Community: On the awkwardness of reputation-transfer

[hrj]

I grumbled on facebook about how awful the first-period royalty numbers are for The Mystic Marriage so I won't do it here, except to note that it would help immensely if people who have a local bookstore (including Barnes & Noble) would go in and ask them to carry it. (You might suggest that they put it in the SFF section, since LesFic readers seem to have given up on me.)

* * *

One of the pieces of advice you see offered to new authors is to leverage whatever existing fanbase they have. You can certainly see the effects of this sort of thing when a "debut" author moves from being a popular fan-fic writer to their first commercial venture.

At one time, it would have seemed axiomatic that my first novel publication would have fallen more in the realm of medieval history, or medieval-inspired fantasy. That was the focus of most of my historic research, it was the topic of my first several stabs at writing serious novel length works. And it would have made it a lot easier to translate whatever degree of fame I'd achieved in nearly four decades of SCA activity into interest in my novels. But it's a bit harder to spin SCA fame (such as it is) into interest in a 19th century setting. Harder, at least, if one is trying to be thoughtful about relevance-of-promotion.

At one time, one might have thought that having some small amount of name-recognition in the filk music community might translate into a bit of useful interest and "buzz" for one of their own. But by the time my novel came out, I'd drifted away from filking (and had been essentially forgotten as a writer even before then). Filkers have, in general, been enthusiastic supporters of novelists who had been active in the community. But memories are short and people move on.

One of the awkwardnesses of being published by a lesbian press is that there's an assumption that the only relevant market for your books is the lesbian community and that you will have contacts, networks, and existing fans there who will jumpstart your writing career. So while the official marketing is aimed at that market, there's sort of an assumption that there's no need to "market", as such. And that has been a real handicap for me. Of all the potential readerships for my books, that's one where I have essentially no reputation-base at all. LesFic readers are fanatically loyal--but if you aren't part of the community, you don't get the benefit of that loyalty.

I'm slowly beginning to build new connections--a new reputation. It's a makeshift sort of thing, cobbling together fragments of intersections. If I'd wanted to leverage all my pre-existing fan-bases in a calculated way, I suppose I should have written a story with a medieval-fantasy setting involving textiles, language, heraldry, and music. Hmm, I suppose there's still an opportunity to insert some heraldry into the plot-sketches for Tapestry. If anyone's still buying my books by the time I get to writing it.

Comments

[irina (from livejournal.com)]

Our local bookstore has a foreign-language (English, German, Turkish and French in that order of number of titles) SFF section comprised of (last time I was there) four shelves, and they carry only the most bestselling of bestsellers. I don't dare try. Now if you were local to our town and wrote in Dutch, they'd put you on the counter for a week if you asked very nicely...

(I'm local to our town, but I don't write in Dutch; also I'm not in print unless I start doing POD. So no hope for me either.)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I always hope that when I post requests like that, it's understood "don't feel bad if this doesn't in any way apply to you."

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Heraldry! You know my feelings on your incorporation of that into Tapestry.

This may seem like cold comfort, but I want to say that reading your books and reading your writing about your books has changed the way I approach/consume fiction. I used to never be someone who reviewed books; I now do systematically. I used to never be someone who bought books for someone else (other than non-fiction); I have purchased copies of Daughter of Mystery as gifts for a handful of people.

None of this may make a difference to you and your sales, but I hope that knowing you, and your books, had a tangible effect, means something.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Even before I had a stake in the issue, I used to bore people to death with my lectures about "strategic shopping". (Mostly rants about the ultimate consequences of big-site online buying.) Maybe no one person has the power to change the tide, but in the end everything is made up of individual people acting in a way that is not in their immediate interest (e.g., spending the time to write a review) but has a hope of long-term payoff (e.g., ensuring the writing and publications of more books like it).

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Ok, I fall right into the target for that unwritten story involving a medieval-fantasy setting involving textiles, language, heraldry, and music. However, I also love the books you did write and publish. These are not mutually exclusive categories, after all. Would I have bought your books if I didn't already know who you are through the SCA? Nope, probably not. Your existing fan base has helped, even if it hasn't helped enough, yet...

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Well, Tapestry is scheduled to have: a medieval setting, textiles (the working title is literal as well as symbolic), and will involve language in the same degree that the 19th century Mysteries do. I don't think I could work in heraldry as anything more than a passing mention, and the music will be mostly a silent back-reference to the opera about Tanfrit that features in Mother of Souls.

[kareina.livejournal.com]

Ok, and you expect me to be patient and wait for you to actually finish writing it? good thing life is busy...

