Author Archives: James Scott Bell

About James Scott Bell

International Thriller Writers Award winner, #1 bestselling author of THRILLERS and BOOKS ON WRITING. Subscribe to JSB's NEWSLETTER.

That Old-Time Omniscient

Posted on by
22

by James Scott Bell

We all know about the “rules violation” known as “head hopping.” This is where we get the thoughts (inside the head) of one character, then suddenly “hop” into another character’s head within the same scene.

Technically, however, this isn’t a sin. It’s Omniscient POV (though it usually happens by mistake).

POV is broken down into First, Second (rare!), Third, and Omniscient (though some label Omni a type of Third, but let’s not confuse things right now). The main deal with Omni is that it can float above the action and dip into any character’s head. The Omni voice can be “objective”  (straight description) or “editorial” (the author offers opinions or insights).

Omni POV is not so much in fashion these days (just don’t tell that to Delia Owens, author of Where the Crawdads Sing.) But it was the default choice of most fiction prior to the twentieth century. Here is a clip from Jane Austen’s Emma, where she hops into three different heads in the same scene:

“Emma,” said Mr. Knightley presently, “I have a piece of news for you. You like news—and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will interest you.”

“News! Oh! yes, I always like news. What is it?—why do you smile so?—where did you hear it?—at Randalls?”

He had time only to say, “No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,” when the door was thrown open, and Miss Bates and Miss Fairfax walked into the room. Full of thanks, and full of news, Miss Bates knew not which to give quickest. Mr. Knightley soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another syllable of communication could rest with him.

“Oh! my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Woodhouse—I come quite over-powered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. Elton is going to be married.”

Emma had not had time even to think of Mr. Elton, and she was so completely surprised that she could not avoid a little start, and a little blush, at the sound.

The above is an example of objective omniscient. There’s no author voice “intrusion.” With editorial omniscient we are more aware of the voice. Here is one of the most famous editorial-omniscient openings:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

That is, of course, Dickens giving us his opinion on matters. Compare that to Margaret Mitchell’s objective-omniscient opening for Gone With the Wind, limiting herself to description:

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.

The knock against Omni POV is that it removes immediacy and intimacy. When the narrator is “telling” the story, the action is slowed, and when it “hops” the reader is distanced from any one character.

I think both notions are wrong. In the hands of good writer, Omini can actually increase intimacy and connection. That’s what makes Theodore Dreiser a great novelist despite being a clunky stylist (“The world’s worst great writer” some wag wrote).

Let’s look at a bit of Dreiser’s Jennie Gerhardt. Jennie is a poor working girl employed by an older man, a U.S. Senator. He becomes infatuated with her, and one day draws her to him and gives her a kiss on the cheek.

“Oh!” she cried, straightening up, at once startled and frightened.

It was a new note in their relationship. The senatorial quality vanished in an instant. She recognized in him something that she had not felt before. He seemed younger, too. She was a woman to him, and he was playing the part of a lover. She hesitated, but not knowing just what to do, did nothing at all.

“Well,” he said, “did I frighten you?”

She looked at him, but moved by her underlying respect for this great man, she said, with a smile, “Yes, you did.”

“I did it because I like you so much.”

She meditated upon this a moment, and then said, “I think I’d better be going.”

“Now then,” he pleaded, “are you going to run away because of that?”

“No,” she said, moved by a curious feeling of ingratitude; “but I ought to be going. They’ll be wondering where I am.”

“You’re sure you’re not angry about it?”

“No,” she replied, and with more of a womanly air than she had ever shown before. It was a novel experience to be in so authoritative a position. It was so remarkable that it was somewhat confusing to both of them.

“You’re my girl, anyhow,” the Senator said, rising. “I’m going to take care of you in the future.”

Jennie heard this, and it pleased her. He was so well fitted, she thought, to do wondrous things; he was nothing less than a veritable magician. She looked about her and the thought of coming into such a life and such an atmosphere was heavenly. Not that she fully understood his meaning, however. He meant to be good and generous, and to give her fine things. Naturally she was happy. She took up the package that she had come for, not seeing or feeling the incongruity of her position…

Dreiser then “hops” into the Senator mid-sentence:

…while he felt it as a direct reproof.

