ROBUST discussion

A friend posted this blog article describing research on music that shows how people flock to the already well-known and popular.

Here's a quote that gets at the heart of the challenge for authors struggling to be noticed:

More details are in the article, but the takeaway was that people will gravitate to what they know other people like. The stronger the popularity signal, the more popular the already-popular became. And compared to the “innate” quality of the songs (as measured by the control group), a song’s popularity was determined more by what the early raters liked. In other words, early popularity was governed largely by luck: whether the “right” listeners got to the site first. Early popularity begat later popularity, and the early “uncool kids” never got a chance to catch up.

That's how it works in creating a premium brand too.

Oy vey...

Not too long ago (2008, I think), there was an effort to create the literary version of American Idol. After this contest (I can't recall the name unfortunately) disappeared without actually selecting a novel, Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award appeared. As far as I can tell, it has done little to lift the obscure to fame.

Fanfic and erotica, on the other hand, sold Fifty Shades of Grey to many people I know who'd only heard the buzz and wanted to be a part of that.

I couldn't stand high school.

I had a lovely time.

Let me guess, Andre...you were popular?

There was a reason Janis Ian's song '17' was my favourite song as a teenager. It was about me. I hated high school and a lot of author groups remind me very much of those days. The difference now is that I can leave at the push of a button.

High school, much like my time in the military, was something that I enjoyed when I was in, but when I got out, I felt much more negatively about it.

High school seemed like a sedate version of Lord of the Flies, complete with psychological beatings, drugs, and sex-addled teenagers. I don't think I learned much of anything that stuck, other than how to reconstruct the skeletons of dead animals (project, junior year biology).

Katie wrote: "Let me guess, Andre...you were popular?"

I suppose so; people wanted to be my friend. People still write to me that knowing me was the high spot of their lives; they remember moments. That's very odd, if you think about it. Somebody ran into an old girlfriend in the street; it turned out she was unmarried, she said because she'd never again met anyone as exciting as me. (I must remember to tell my wife that!)

But the main thing about school is that I was in a class of gifted children to whom the best teachers were assigned, which in a place where teaching was a high-status profession was quite something. I came away from that with a lifelong attitude that curiosity will be satisfied if only you ask. Also, I learned an amazing amount of stuff, for instance to paint really well, to do woodwork and metalwork (the headmaster was a socialist who insisted the gifted class show solidarity by taking all the subjects put in the curriculum for the academic laggards), and for an artist I have an uncanny knack with engineering, physics and mathematics, especially statistics.

Oh, good old times...I loved school, all of it. I love to learn new things. I loved to "torment" professors with questions that literally locked them up. There was no joy greater than that, along with having deep friendship that only teenage years can bear.

And I hated the physical education teacher, an old lady who hated us all and abused us accordingly.

Which of course makes for great memories.

I can't say I loved high school, but in my final two years I found a niche among the smart students and the classes became more challenging and interesting at the same time. I learned then how important it is to have solid group of friendly rivals who brought out the best in each other and who also valued learning. It meant that we didn't have to pretend not to like anything scholarly, nerdy, or academic. In high school, I also believed I could learn anything I put my mind to, whether it was chemistry or Shakespeare.

I loved college.

In High school I was a contrary kid who didn't give a rat's patute about the social order.

K.A., I too loved college. I also had the good fortune to go on to a master's program, but while I didn't love the coursework, I made life-long friends in the program and at the university. So I guess the exorbitant tuition (and the fact that I also met my husband there) was worth the while.

I came across author/blogger Heidi Cullinan's post Death by Promotion.

So given the study I posted at the beginning of this thread, are authors killing themselves for no good reason? I'm rather glad to find that my inability to work up enough belief in the value of social media to prioritize it over my family and my writing has been validated.

I know plenty of authors who have done okay without throwing themselves all over the internet (or not even bothering with net presence until after getting some sales), provided they keep some sort of 'anchor' for people to find them (webpage, mailing list, et cetera).

Now, some people just like all the social media stuff, though.

I guess the way I look at is that unless one plans to die relatively soon, just writing more material will at least add to one's backlist in a permanent way that can eventually benefit you even if it doesn't 'pay' off in a pure sales sense immediately, but all the social media stuff* is a hungry beast that fades from relevance the minute you stop feeding it.