But I can guarantee that you sell at least one copy when it is ready.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Have you tried asking Scalzi if you can post a Big Idea blog on his site? He does that for a lot of writers. Did you get a chance to meet him when he was at Kepler's?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

I submitted a query for the Big Idea series for The Mystic Marriage. Followed up (as instructed by the website) when I hadn't received any response. Never did get any response. It wasn't because the Big Idea calendar was over-full at the relevant period. So I have no idea why I didn't even get a "no".

It wouldn't have occurred to go to Keplers to see him. I haven't read his books and don't have any existing social connections to him. I rather imagine that he gets a lot of random strangers pestering him to help promote their books. I don't care to be lumped into that category.

Believe me, I would love it if there were established big-name authors who would be willing to give my books a shout-out. I wish the set of authors I'd feel comfortable asking and the set of authors with whom I share a natural readership overlapped more. I wish for a lot of things.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Do you hang out on his blog at all, or on blogs by Jim Hines or some of the other more social authors? That's one way to get to "know" people.

One of my favorite stories begins, "When I was having drinks with Joe Haldeman one time..." (and the having drinks with Joe wasn't the point of the story, it just happened that he'd invited me and Anne -- probably because of Anne -- to have drinks with him and Gay). Why did Joe invite us to have drinks with them? Because I read the newsgroups on sff.net, and there weren't a lot of active ones, but the active ones were by writers whose work I liked. These include Susan Shwartz, who based on that acquaintance has taken me shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue; Esther Friesner, in whose newsgroup I heard about the anthology that led to my first sale; and Joe Haldeman, who, when I ran into him at that World Fantasy and introduced myself as the Karen who read his newsgroups, said, "Oh! *You're* Karen. Pleased to meet you." or something to that affect. Blogs aren't as interactive as newsgroups, but Susan, Esther, and Joe are still on sff.net (though I rarely am). It's a way to hang out and make friends with authors whose work you like, and from your comments, they get to know you.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

There's a limit to how much social media I can do and still write. I've been hanging out at Making Light ever since my favorite people from rec.arts.sf.composition decamped there. Recently I've been participating in a somewhat spontaneous community that arose on File 770 in the wake of Hugo discussions that turned more general. And I have a serious Twitter habit as well as being a holdout on LJ. But getting involved in a particular site deeply enough and long enough to feel like part of its community is a significant investment of time. I read Scalzi's and Hines's blogs from time to time and dipped my toes in the water a few times, but I've never found the sort of intersection that gave me something to grasp onto.

I've "tried on" a fairly extensive number of online social venues relating to writing, from a variety of angles. Some of them have a dynamic that just doesn't work for me. There was one bulletin board style site for lesbian literature that seemed promising at first, but it ended up having a smooth, hard, shiny surface that I could never figure out how to enter. (I'm not talking computer interfaces here, but social dynamics.) I pop in and out of Absolute Write regularly, but haven't really found a niche there that's both manageable in volume and congenial to interact with.

Believe me, I'm not just sitting in a corner refusing to play with the other kids and then complaining I have no friends. Twitter has been very good to me in many ways. But I'm suffering from social whiplash. It took me literally decades to get to a place of comfort in the SCA. I'm not you. The things that work for you don't work the same for me. I'm trying to untangle the things that are going to work for me, and it's very frustrating.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

The things that work for you don't work the same for me.

That's what it comes down to, just like when talking about the things that work with writing. I can tell you about what works for me, in the hope that it will work for you, but just like any writing advice, you have to figure out what works for you.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I don't hang out on Making Light because I don't quite feel comfortable there and it's a very busy site and there are only so many hours I can spend on social media. But I would have thought that there was a decent overlap between readers of Jo Walton's books and yours. Has Jo reviewed or mentioned your book at all? Or do they only allow reviews of Tor books?

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Crap, my wifi connection timed out while I was commenting and I lost it. Don't feel like reconstructing. Short version: I know Jo to talk to, but I don't know her well enough to approach cold. And I don't think she's reviewing at the moment.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Further regarding: "I'm not just sitting in a corner"

Both past years I've submitted essays for consideration for Hines's "Invisible" essay series/collection. I am trying to reach out, really. I'm just not on the right wavelength there.

[patoadam]

I suspect one problem you have is that readers are not likely to invest their time and money in a book unless they read all its genres.

The Harry Potter books, for example, have elements of the classic whodunit, set in a fantasy universe in which the perp could appear to be an inanimate object or an animal. But most fantasy readers do not read mysteries, and most mystery readers do not read fantasy. Fortunately, the publishers sensibly marketed HP in only one genre. "The Mystery of the Sorcerer's Stone" would not have been an international sensation.

There can't be that many readers who read lesbian romances and fantasy and novels set in the 19th century.