“She ought not to carry that,” he thought. A great wave of sympathy swept over him. He took her cheeks between his hands, this time in a superior and more generous way. “Never mind, little girl,” he said. “You won’t have to do this always. I’ll see what I can do.”

Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (a whopping 900 pages) is, for me, unforgettable (as is the movie version A Place in the Sun with Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor). He takes us deep into Clyde’s head and heart, step by step tracing the choices he makes that take him down, down, down. It’s like watching a terrible traffic accident in slow motion, starting with the first wrong turn.

One final note. An intrusive Omniscient POV is perfect for an author with a singular and humorous voice (e.g., Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut). But that kind of voice is the hardest of all to pull off.

All that to say, I wonder if classic Omniscient POV could make a comeback. It requires a writer of great skill and intention…and readers with an attention span longer than seven seconds. In this age of apps that’s quite a challenge.

What say you?

News: BookBub Deals, Anthropic Dough, and Audio Add-Ons

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

BookBub Introduces New in Kindle Unlimited Deals

 If you have books in Kindle Unlimited (KU), BookBub has added a promo called New in Kindle Unlimited. The benefits:

  • Drive revenue through increased page reads. Partners who ran early New in Kindle Unlimited promotions reported immediate spikes in page reads, and long tails of increased activity that continue to boost revenue well past the feature date.
  • Boost visibility across the Amazon store. New in Kindle Unlimited engagement drives improvements in rankings that maximize your book’s discoverability across the Kindle store, leading to organic visibility beyond BookBub subscribers.
  • Expand your readership. Reach hundreds of thousands of KU users in BookBub’s audience to hook new fans and increase engagement across your catalog.
  • Highlight a new release or revive a backlist title. Maximize your new book’s momentum in its critical early weeks after launch, or engage thousands of new readers when enrolling an existing title into KU.

You can read more about it here.

Anthropic Settlement Money on the Way

The Bartz v. Anthropic class action, filed August 2024, is just about at the payout stage. The $1.5 billion settlement was reached last year, reportedly the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Anthropic agreed to pay rights holders approximately $3,000 per qualifying title (i.e., pirated book). There’d be a 50/50 split with the publisher (assuming the publisher had actually registered the copyright, which they should have), unless the author got rights reverted, in which case they’d get the whole caboodle.

Initial settlement checks (or direct deposits) are expected to be disbursed in the next couple of months. 

Unless the author chose to opt-out of Bartz in order to hunt larger game, namely “statutory” damages of up to $150,000 per title. A few law firms offered to take these on a contingency basis. The ka-ching ka-ching sound is tempting, but in the real world of deep pockets and protracted litigation, the prospect of getting significant dough is, in non-legal terms, dicey.

Cinematic Audiobooks

Like the rise of the machines (see Terminator, The) there is apparently a move by major publishers toward more “immersive” audiobooks, as opposed to solo narration. That means adding things like music, sound effects, and different voices for each character. You know, more like a movie. We are such an audio-visual culture now that the move makes sense. Or does it:

Excessive sound effects or dramatic performances can distract from the writing, making the production feel artificial….Voice actors must understand their characters, the emotions they convey, and each relationship. One poor performance can ruin the experience, even if the rest excel.

Personally, I like a good solo narrator, which means they don’t try to “do” a voice for each character, or put their idea of method acting into the reading. This is one area where an AI Virtual Voice may fare better than a human, bad-actor voice.

Comments welcome.

Writing for Fun…and Kids

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell

When I was 8, I asked my mom to buy me some tights. Green tights. No, I wasn’t looking to get into ballet or pose for a Jolly Green Giant ad as little Niblet. I was looking to be Errol Flynn.

I’d watched The Adventures of Robin Hood on TV and I wanted to be a dashing outlaw in the forest with a bow and arrow. I even had my mom get me a toy bow with one of those arrows with the rubber suction cups on the end so I could shoot at a window and make it stick. Mom stopped me from that, so I shot at rose bushes and a stuffed monkey instead. (How monkeys got into Sherwood Forest remains a mystery.)

