Coming at it sideways

by Celia Hayes
(San Antonio, Texas USA)

The Greatest frontier adventure you've never heard of!

genre: historical/western

I came into POD publishing kind of sideways - through the medium of blogging. I am a contributor since 2002 to a pretty-widely read mil-blog "Sgt Stryker's Daily Brief" - now just "The Daily Brief" at www.ncobrief.com.

It's where I first developed readers and fans - and I did my first book just for them. I had done a whole series of memoir-essays about my oddball family, which people really, really liked. Another blogger and fan recommended Booklocker.com, around the time that I got tired of getting emails saying "So, when is your book coming out?!" I don't think I bothered with doing a proposal and shopping it around to agents and main-line publishers. "Our Grandpa Was an Alien" was just for the blog-fans. I think I have broken even on it, just barely!

A couple of years after that, I did another essay - about a historical wagon-train party on the California Trail in 1844. One thing and another, it turned into "To Truckee's Trail". That one I did shop around to agents and mainstream publishing houses for a year. No luck - although everyone who read the whole thing loved it! Even three literary agents that read it, loved it - but they said it wasn't marketable. And I said to myself "Hmmm. Something doesn't quite fit, here."

Long and short, I raised the funds to go back to Booklocker. I thought to market through several avenues. One of them is to market to local historical museums and historical societies based on the fact that it is painstakingly well researched about real people and a real, although relatively unknown historical experience. This has slowly started to work. The Truckee-Donner Historical Society carries it in their bookstore. I will have to check again, but OCTA (Oregon-California Trail Association) has promised to carry it also. (Good thing I am not in a hurry on this!) I think that these places are a little more inured to sticker shock for speciality books. I have also had some luck in being stocked as a local author in local brick and mortar stores. Unless you can offer at least a %40 discount through Ingram or another distributor, a bookstore needs a really compelling reason to carry your books.

I had also thought to call in some other bloggers and fans for reviews and links to on-line bookstores. I have had mixed results on this; it's a bit like herding cats. It has paid off in some exposure and links, through the various political and milblogs associated with "The Daily Brief". I rather think I have milked them dry at this point. Now I am marketing "Truckee" through contributing to discussion groups and blogs focusing on Western books. People who love genre Westerns are always looking for new ones - why not go where the readers are? I just finished writing two short stories, which were the entree for getting linked as a feature author on one of these sites. (http://www.ropeandwire.com/index.html)

I also joined a discussion group for writers who had done historical novels and published through POD or small publishers. This group started on Amazon, but morphed into a yahoo group and finally into a self-help organisation: The Independent Authors Guild. (www.independentauthorsguild.com) Two goals - swap tips and encouragement for marketing and do joint marketing events such as our newsletter (which evolved as something to be handed out whenever a member has a signing anywhare!), and help each other write the very best books we can. Some of the other members have been in the game for quite a while. One member, Janet Elaine Smith encourages us to approach owners of B&B's in the neighborhood of wherever our book is set, on the grounds that someone visiting would love to know a little more about a place! We also swap blurbs and reviews, critiques and editing, recommendations on how to handle signings, and how to approach bookstores and local media. We like to do joint efforts, on the grounds that whatever helps one of us, helps us all, and we can do more working together than any of us could ever do separatly.

I think that independent publishing is the wave of the future - in the next couple of years, it will be about where independent music is now, in relation to the old-line music business. Unless you are one of the established literary dinosaurs, you have to get out there and market your own book. Just having it available on Amazon, or B and N is just not going to get anywhere unless you think about where you have to go to get people to read it. My next book is a trilogy about the founding of the German settlements in Texas - and of course, I will be making sure that bookstores in Fredericksburg, Comfort and New Braunfels will stock it. Think the bookstore owners will want to say no, to carrying books that are set right in the place where they live and work?

Visit Celia Hayes: Books and More.