I spent a LOT of time promoting my first book. I did okay based on my admittedly modest goals, but I could have written several novels with all the time I promoting, and I suspected the latter would have benefited me more in the long run for various reasons (including the study you mentioned and what not).

So, at this point, I've basically abandoned almost all the non-stimulating social media stuff.

*A lot of people really just like that sort of thing though. So, it isn't as much "work" to them, I'd suppose.

J.A., I like some of it, and I do spend every day looking through my Facebook and Goodreads feeds, but my Web site is static, and I gave up on Twitter pretty quickly because I just didn't have enough to "announce" and couldn't bring myself to try to develop relationships there based on 140-character comments. I know there are those who do and have, but I think Twitter has definitely not been as successful as other social media even if it has its devotees.

All that said, I'm only spending more time here on Goodreads because I'm not writing. What that means, though, is that instead of forcing myself to sit in my chair and stare at a screen or think through plot issues and otherwise use my imagination I'm enjoying other uses of my time that probably has little benefit to my novel writing.

It's as I tell my children: our time is finite. What we choose to do at any given time means we're choosing not to do something else.

I like Cullinan's post.

It is way too easy to get sidetracked by social media and 'promotion.'

LeAnn wrote: "I came across author/blogger Heidi Cullinan's post Death by Promotion."

Cullinan has it absolutely spot on. The sickening amount of time spent on promotion negates every single advantage of being an indie, ten times over.

A novelist is a wholesaler of ideas, not a retailer of books.

Andre Jute wrote: "Cullinan has it absolutely spot on. The sickening amount of time spent on promotion negates every single advantage of being an indie, ten times over.

A novelist is a wholesaler of ideas, not a retailer of books."

Do you think that's true of all novelists? I'm not so sure.

Also, it's interesting to contrast Cullinan's post with what happened here on Goodreads last year. I confess to being mostly out of the loop for it, but it did come up with a GR friend. Did Robustians discuss the Salon article by Laura Miller about it?

What, in particular, are you referring to in terms of Goodreads? Salon (and Miller) has put out a lot of self-pub articles, so not quite remembering based on that.

Are you talking just about some of the major the whole kerfuffle over bad reviews, alleged targeting, people trying to ID particular reviews to go after them, the counter-attacks and that sort of thing?

I don't particularly remember discussing it here. My memory is often unreliable though. :/

Heck, one can be reasonably active on GR (as I was previously in many groups and did actively promote in several) and still have escaped all that nonsense. While not always, drama often follows the dramatic.

If we're talking about that though, I'll just note that though there definitely are people who do "hunt indies", I've find a large number of indies who flip the heck out anytime they get a negative review as if they are entitled to nothing but positive reviews or who aggressively attack anyone giving them a negative review.

If you want an eye-opening view on this just go to Kboards and look at any threads on reviews where various authors bemoan not having reviews, but then basically suggest all review systems be heavily changed to basically favor authors.

Again, doesn't mean there's no trolls out there, but sometimes people are creating their own trolls...

Or are you talking about something else entirely?

J.A. wrote: "What, in particular, are you referring to in terms of Goodreads? Salon (and Miller) has put out a lot of self-pub articles, so not quite remembering based on that.

Sorry for being so opaque. I wrongly assumed that I'd avoided learning about the Goodreads review dustup because I'm not very active in a lot of groups, but that most active Goodreads members had probably discussed it at least a little. Even though I get a digest of messages from Robust, I don't always look at what's being discussed. I figured that I was one of the last to the party.

I'm referring to Miller's Salon article Goodreads: Where Readers and Authors Battle It Out in An Online Lord of the Flies.

I have to say that I'm glad I've decided to spend some more time here on Robust, which seems low on the drama and relatively high on interesting discussion.

It's kind of funny. The very free-for-all nature that can lead to things like the review nonsense is a good part of what makes this place work.

That is, Andre makes no attempt to moderate other than cutting remarks, so its seem like we all have decent discussions without worrying about "You're off-topic! You offended me! Banned!" stuff.

In my time on ROBUST, which I think has been about three years or so, there's only three 'drama' episodes I can think of:

1) Some very crabby person from Kboards came on and started harassing a regular who defended the reading of YA and fantasy.

The aforementioned crabby person got really snippy at one point accusing Andre of "favoring" authors and going on about how Andre claimed ROBUST wasn't about favoring anyone. Andre in response made a few cutting remarks then noted the person crabby person was arguing with was, in fact, not an author. The CP then left after a bit more of a huff.