Anyway, I was totally into adventure stories, pirates, knights, and all that.

I’m a bit older now and still love classic stories and movies about adventure, pirates, and knights.

I’ll give you a couple:

Morgan the Pirate starring Steve Reeves.

Prince Valiant starring Robert Wagner.

The Black Shield of Falworth starring Tony Curtis (no, he never said, “Yonda lies da castle of my fodda.”) This movie was based on Men of Iron, an 1897 novel by Howard Pyle. I loved the Classics Illustrated comic book version as a kid.

And now I have three grandsons who, thank God, love to read.

So I wrote them a book. And then decided to publish it, because in this digital-visual-artificial world of ours, I want to encourage reading among the young, especially boys.

This is my first venture into Middle Grade (8–12). It’s about a kid named Justin Brubaker who is sucked into a game app back to medieval England, where he is tasked with killing a fearful monster called the Brymwolf. Along with a Saxon lad named Cuthbert and his pet pig, Walter, the quest encounters all manner of strange creatures, and a forest outlaw who teaches Justin how to fight.

I put in an Easter egg or two for adults, just for fun. Like a “boggard” (a shapeshifter from mythology) whom Justin names “Humphrey.”

Because fun is the best thing to have when you write. It shows up on the page. And goodness knows we need fun to sustain us through the inevitable rough patches of writing a whole book.

It is my hope that parents and grandparents might consider this as a gift for the kids in their lives. Thus:

The print edition can be ordered here.

The ebook can be ordered here.

You’re a writer. Are you having fun yet?

Quotable

Posted on by

“It’s the whole getting started thing for me. I forget how to write a book. The first ten thousand words are like digging fossils from rocks.” – J. T. Ellison

Handling the Big R: Rejection

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

I saw her for the first time on the playground.

The sun was shining, and her hair, so blonde it was almost white, glistened in the light. She turned and looked at me with eyes as blue as the sky above the smog line in Los Angeles. And I felt something in my chest, a burning of some sort.

I was only in third grade, but I knew I was in love.

Now the question was what to do about it.

I did not get the impression Susan was at all interested in my amour. I was not adept at talking to girls, having only two older brothers. I did, however, know how to show off. I was a great kickball player, so I tried to impress her on the kickball diamond.

She was not impressed.

I walked to school, entering and exiting through the front gate. She also walked to school, but entered through the back gate. So I came up with a plan. After school one day, I waited for Susan to head out and strolled along so I met her—what a coincidence!—at the back gate.

We went out together, and I started walking with her. I made some sort of comment, though I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it was about the book our teacher was reading to us, a Henry Huggins book by Beverly Cleary.

Anyway, we were halfway down the block when she turned to me and said, “Just because I’m walking with you doesn’t mean you’re my boyfriend.” The way she said that last word was a killer. She was mocking me. She reached in my chest and pulled out my heart, and said, “You won’t be needing this anymore” and tossed it in the gutter.

“I know,” I said, in a bid to salvage a shred of dignity. I endured the whole walk to her house. Then began the lonely march back to the school, through the back gate, across the playground, through the front gate, and home. I drowned my sorrows with drink. Chocolate milk, I think it was.

I didn’t know it then, but I was being prepared for the life of a writer.

Rejection Has Always Been Part of this Business

Before the self-publishing era, all writers got rejection slips and letters from magazines, agents, editors. We got used to seeing lines like, This does not fit our current needs.

The Peanuts cartoon strip had a bunch of strips where Snoopy was trying to be a writer. In one, Snoopy is reading a letter he’d just received. “Dear contributor, thank you for submitting your story to our magazine. To save time, we are enclosing two rejection slips, one for this story and one for the next story you send us.”

Then self-publishing came along. Free from editorial rejection, many a writer put their book up on Amazon, and faced another kind of rejection—from the marketplace.

We all have to learn to deal with the Big R.

I knew of a writer who got one of those wild, big fat 1990s contracts. But his thriller failed to catch enough fire to make back most of the advance. Thus, the next book in the two-book contract received no support. The author was dropped, and could not get another contract from a major publisher. He was, in my opinion, a very good writer. He handled the Big R by turning to the bottle. But he battled out of that and last I saw he had done a few books with a small publisher. And good for him. 

