Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies

by Deborah Halverson

  Your work ethic: Are you self-motivated? Are you willing to work hard? Are you organized? Are you a multitasker? Do you have the time for this? Are you willing to sacrifice writing time? Do you like being a jack-of-all-trades? Would you go DIY all the way, or would you hire freelancers and consultants?

  Your market savvy: Do you know your audience and the market? Can you design a cover that will appeal to that audience? Can you target and promote to your audience? Are you a salesperson? Can you get out there and talk up yourself and your book?

  Your financial willingness: What’s your comfort level with risk? How much money are you willing to invest? How much can you stand losing?

  Your motivation: What’s your definition of “successful self-publishing” — a few hundred sales? A few thousand? Bestseller lists? What’s your goal? What will it take in terms of money and effort to reach your goal? Are the money and effort realistic for your abilities, life situation, and fiscal responsibilities?

  Budget and calculate before you commit to any self-publishing plan. Determine how much you’re willing to invest and then shop around to see which services you can buy with that amount. Remember to account for marketing expenses in your budget. Then calculate the number of books you need to sell to break even with your investment. Are you confident you can promote and market aggressively and effectively enough to reach those numbers? If in doubt, adjust your budget, services, or self-publishing plans.

  Careful and constructive collaborations

  Sometimes two or more creative folks get together and make something wonderful. That can be exciting and rewarding. Getting input, ideas, and perspective from each contributor is energizing. The potential marketing benefits of collaboration can be just as energizing: multiple minds generating ideas, multiple sets of networks to tap into, multiple locales where you can push for local publicity. A team that works together seamlessly and agrees on things quickly can have a wonderful publication experience.

  It’s important to remember, though, that collaborations are more than just co-creating material and packaging the team. You’re entering a business partnership. Too often, writing partners are so excited about the material and the submission process that they don’t consider potential breaking points that they should address without rancor at the get-go. For example, do you split your income evenly or according to who does the most work? If one author goes to a conference and sells some books, should she get a bigger cut of the sales of those copies? Who operates the book website, and who has final say on its style and content if you don’t agree? How do you work out different contract wishes? Whose name comes first on the cover? Smart coauthors brainstorm the entire process, considering all the things that may come up and then assigning responsibility. Most important, they memorialize these responsibilities on paper, even if it’s just a memo that they’re all willing to sign.

  Each partner may have her own agent. If that’s the case, the agents, too, must work things out among themselves before bringing in the outside pressure of a publisher. Will just one agent negotiate the contract? Which one? Will that agent get a higher percentage? How will the agents reconcile differences in what they each want in the contract?

  All parties involved in a collaboration should brainstorm, discuss, and memorialize at the beginning of the project, well before any conflict can arise. A careful collaboration is a constructive one.

  You don’t have to go this alone. You can collaborate with a coauthor, doubling your resources. Or you can team up with other self-published authors to form a marketing group, stretching your marketing dollars and multiplying your connections. See the information about author promotional groups in Chapter 15.

  Chapter 15

  Mastering Marketing

  In This Chapter

  Becoming an empowered self-marketer

  What the pros do for you

  What you should do for yourself

  Creating a platform

  Mastering the tools

  Marketing is an essential part of being a published writer. After all, if no one knows about your book, who’ll buy it? You’ve got to hawk it to sell it.

  The term “marketing” may call to mind images of spiffy ads in newspaper book review sections with your cover image front and center, but marketing is far more than placing ads. That’s a specific task of marketing — one called promotion, which is the collective term for spreading the word about your book through paid advertising and press publicity. Marketing is bigger than these individual tasks. When you engage in marketing, you’re researching your target audience and strategizing ways to connect with them, and then you’re planning your specific promotional efforts and enacting those plans. Marketing is figuring out who to hawk your book to and the most effective, efficient, and economical way to go about it.

  Strong self-marketing authors go beyond any single book, though. They think Big Picture and Long Term, and they ultimately strive to position themselves as go-to authors of great young adult fiction. Their individual novels are components of their overall author branding.

  Thanks to the Internet, authors have more control over their marketing fates than ever before. In addition to promoting themselves and their books at appearances and in classrooms, authors are connecting with groups and individuals on social-networking sites and through their own websites, contributing articles and guest blog posts, disseminating sample chapters and creating book trailers, maintaining expert blogs and taping podcasts. . . . Phew! The big challenge, really, is to keep from drowning in the process.

  You could easily spend all your time marketing yourself and your books instead of writing them. This chapter helps you define your marketing audience and devise a realistic strategy to target it, decide what to leave to the pros and what to undertake yourself, and arm yourself with the basic marketing tools every author should have and decide how far you want to go beyond them. Best of all, you can begin the process before your manuscript is even finished.