2 & 3) A very angry retired reporter came and got very upset with me for various reasons (long story, mostly stupid) and then left. He came back, after from what I could tell from his own explanation (and the fact I'd seen it elsewhere), having trouble and all but getting run out of every other GR groups he participated in for being a jackanape. Things went well for a few weeks, but then he became enraged at Andre for, I don't know, being too much of a "European intellectual" and being offended about some perceived anti-American comment. He left after Andre made some cutting remarks.

That's the some total I can think of in terms of true "drama".

J.A. wrote: "Andre in response made a few cutting remarks"

I never!

I remember your number 3, Larry, vaguely. He was upset that the world didn't recognize his genius and beat a path to his door to buy his book. It was very odd, because he claimed to have been a book publicist, so he should have known better.

We also had a pair of bimbos. One was an undergraduate student of marine biology, and when I said that the people who caused DDT to be banned merely to demonstrate their political clout were responsible for a genocide of many tens of millions of African women and children, and that those who are "against" DDT today continue that genocide, she opined that 220,000 of these poor people every year could keep dying until she could finish school and determine whether DDT is deleterious to plankton; when I asked if she understood what she was saying, she left in a huff. A perfect illustration of why as an old revolutionary I find American "liberals" embarrassing; a perfect illustration of the heartlessness of the politically correct. Zero loss to the community.

The other one took the cake and is my favorite. She left in a huff because she appeared to understand by free speech only politically correct predigested speech that she personally approved of. Since her valedictory, condemning us all to perdition, was her very first message, we were apparently supposed to guess what she wanted to hear. Her parting shot was to describe the entire conference as "patriarchal"; she must have been talking about Jeremy! Now, she was a great loss. Somebody that humorless is always good for a giggle.

I was once, actually in the same day, though alas not in the same forum, accused of being a "patriarchal oppressor" and "a useful idiot neutered beta male carrying water for the anti-male feminist conspiracy."

I do tend to operate under a general principle that if I'm annoying extremists on both sides, I'm probably doing something right though.

J.A. wrote: "I was once, actually in the same day, though alas not in the same forum, accused of being a "patriarchal oppressor" and "a useful idiot neutered beta male carrying water for the anti-male feminist ..."

That's too funny, J.A.!

I must be going senile or I've just missed the right threads, because I only remember one of the arguments mentioned above. Or maybe it's my trouble-avoiding nature that has steered me clear.

I try to have trouble-avoiding policy. I manage to generally go six months or year on the internet, then make the mistake of engaging someone in what ends up being a most glorious waste of time.

Okay, am I just losing it (always a possibility)? I could have swore Matt posted something here the other day (I hadn't had a chance to look at it), but now I don't see it.

Or am I slipping into various alternate ROBUST time lines? Quick, contact the guy from the 'Wonder' thread!

J.A. wrote: "Okay, am I just losing it (always a possibility)? I could have swore Matt posted something here the other day (I hadn't had a chance to look at it), but now I don't see it.

Or am I slipping into v..."

No, J.A., I was going to post exactly the same thing. I saw a post from Matt on my phone but wanted to respond on my desktop. It's gone this morning and doesn't show up on his profile, either.

I find this forum (fora?) to be the most interesting.

Mostly because we can have fun debating and not get our knickers in a collective twist when we don't agree on something.

I get confused at times because sometimes I might have seen something on FB, and think it was here or read it on ThePassiveVoice.com or whatever.

Yeah, I agree, K.A.

I may disagree with people here on several things, some quite strenuously, but I've never felt that I wasted time in a discussion here (well, other than the Larry thing) because people had such intelligent and thoughtful things to say.

I wrote a long post last night before going to bed, and when I woke up, I regretted what I had written and removed it.


Since you guys wanted to respond to it, I will restore it -- I saved it in a Word file to cannibalize some other time.

"
Let me start by thanking you guys for clue-ing me into two more articles (Cullinan and Miller) that I can both enjoy reading and also add to my revised twitter feed.

Which twitter feed I noticed tonight contained people who followed me, I followed back, and who then unfollowed me. Whereupon I unfollowed them. And someone who has interview questions from me, whom I met on twitter, has unfollowed me. And someone I interviewed, whose interview I was still tweeting, has unfollowed me (I won't identify those two people as Neil Spring and Mary Buckham respectively.)