What you have to do is accept that rejection is perpetual aspect of this business. It will happen to all of us. You must be ready to deal with it, and the best way to do that is by writing your way out.

When my son was first pitching Little League, he had a tendency to let a bad play or a home run upset him. So early on I made this rule. “You are allowed one ‘Dang it!’ And you can hit your glove as hard as you want. But that’s it. Then you go back to pitching to the next guy.”

That’s what he learned to do, and in fact won a championship game that way.

So you get a rejection. You can have one “Dang it!” (or its adult equivalent). I’ll let you feel it for fifteen minutes. But that’s it. Don’t hang onto it. Don’t go moaning all over the Internet. Don’t yell at your spouse or kick your dog.

Instead, turn that energy into action. Get back to your keyboard.

Any further advice on handling rejection?

And Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

Jack Woodford on Writing For Money

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Jack Woodford (1894–1971)

In the golden age of the pulps there was a writer named Jack Woodford, who also wrote how-to books for writers. What’s refreshing about these is his no-hold-barred advice that eschews all flowery paeans on the romance of being a writer. He gets down to it in a book titled, appropriately, How to Write for Money (1944):

So there you are. A free-lance writer! Oh pitiable wretch! Oh miserable fool! Of all the business you could have gone into—operating a movie theatre, or making guns, running a drug store or learning how to be a tailor or a plumber, a typographer or a hot dog cook—you insist on going into the business of cash-and-carry prose. Well, you know best. As for me, I know there isn’t a so-and-so thing I can do to discourage you or make you change your mind. I admit (reluctantly) I’ve made a pretty good thing out of it myself. But I’ve had some breaks….Can you be sure of getting breaks? Of course you can’t. That’s what a break means—a stroke of luck that nobody expects, all pine for madly, and mighty few ever get. Where would I have been without my breaks? God knows. I don’t!

Do you feel like a “pitiable wretch” sometimes? Welcome to the club called Every Writer. We meet at the bar.

Writing is the most hazardous profession of which I know. It usually carries with it far less rewards than most people think, much more work, and very little satisfaction; since you cannot, ever, say what you really think about anything. Many writers appear to do so but they are always restricted one way or another behind the scenes. The rewards of writing, however, are worth it for those temperamentally suited to such rewards. The freedom it brings from alarm clocks, for instance, is, in itself, not an inconsiderable item; and from time clocks, and other devices of torture invented by people who hold stock in things and milk other people of their labor at usurious rates.

That is a lure, of course. If this gig gets big, you don’t have to “work for the man,” as they used to say. Better, though, to think of your writing as one little stream of income, a side hustle, that may or may not grow into a river. But a trickle is better than nothing at all if you love to write (and you should love it…most of the time, at least).

Woodford, writing in the middle of World War II, offers a military illustration:

In Boot Camp, tough sergeants deliberately try to break the morale of inducted men. Those who break they send back to civilian life, or to some more or less ignominious chore in army life. There are two or three hundred thousand “writers” who “write at” writing in this country. Ninety percent of them make next to nothing. The few who do get by are those who were not “broken” in the “Boot Camp” of their own wills, or lack of same.

Knowing all that:

If you really want to be a writer it is my observation, from a quarter century of association with successful and unsuccessful writers, that the hinges of Hell cannot prevail against you.

In Writer’s Cramp (1953), Woodford quotes the novelist Robert Ruark, who was big at the time:

“To write a book is no simple thing. One needs paper, a typewriter, a certain basic stupidity, and time. Also arrogance. Any bum who sits down and figures he has 300 book pages of importance is an arrogant ass. Nobody has that much to say worth saying. Neither Shakespeare nor Artie Shaw.”

Note: Artie Shaw was a famous big band leader, a clarinetist, who also had a fertile mind. In 1952 he published an autobiography titled The Trouble With Cinderella: An Outline of Identity, which is no doubt what Ruark is referring to.

