Turning Points

Remember: Promo won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t have something to sell!
So…pages FIRST!
**The motto of 1st Turning Point

HANK: If you don't know of her, I'm betting you will soon. Ann Charles is the co-creator and co-owner of the phenomenally successful and incredibly educational
http://www.1stturningpoint.com/, a website for both unpublished and published writers, where nearly fifty authors, reviewers, and PR consultants teach, share, and learn all
about promotion. It's a constantly updated, endlessly interesting source of inspiration and experience. (Read this first, then go. Click on "articles" when you get there.)

Ann's also had other champagne moments this year, one of which was winning the coveted Daphne Award for Excellence in Mystery and Suspense for her manuscript.

(Whoo hoo.) (That's not actually it, at left, but you get the point.)

(And of course, since WRITE FIRST is our writing mantra here at JRW, we're thrilled to find that the promotion pros, like Ann, think we're on the right track.)

And now, because storytelling is what she does, Ann is giving Jungle Red the scoop on her success. They say you can only learn from experience. Now, luckily for us, Ann shares hers.


Author Up!
by Ann Charles

Let me tell you a little story about why I have the privilege of hanging out today with the brilliant ladies of Jungle Red Writers...

Once upon a time I wanted to write a book and get it published. You’re familiar with this yarn: Author writes a book, author naively believes it is stellar and worthy of a spot on all bestseller lists, author is rejected, author returns to keyboard with egg on her face (I prefer mine scrambled with ketchup, please). Author tries again, and again, and again; running head-first into that same brick wall until either it falls down, or she does.

A few years ago, I had an epiphany about this cyclical tale and the throbbing lump on my forehead—the section that explained how to climb up and over the brick wall was missing. Suddenly, I had a new mission: I would find this missing piece of information. I became obsessed, scouring bookshelves for a hidden codex that might reveal helpful hints, digging for clues on successful authors’ websites, studying the career moves of my role models. Two restraining orders and a night in solitary confinement later, I realized something very important: I needed to write my own climbing instructions.

Now, some of you may not be as thickheaded as I was and figured this bit out long ago, but that’s not the way I tumble. While I usually learn best from my own screw-ups, which explains my first marriage and divorce, this time I learned from studying, analyzing, and experimenting; and that is exactly what it has taken for me to climb as far up this wall as I have, brick by brick, one hand over the other.

Four years ago, I took my first class on marketing. Since then, I have read widely on the subject of promotion and marketing for both fiction and non-fiction authors, co-designed a website dedicated to sharing knowledge about this important half of an author’s career, and snatched up every nugget of wisdom and ounce of advice offered.


These days, I try to share things I’ve learned about conquering that wall and making the jump to success, to help fellow authors gear up and scale their own walls. With this goal in mind, let me throw you five lines to help you climb.

1. Dig In: Success is not guaranteed with a contest win or a publishing contract. It’s developed over time in small bits and pieces, usually includes a fair share of cuts and bruises, often leaves a scar behind, and can only be found in authors who, like Roberta, Jan, and Hallie, are too diligent, persistent, and focused to give up and take a seat on the sidelines.

2. Be Yourself: My path to success is not the same as Hank’s, nor Rosemary’s or Rhys's. Don’t try to mimic the success of others, because you’ll fail. You’ll end up angry, depressed, and throwing darts at the book covers of the same authors who might otherwise lend you a hand when you need it.

Also, don’t lose sight of what’s important in your definition of success. For example, one aspect of my “success” is determined by landing workshop opportunities and venues. I want to help other authors because it makes me happy, so for me happiness=success. Your definition of success may include selling 20,000 copies of your ground-breaking, futuristic, romantic mystery, Killer Love-Monkeys from the Planet Enigma. Your goals and efforts should focus on targeting and hooking your audience with the hope that they’ll buy the sequel. Giving workshops might send you off on a time-wasting tangent, unless you’re speaking to rapt audiences at Planet-of-the-Apes conventions.

3. Think Entrepreneur: My friend and fellow mystery author, Polly Iyer, once told me, “You will succeed because you refuse to fail.” I like to think of Polly as a fortune-teller, but in truth, if she is right, it’s because I see myself as an entrepreneur first and an author second. The books I write are my “products.” After I have a new product in hand, Ann the Entrepreneur has to figure out how to market and sell the book/series, secure future opportunities, and keep the stockholders (aka my family) happy. In my sleuthing, I’ve found that this entrepreneurial concept is common amongst the most successful authors.

However, there is a dark side to this insight—entrepreneurs don’t win “World’s Best Mother” and other similar awards. The path to success is long and hard, full of potholes and family interventions. You have to make your writing career a priority in your life, and at the same time continue to shower your family with love and attention...or at least drizzle on them semi-regularly. A lot of authors struggle to balance it all. You need to practice multi-tasking on a regular basis and keep those balancing muscles in shape.

4. Make a Plan: Writing to get published requires time and dedication, as I’ve already mentioned. You have to really want to succeed; be determined, stubborn, and patient, but your odds are improved if you work with a career plan. What’s a career plan? It’s a document in which you think long-term and plan your successes out on paper far into the future, placing targets out there into the ether to aim toward. Your future is unwritten. A career plan is where you start to map it out, making sure you at least know which way is north.

5. Get Big: I heard something on television recently that struck home: In Hollywood, success is in the franchise. Think about James Patterson, Stephen King, and J.K. Rowling—they are franchises in their own right. You know their names, not all of the titles of their books (unless you’re a diehard fan). Start thinking about how you can make your name and books into a franchise. Don’t focus on marketing one of your books, think about how you will market you, the fabulous author of these wonderful books, to your fans—old and new. You have to reach the masses. Books alone won’t do it. Think big. No, BIGGER than that.

Now, you have several lines of rope to get started up that wall, so stop slamming head-first into it and start using your noggin for less painful purposes.

I challenge you to “Author Up!” What are you doing to scale your wall to success?
* * *

Thanks to the successful women of Jungle Red Writers for letting me hang out for a day; and special thanks to Hank Phillippi Ryan for inviting me to blather on in the first place.

Ann Charles is an award-winning author who writes romantic mysteries that
are splashed with humor. She recently won the 2010 Daphne du Maurier for
Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. She has also been a Romance Writers of
America Golden Heart finalist, as well as a Pacific Northwest Writers
Association Literary Contest finalist. A member of Sisters in Crime and
Romance Writers of America for many moons, she has a B.A. in English with an
emphasis on creative writing from the University of Washington. She is
currently toiling away on her next book while her agent works on selling her
manuscripts. When she is not dabbling in fiction, she is penning
writing-related articles or standing on her workshop soapbox, sharing what
she has learned over the years about the craft and self-promotion. Visit her
at www.anncharles.com, or read her weekly mom-related antics at
http://www.plotmammas.com/.

******TOMORROW: the Scoop on the e-zine SPINETINGLER. And just a tidbit of a quote from the editor-in-Chief: "And if he wants the writer banned for life, I'm fine with that."

And that's just the beginning.