I have spent way more time on social media than I have writing over the last three years. I have felt obliged, because of group membership, to help promote people who sell way better than I do, and while they have reciprocated with me, their help has not helped. (Presumably my help didn't help them either.)

I am doing less and less promotion. People have complained to me about my automated twitter feed, and I am redoing it, because fresh content is always nice, and I often find nice articles worth sharing and like a venue for that, and I take a certain pride in my twitter feed not sucking, although perhaps just now it does.

Overall, though, Cullinan is right. She has gotten a lot more benefit from her over-promoting than I have from my moderate promoting -- I don't get nearly as many emails or group invitations as she does. But the promotional activity is a SERIOUS detriment to daily writing. If I sit at my desk with time to write, I usually try to "clear writing business" first which means work related to my interview series, creating some social media content, etc. Most days I don't get to the fiction. I run out of time or energy long before the WIP appears before my eyes with its blinking cursor.

And yet, what to do? An unpromoted work does not sell, right?

I have discovered, however, that the promotion I am doing does not affect my sales. Someone tells me, "Your interview got a thousand hits on my blog already." Well, that's cool, but sales change not at all. My sales are the same every month whether I promote or not. I'm not kidding; each month is within three or four books of the month before and the month to come. Do I really suppose that if I promoted to the level Cullinan has decided no longer to do, that it would matter? I think it would not.

I would never wish to stop being part of Robust, but I think I am going to have to let some of the other social media and promotions go. I am not writing enough.
"

Matt, I don't know why you regretted that, and I thank you for sharing your experience with promotion. I've felt that I'm failing by not doing that piece well, but it sounds like that doesn't matter. I'm sorry that you're not writing fiction, so I hope I don't see you around Robust too much (and I hope to also disappear again into my own fiction), but your experience is invaluable even if it's negative.

Matt,

If it makes you feel any better, what you're going through is pretty much exactly what I went through (it doesn't help that I've been ridiculously busy with work either).

Hmmm - really, there has to be a better way to promote, as we've all done the same things with the same results -- nada.

Twitter is an endless source of frustration for me. I can tweet the address of a book on Smashwords - get 30 hits overnight and no sales. Same no matter which address (AMazon US, UK, B&N, kobo.) No sales, but a few hits.

Two weeks ago, I started getting a random smattering of review stars - but no sales.

Currently, I've slashed prices to $.99 on all vendor sites and left a few e-books free on Smashwords. That has resulted in 1 Zon sale just a day or two ago.

There has to be a better way.

People don't buy based on variations in low price points. There are buying patterns. For example, books sell better at $2.99 than they do at $1.99. Why? Dunno.

Dunno = Threshhold pricing is a matter for empirical test, not for strict psych principles, except for the principle of threshhold pricing working.

I read an article about it and I am just parroting the contents of the article, but I don't remember where it was.

There isn't too much to know about threshhold pricing except that it works. The particulars of how it works, at which threshholds at which times for which particular products, are moving targets, subject to test and retest.

But it is well known that 1.99, if it ever worked, doesn't now work. You may as well price at 2.99. 4.99 is also better than 3.99.

Here's one for you. When they left Amazon, CoolMain increased their authors' book prices, in Dakota's case to a uniform 4.99 except for the omnibus which has always been 9.99. Her sales have gone *up* as a result, which I read as her market not being price-sensitive,and possible considering 2.99, which was her introductory price, infra dig, or just plain cheap and nasty. Kat did report here several months ago that people whose blogs she reads (Konrath and Rusch are the ones I remember she mentioned) were saying that people should move up from 2.99, their previous fave, to 3.99. Because I know that 3.99 isn't a significant threshold, I told Gemma to bypass it and go straight for 4.99. It's turned out to be the right decision.

I went with $.99 last summer, it kept my sales going until fall, when I raised prices they fell off to nothing.

It's been 2 years since I offered 'Let's do Lunch' for free - I'm trying it again via Smashwords.

I'm having trouble with Kobo again. The 'Impressive Bravado' page is over a year old. It may have come from Draft2Digital, which I thought I unpublished a year ago.

Hmm...just checked my Create Space. A drop in paperback prices to minimum just paid off with a sale.

This bears watching.