Woodford’s most influential how-to was Trial and Error: A Key to the Secret of Writing and Selling (1940), cited by no less than Ray Bradbury and Raymond Chandler.

Be glad that it is hard. Wish that it were more difficult than it is; for this is your protection, when you have learned it, from too much competition. Only this I can promise you—that even though you have no gifts whatever ever for writing, no knack, education, knowledge, imagination; no common sense, intelligence, anything, you can still learn to write commercial fiction and sell it, if you have really made up your mind to do so. If you really are a downright simpleton, this very fact may make things easier for you in the free lance commercial fiction racket, for nine-tenths of all stories and novels are in America read by ninnies who may understand you far better if you are a kindred spirit.

You could not learn to write literature, whatever that is, by simply making up your mind to do it; no, not even if you had a will like Mussolini’s.

All I can give you here is a rough idea as to how to go about turning exposition into the various sorts of narrative writing.

Okay, you pitiable wretches, if Mr. Woodford were still around, what would you say to him?

Cook Your Story

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

There’s a legendary diner near my house called Bobby’s Coffee Shop. It’s been here since 1949, when Robert “Bobby” Perkins, a U.S. Navy veteran who had served as a cook during World War II, started slinging hash. The place has not changed much over the years. It still has a few tables, a counter, and a big old flat top and burners for the cook.

My dad brought me here as a kid. I was fascinated by Bobby. He had a stack of egg crates by the stove and worked several orders at a time. He’d grab an egg in each hand and crack them—at the same time—on both sides of a pan, and in went the eggs. Then in one, swift motion he’d bring his arms down and, without looking, throw the shells into a big container hidden under the counter. He would tend the eggs (flipping or scrambling), bacon, hash browns and pancakes, without pause (he did have an assistant cook so he could take the occasional smoke break).

The place was always packed. Why? Because Bobby knew his routine and what the customers wanted—the same satisfying breakfast every time.

In this way, Bobby was like a great genre writer. Give the folks what they want, with consistent quality.

I’ve also had a meal or two at a fancy-shmancy joint, sometimes featuring a celebrity chef. They’d have their specialties, a signature style making each dish unique.

In this way, they were like great literary stylists.

What both Bobby and the star chefs had in common was that they both worked with formulas.

I’ll sometimes hear a young writer say, “I don’t need to learn all this plot and structure stuff. That’s just a formula. I don’t want to write by a formula!”

I will then ask the whelp if he likes omelets. “Sure.” Then I ask, “Can you make an omelet without eggs?”

“Of course not.”

“Without a hot pan, some butter, some ingredients?”

“What are you getting at?”

“There’s a formula for omelets. You have to follow it, or you have no omelet. What gives it individuality is your mix of spices and ingredients. Same with writing, my friend.”

Thus, I was pleased to run across this recently in Story Physics, by Kill Zone emeritus Larry Brooks:

Equate the writing of a book to a lavish meal: multiple courses, different flavors, all aligning with a theme.

It will require tools—pots, pans, a stove, a butter knife—to prepare. It will require a basic recipe and some sensibility of cooking as a craft (note to self: don’t serve steak that’s as hard as a hockey puck). It will be composed of various ingredients, each with a different role that will add to the outcome.

The courses should be served in a specific order, in certain combinations, and both the ingredients and the recipes need to align with their assigned roles in the dining experience (a little Tabasco in the dessert isn’t gonna work).

Larry goes on to explain about spices, the individuality a chef brings to the formula:

Here’s an example of choosing the right spice for your story: You give your hero an everyday job because he’s an everyday guy—in other words, you give him a boring job—when any number of compelling jobs would better serve both characterization and plot. Why? Because it was—or is—your job, and you know it well. Somewhere in your writing past you’ve been told to write what you know—solid advice, but not always the best advice—so this leads you to unvetted choices in this regard.

Maybe your job fascinates you, but is it inherently compelling to others? Unless the plot depends on the hero’s occupation, in which case the plot defines it, then this is an opportunity to contribute to characterization and context by way of injecting something interesting into the mix. Something that possesses stronger story physics.

Simply put, the great cooks deliver consistent quality, and the great chefs unique tastes and textures, while both provide a satisfying meal. That’s a matter of craft, of knowing what works and what doesn’t, leaving room for your individuality, your “voice” and style.

If you want to sell books—or open up a restaurant—learn how to cook. Honor the craft. Master the seven critical success factors of fiction—plot, structure, characters, scenes, dialogue, voice, and meaning. Get to know your spice rack, which holds ingredients like minor characters. Give others a taste—a good editor, beta reader or crit partner. Keep on cooking. You’ll burn a few things here and there, but that’s how you learn.

Enjoy the process. Bon appétit.

How do you cook your books? (Maybe I should rephrase that…)

News: Sales and Deals

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

A couple of items from the trad side of the business.

Book Sales Down

From Publishers Weekly:

Unit sales of print books had a slow start in 2026, according to data from Circana BookScan. Total unit sales fell 3.1% compared to a year ago for the quarter ending March 28, 2026, dropping to 163.5 million copies sold.

The young adult category had the steepest percentage decline.

This last bit concerns me. Is it phones, tablets, TikTok, or whatever else that keep kids from novel-length fiction? Are parents buying fewere books to give to their kids?

Book Deals Hard to Come By (File this under “New, What Else is?”)

Getting a traditional publishing deal has always been a challenge. Is it harder now? A column in USA TODAY says:

About 81% of Americans feel that they have a book in them, according to an often cited survey reported in The New York Times (from the early 2000s). Many aspire to write and publish a book in their lifetime, but only a small fraction see their work formally acquired and announced each year. A little over 2,000 fiction writers announced deals in 2025 on Publishers Marketplace.

***

[W]hen people ask, “Can anyone get a book deal?” what they’re often asking is something else:

  • Is this still possible for people who aren’t famous?
  • Do I have to know somebody in the industry?
  • And if I do everything “right,” will it still take years?

In short: Yes, no and maybe. A book deal is attainable – to some extent. It’s also not a finish line. 

***

The publishing industry is consolidating, which means fewer imprints (and fewer editors)…When editors are stretched thinner, the time it takes to nurture talent – especially debut authors – shrinks. The industry’s ability to take a slow bet on a writer, to develop them the way record labels develop musicians or sports teams develop rookies, becomes increasingly rare.

***

Even when the book is good, “we have less places to sell things than we have in the past,” Carly Watters, senior literary agent at PS Literary, told USA TODAY. “A lot of things are more predicated on the appetites of a smaller group of people … there might be separate imprints, but they all share an editorial board meeting.”

Quality aside, a novel also has to be “sellable” to stand out in those meetings. “In my experience, (books) that are easily pitchable, meaning we can sum up – hook, line, sinker – in one sentence, that’s something that I can get people’s attention with,” Watters added. There are gorgeous books that are hard to summarize, she said. The kind you want to hand someone and say, “Just read it, then call me.”

Those books can sell. But it’s harder.

The article’s author spoke with a literary agent Eric Smith:

Plenty of his clients come from cold querying (sending an email or form pitch) with no connections in the industry. But also, his inbox – when he’s open to submissions – can reach thousands in a few months. Smith estimated he received around 3,000 submissions over roughly 90 days and signed a handful last year.

That number can seem terrifying until you remember something important: Most of those submissions weren’t “bad writers.” They just weren’t the right fit. Or the timing was wrong. Or the market was saturated. Or an editor had just acquired something similar. Or an imprint closed. Or an editor got laid off. Or the editorial board said, “We already have a slot like this.”

You can do everything right and still lose to the invisible calendar of the industry.

Consolidation makes that sharper. Smith described it plainly: Agents can’t send five projects in a row to the same editor without burning that bridge.

So yes, it can be more challenging now; not because the “gatekeepers” hate writers, but because the gate is servicing fewer lanes.

Comments welcome.

Hawking Your Book in a Crowded Sky

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Obsessive Marketing Disorder (OMD)

Sheesh! With over 4,000,000 books (mostly indie) published last year, how the ever-loving heckfire does an author hope to get noticed, let alone make any lettuce at this gig?

I recall two historical events converging at around the same time—the explosive growth of Twitter and the eruption of indie publishing via Amazon. I got in on both around the same time, and I remember a number of writers who had the idea that millions and millions of people would see their tweets, so the best strategy was repetitive messaging that was a variation on buy my book, really buy my book, really buy my book right nowI

That quickly grew stale. It didn’t take long to discover that social media is not a direct marketing tool. So authors began to use Twitter as part of their brand-building enterprise, which for many included several other platforms. That takes a lot of time and mental energy away from the writing, and can result in an affliction I call Obsessive Marketing Disorder (OMD).

To avoid this malady, let me offer my personal take on where to focus your energies. I invite your take in the comments.

Your primary marketing tool is your books, written with the best craft and care you can bring to them. Because word-of-mouth has always been the most effective way to sell books over the long-term. So spend most of your time doing what you do—producing pages and getting better at your craft.

Set up a website, of course. A full treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of this post, so start off by reading the advice of industry expert Jane Friedman.

Next in importance is the email list. By going direct to a growing base of satisfied readers, you build a career. But how, you may ask, does a newbie create such a list? Well, first, satisfy readers with your books! (See above). Then offer a reader magnet, a healthy chunk of free content in return for an email address. I use BookFunnel for this ($10 a month) offering a free novella.

Now, how do you interact with your list? With pleasant to read emails. What I mean is, offer your list something they’ll enjoy reading on its own merits, not just a sales pitch. One author who does this well, IMO, is a guy who is bound to break out soon. His name is Dean Koontz. One recent email “From the Desk of Dean” begins:

Dear Readers,

It’s been a month of chaos here, with real life intruding into Koontzland in ways that I simply refuse to tolerate. In my frustration, I was dismayed to discover there is no Bureau of Real Life Control to which we can turn. More than one officious federal bureaucrat, hearing my complaints during multiple phone calls (I do not give up easily) said, “You’re on your own, you idiot.”

I was further dismayed to discover there is no Bureau, Office, Agency, or Department that will soundly thrash bureaucrats who call model citizens like me an “idiot,” and will not even teleport them to a retraining facility on the moon, which I’d be willing to help fund. It seems that if I am to maintain my quality of life in Koontzland—with its sugar-cake buildings, candy-bearing trees, and herds of unicorns—I will have to take extreme measures, which I am still formulating.

He goes on for a couple of paragraphs, then deftly drops in his pitch:

I am smiling now with true delight when I tell you that the first three Jane Hawk novels—The Silent Corner, The Whispering Room, and The Crooked Staircase will be reissued for the first time in trade paperback by Bantam Books in June and can be preordered as soon as you’re wise enough to do so. The fourth and fifth Janes are coming in September. They all have dazzling new covers.

He finishes off with:

To calm myself, I will go running now in the company of unicorns through the vast meadows of wild orchids here in Koontzland, through the forest of muffin trees, to the great Fountain of Longevity. One drink of that fountain’s flow of cherry cola grants another century of life. It’s another century in real life, but I’m counting on a world run by benign robots that will spare us from the problems and annoyances that now plague us. How could they not?

Warmest regards from everyone here in Koontzland,

Dean Koontz

To see more of Dean’s mailers, go here. Please note, don’t try to imitate Mr. Koontz. It’s his tone. Find your own, one that would be welcome at a party, which means don’t become just another boorish ranter. We have way too many of those now.

As for frequency of mailing, I’d advise once a month. What might you talk about?

  • Your WIP
  • Your process
  • Your research
  • Early look at chapters
  • Cover reveals
  • New deals

If you enjoy writing about a certain subject, you might consider a newsletter. I have one of these via Substack, which you can sample here.

As for paid advertising, I’ve never cracked the CPC or CPM code, and trying to figure it all out while shelling out dough can induce OMD all on its own. I have had some success with promotional services like BookBub and Written Word Media.

My bottom line is, don’t stress about marketing. Keep the main thing the main thing—producing quality fiction. Set up an email list. Move outward from there, watching for signs of OMD as you do. If you feel it coming on, go outside, take a deep breath, come back in and write another chapter.

Comments welcome.