  Laying the Foundation

  Savvy authors accept that a publisher has limited resources, and they use the Internet to spread the word themselves. These authors establish a base online presence and then promote from there, working the virtual world and the real world simultaneously. The Internet offers even the most introverted authors countless opportunities to generate buzz and sales, all from their cozy writing nooks in the attic. Online marketing can complement and even drive your in-person efforts.

  Before you’ve finished your manuscript, use the Internet to lay the foundation for your marketing efforts. Here’s how:

  Branding yourself: The Internet lets you create, manage, and promote your image and reputation as a writer to a degree and with an ease never before experienced by the writer masses, especially yet-to-be-published writers. Setting up a website as the anchor for your brand (that’s you, not your books) and engaging in social media both pay off when your book is ready because your word-of-mouth network is already in place. I talk about branding later in “Creating and maintaining a platform.”

  Learning the biz: The Internet lets you educate yourself about the industry you’re about to enter. Reading online editions of trade publications and keeping in touch with other writers in groups, on forums, and on social-networking sites lets you follow the industry, know the key players, and know how your voice can work into the mix.

  Start with Publishers Weekly, the trade journal for the publishing industry. PW provides news and articles on publishing trends and reviews of new books for adults and children. Its free e-newsletters offer a steady stream of industry news and insight into bookselling trends. For your particular areas of interest, you may subscribe to the review journals that I list later in “Established reviewers of MG/YA.”

  Even as you write your YA novel, you can use the Internet to increase your understanding of the industry so when the book is ready, your
industry knowledge is already in place, too.

  Mastering the marketplace: The Internet lets you keep abreast of market trends — that is, what’s selling and who it’s selling to. Just as you read widely and deeply in your genre, you should read widely and deeply about your genre and about children’s books in general. Keep up with marketplace news and trends, and when your manuscript and then your book are ready, you’ll know the marketplace as well as you know your characters.

  As you lay the groundwork for your marketing efforts, be realistic. Despite having a plethora of resources at your fingertips, maximizing every opportunity on the Internet is impossible. Figure out what you can do based on your time, interests, and expertise at the moment.

  Even though a good chunk of your industry research can be done online, don’t forget about the real world. Go to brick-and-mortar bookstores to see what’s on display and to chat with booksellers — especially those who specialize in children’s books. Chat with children’s librarians to see what young adult fiction is popular with their library patrons. Keep your eyes peeled for newsstand features about young adult fiction, because magazines and newspapers sometimes feature current book trends and noteworthy authors and books.

  Working with a Marketing Team

  Whether you publish your YA fiction with an established publishing house or self-publish your books, you can have a marketing professional in your corner. Here’s a look at what the pros can do for you.

  Understanding the marketing department’s role

  The fine folks in your publisher’s marketing department create the marketing plan for each title, fitting it into a grander strategy for the entire list. The department has on-staff experts in publicity (telling the press about your book), promotion (getting word out to the world at large), advertising (creating and placing paid ads), institutional accounts (school and library markets), and Internet marketing. The marketing department provides all the materials and positioning to the sale reps, who physically go out in the field and sell to book buyers.

  An author’s primary contact in the marketing department is usually a publicist. Publicists are responsible for promoting specific titles and authors in the media. They handle mass mailings and schedule interviews for broadcast and print media, author tours, public readings, and book events. These marketing pros spend their days developing media contacts, dealing with reviewers, and pitching articles through press releases or phone calls.

  Your job is to work as a team with your publicist. The more involved you are, the greater the potential for book sales. Discuss with your publicist how you can best tap into the network you built while writing your book. Talk about which materials you can expect your publisher to provide to your contacts in national or local media or through whatever venues you can offer. Be responsive, willing, and communicative.

  Also be understanding. Publicists can’t do it all. They have a bunch of authors and books on their plates and only so much money and time. You must do some marketing on your own, and that’s not a bad thing. Even with a marketing department behind you, you are your best promoter. You know your project better than anyone, and you certainly have the most motivation.

  Calling in reinforcements: Freelance publicists

  To help with your self-marketing efforts or to supplement those of your publisher, you may hire a freelance publicist who specializes in children’s books. Freelancers strategize publicity campaigns based on your needs and your budget and then implement the campaign to any degree you choose. Here are a couple of ways a freelance publicist can help:

  Niche and local marketing: A great role for your freelance publicist is to be the point person for niche and local marketing while your publisher handles the main reviewers and media (in fact, few publishers include any niche or local marketing at all in their standard marketing). Niche markets are specific and small, but they matter if you exploit them well. For example, if your YA novel features horses and riding competitions, you may target the equestrian market through equestrian publications by doing interviews, submitting feature articles, or arranging for your book to be reviewed.

