Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

Another week, another what to say because right now things in the writing world I inhibit aren't great. I did have a good sit down with one of the more successful members of my writing group and got some tips. One of them was she really believed in email newsletters driving sales. Honestly I'm dubious but she reminded me not everyone is ME. I've ended up with so many newsletters I couldn't possibly read them and I very rarely read ANY of them. How about you? Are you on any? Are they driving you to buy books? I'm curious.

I'm also disappointed. It's a couple weeks back now but I've been too depressed to tackle it. However, let me paraphrase the question. 'How do you get diversity into your reading?' My own answer (which I didn't share) was, honestly I don't do as good a job as I should but on the other hand I barely pay attention to the author period. Maybe I should so unless the author's name is obviously from a certain ethnicity like Nnedi Okorafor or Kamome Shirahama or Hiromu Arakawa I'm probably not going to know right off the bat. I'm not one for reading bios or looking at author pictures, at least not when I decide to pick up the book. Cover and blurb are my deciders.

Anyhow, several of them prided themselves on 'I'll never buy ANYTHING from a cis white male.' Here's where I don't engage and bite my tongue. To me that is not adding diversity. That's saying straight white men have nothing to say and should be silenced (which yes was in fact their opinions). I thought about that and then thought about a world without Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Game of Thrones(which okay I don't like but millions do). I should throw out Stephen King, Neil Gaimen, Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and so many more all because they're White? Should I ban watching Good Omens because White men created it?

What the original questioner wanted were ways to increase their diversity, sites that feature diverse authors etc. What they got was white men are always wrong and should be avoided. (Oddly enough if they wrote lesbian fiction, they were okay which is the opposite of the reaction we get if women write gay men and I will say all the toss white men out proponents were women before I ran the hell away from all of it).

At the end of the day people are going to do whatever they want but in my opinion banning one group is not going to help anything. Want to help diverse authors? Buy their stuff. Promote their stuff. Promote stuff that you love regardless of who wrote it (which okay caveat if I find someone I love has turned out to be a prejudiced asshole my support is gone). That's how you help. Some people have started archives for ACE books, and lesbian and you name it. That's helpful.

And hopefully publishers will take notice. duskpeterson had something along these lines today as well. The troubles of finding stock photos to use of anyone but Caucasians. That was a huge trouble for my last two stories. They couldn't find a single Hispanic man dressed as doctor (bet they could have found them as street punks) for my last Christmas story. Modified and Sacred's cover just ended up a planet to indicate it was SF because they couldn't find a single Native American stock photo (that wasn't someone in tribal gear).

Maybe the conversation needs to get volleyed to the stock photos people where self pubbed and indie publishers get their cover models. People get pissed when there aren't diverse covers and I agree. But it's not always the author/small press's fault. Here's hoping that chances.

Not a lot of links today. How to legally quote song lyrics in your book

The Successful People I Know Are Voracious Readers Boy I wish that was all it took

Don’t Get Caught Up In The “Cult of the First Sentence”

On Running, And Writing, And How A Little Becomes A Lot As always with Chuck Wendig, the language is NSFW

And honestly one of the most important ones that a friend gave to me when I was whining about this a couple days ago 10 STEPS YOU CAN USE TO OVERCOME IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

ETA - Something that took me by surprise. I wrote two stories for comment_fic one in the MCU and one X-Files. That the MCU got 50 hits in about 12 hours didn't surprise me. It's a hot fandom. However, X-Files is like 25 years old and counting. I expected it to be like the Buffyverse, a slow trickle of hits. Somehow that little ficlet racked up 150 hits in 12 hours. Wow.

Comments

[shopfront]

So I don't really pay attention to newsletters myself either, but they were an important tool when I was still working in PR. Forgive me if you already know all this, but just in case it's a useful perspective... I would say, even if they feel useless to you personally or you don't find many people who do say they read them, that they're a numbers game. It might be helpful to find out what the average conversion rate is for any tool you consider whether that's emails or social media or whatever. Generally successful campaigns relied not on getting loads of people from any one thing, but being able to bank on hitting the average numbers (which might still seem really really low as a percentage of all your subscribers) for the tools in play so as you accumulated more followers or subscribers over time that tiny percentage turned into a bigger number of actual people paying attention. Often when I was looking at case studies or conferences or whatever, it wasn't so much 'email is the best tool' as much as 'this person/organisation believed email was the best tool and stuck at it so consistently that over time their 1% conversion rate was a huge pool of people.'

[cornerofmadness]

Thank you. I appreciate it. That's pretty much what she said. I had planned on making on before the last novel but never managed it. Once I get the scientific papers written this summer, I'll make that the next project.

[aaronlisa]

I'm on the fence re: newsletters or even an email list foru authors or musicians. Most of the time it's too much work for me to follow the bulk of what I am subscribed too BUT I do appreciate it when I see an email for a newsletter for an author/musician that says "HEY NEW MATERIAL IS COMING OUT ON THIS DATE!!!" Those I open without fail.

Other than that, I think I am largely "ugh this is too much work." That said, not everyone is me or you or anyone else who is kind of against them. But those select authors/musicians where I do subscribe to their newsletter and/or email list, I can say that in most cases when I've gotten the update that there's a new release, I've almost always bought it within the first week or two of it coming out. So for me that's why I am subscribed to those that I want to know when they are publishing something new.

I hate this whole push for diversity and the negativity that comes with it. You and I've briefly spoken about it. I think I would have had a hard time biting my tongue had I been in your place. It's hard to read diversely but I don't want to read diversely just to say that I read diversely.

[cornerofmadness]

Thanks. that helps as far as newsletters go. I barely even do that these days. I really need to par mine down.

Yeah, it bothers me that some are so very militant, steamrolling over everyone if you don't do their way of being whatever it is, never seeing there's more than one path.