, and more. I frequently tell more than one story in a novel.
2. Many of my characters are middle-class people, though that term wasn’t so common in the pre-Revolutionary America I’ve often written about. I like to emphasize the lives of ordinary folks – soldiers, teachers, artists, a museum guard, a bookseller. I like their courage, honesty, and ability to endure.
3.I discovered a while back as I reviewed my work that my novels have a common theme: renewal – of individuals, families, communities.
4.Another way to look at my novels is that they give one writer’s view of life in a democracy. Every way of life has flaws. Our current form of democracy favors the preferences of the majority. Anyone who strives to excel or who needs special care can walk a lonely path. And money gets more attention than is good for us. On the other hand, our form of democracy allows people to be themselves, to mingle freely with others, and to strive to improve their situations, which can mean being helpful to their neighbors.
5.Though I like to think that our superb literary tradition inspired my novels, I’ve experimented with narrative format. I’ve put two time periods, centuries apart, side by side in alternating chapters. Another novel includes its main character’s dreams, poems, letters to his late wife, misadventures with the devil, and a fictionalized biography he wrote about a 17th century predecessor. I’ve written a five-novel series that weaves together novellas about a 17th century war, stories from another war in the 20th century, and a campaign against a destructive cult.
6. I’ve read more than once that sales of literary fiction are anemic. Does that discourage me? No. A person who believes in something will keep on with it never mind that prevailing winds blow in other directions. I hope the work I’ve done will have enough exposure and arouse sufficient interest for others to say, “Yes, I have the staying power myself to create a body of work that’s original and uplifting even if it takes me a long time and no one is paying attention.” We begin to find the solution to the last challenge when we understand that it's possible to find ways to encourage readers to pay attention.
7. I should note finally . I’m a retired pastor with the Lutheran Church- Canada, I believe that a Christian understanding of life permeates my writing.