  Blogs: Your freelance publicist can focus on blogs, which are essentially online journals. Blogs are valuable for spreading the word but can also be a quagmire. After all, anybody can start a blog, and just because a blog exists doesn’t mean it has a readership or even credibility. Freelance publicists can help you target the best blogs, each of which has a targeted purpose and audience. Promoting yourself through blogs is a topic all its own; see the section “Creating and maintaining a platform” for info on blogs.

  Most publishers appreciate the participation of freelance publicists, viewing marketing as a team effort. In fact, your publisher should be able to recommend good, trusted freelance publicists the publisher already works with. If you look for a publicist on your own, pick one who specializes in children’s books, who has worked with reputable houses, and who preferably has handled authors whose names or titles you recognize. To find a freelance publicist, ask writer friends, your publisher, or your agent for recommendations. Some popular book industry blogs like The Book Publicity Blog keep lists of publicists, or you can do an Internet search for “children’s book publicists.” Whatever your source, be sure to check agencies’ client lists, testimonials, and featured campaigns for books and authors you recognize. Many freelance publicists spent large chunks of their careers in the marketing departments of big houses, so check their bios, too.

  Communication is the key to making your relationship with your publicist effective. Be available, be open to suggestions, and above all, discuss your expectations upfront. If you’re really, really hoping to be interviewed in a certain publication or on a certain show, say so. And finally, even with a pro in your corner, be willing to do your part. Your freelance publicist is not a miracle worker; she can schedule the signing, but you’re the one who can fill the seats by spreading the word to family, friends, and readers through that network you built while you wrote the manuscript.

  Marketing Yourself: I Write; Therefore, I Promote

  Few are the authors who can leave all the marketing to the publisher and sell millions of copies. Economic considerations force publishers to put the bulk of their marketing budgets and efforts behind a few big potential lead titles each season. Those titles garner high-profile ads, book-signing tours, pitched features to major media, and keynote speaker gigs at conferences and book festivals. The rest of the season’s books (the list) get a standard marketing package: submission to a core set of reviewers and awards committees, pitching to niche media (small, topic- or genre-focused markets), and local media exposure. This focus isn’t a matter of limited interest on the part of the publishers (who would love to market all their books as bestsellers and then have sales follow); it’s an issue of time and resources.

  Even if you have access to a marketing department or a freelance publicist, you need to participate in the process, adding your expertise, insights, and connections. You’re more motivated, determined, and knowledgeable about your book than anyone else, which makes you its best promoter.

  This section provides tools and resources for promoting yourself and your books. You discover the basic promo must-haves and must-do’s, how to create a marketing platform for yourself, and which outlets you can exploit to get the word out about you and your book . . . and keep it out. Use this information to decide which pieces you want to include in a marketing strategy that suits your goals, your abilities, your time, and your budget.

  As a YA writer, you have special marketing considerations. Your readership (which you identify in Chapter 2) is somewhere between ages 9 and 18. You must be careful in how you interact with them; you’re a grown-up, and your access to unknown kids has limits. You certainly can’t be collecting their e-mail addresses or chatting with them on social networking sites. Both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trad
e Commission (FTC) enforce laws protecting kids from adults who use the Internet for inappropriate or downright nefarious purposes. The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), for example, requires websites to obtain parental permission before collecting the personal information of children under age 13. Instead of targeting young readers as direct customers, you market primarily to parents, teachers, librarians, reviewers, and booksellers — collectively referred to as gatekeepers. Every YA book must pass through at least one of these folks before landing in a kid’s hands. In a nod to your teen audience, though, you can present your website and the materials on it in a teen-friendly manner so that after young readers get your books, they can go to your site, feel at home, and become fans.

  Creating and maintaining a platform

  Your marketing efforts should start with the one thing that doesn’t change no matter how many books you write or how widely your topics range: you. When you communicate your expertise, your credibility, and your personality to an audience that comes to know and trust you, you are creating a marketing platform, or a stage from which you can talk to an identified, accessible audience. You are, in essence, branding yourself and establishing a following that you can go to with book news and can count on for book sales.

  The most obvious example of a platform is a celebrity with a large fan base already in place before the book deal comes. That fan base can be counted on for a large number of sales, and the marketing can be tailored to their known profile and disseminated to them through pre-established avenues such as the celebrity’s fan club.

  Celebrities haven’t cornered the market on platforms. You can create and maintain your own platform with these tools: a website and blog, social media, articles and newsletters, appearances and teaching gigs, leadership roles in organizations, and participation in author promo groups. Your ultimate goal is to sell books, and platform-building helps you achieve that goal by raising awareness about you and your books. Keep three tenets in mind as you work on your platform: