Tell the Story Behind the Story

Every book has a story about itself.

The story of the writing of a book-length work (or a substantial article) – how the work came to be – is grist for your publicity mill. It’s an effective and easy-to-use tool in your efforts to establish Brand You, your personal brand.

Why? Because it tells two stories: one about the work itself, and one about you as a person writing the work. Hearing why an author picked a given topic, how he/she researched it, designed its telling, and populated it with happenings and ideas and and characters . . . is of great interest to many readers.

Here’s a great example:
Clues in the Shadows (A Molly Mystery): The Story Behind the Story

Here, author Kathleen Ernst uses a wonderful batch of photos from the Library of Congress to illustrate and talk (on a page on her excellent, content-rich website) about the research she did in writing this middle-grade reader, Clues in the Shadows, a mystery in the immensely popular American Girl line of books, doll, and zillions of accessories.

In this piece, Ernst shares how she came upon ideas that she incorporated into the story:

Many of the programs urged children to compete against each other, seeing who could collect the most paper or scrap metal.  Sometimes children struggled to meet expectations.  When I read about that, I decided that was an important idea to introduce in Clues in the Shadows.

Well-researched background like this impresses educators and reviewers. And readers themselves (in this case, kids) always like to see “behind the scenes” . . . to peek behind the curtain, to feel that special sense of privilege when someone takes you backstage and gives you a personal tour.

Of course, this is great stuff for any published (or soon-to-be-published) writer’s blog. Here’s another example (from a project I’m working with), the story of writing a historical novel for young readers, by two sisters, Hilda and Emily Demuth, centered around a historic plank road that ran by their childhood home in southern Wisconsin:

Plank Road Summer blog

Why does this behind-the-scenes storytelling work so well?

Because at the core of storytelling is the desire to be connected with each other. This goes back to the roots of oral storytelling, where the story never existed without the teller.

So take the time to create and share the story behind your major pieces of writing. It will draw in the reader and extend your personal brand, presenting you in a most-favorable light: how you (as a skilled, thoughtful pro writer) take raw ideas and turn them into literature.

Don’t just serve the dish. Let them see and appreciate the making of the dish. As brand-meister Martha Stewart would say . . . “And that’s a good thing.”

Blogs for Writers: Simple Thank-You Posts

(This is part of a mini-series for writers, with marketing value to almost any small business. For related posts, click here: “blogging for writers.”)

In the last post, I talked about the benefits of a low-key, minimalist blog: one that functions as a mini-website, an online business card or directory listing. You post your contact info, bio, and services, and be done with it.

Except . . . hey, now your blog exists . . . and can be used for a couple of easy online marketing applications!

One is to post a public thank-you note, as a simple blog post, at the end of a project completed.

Here’s an example of a company that has a website-like blog that mostly is just that: Juxtaprose.

It doesn’t take long to write a short paragraph or two about a project, thanking the principal players and mentioning what was done.

But note: there are a couple of real benefits to you in that brief post that go far beyond what a traditional thank-you note would do.

1. You create a link to that company’s site.
This creates a little permanent linkage, for political benefit. If you praise the company or someone in it, you are doing that publicly. (And that person can share it by sending the link for that blog post to others in their company, which they probably will . . . if it speaks well of their company . . . and of that person in it . . showing them . . . and you . . . in a good and generous light.)

2. You get get to tell others specifics of services you offer.
By describing a bit of what you did for that company, you create search-engine terms in your thank-you post that highlight your services. It’s good to be both specific and general, so both types of terms appear.

In other words, you created a “press release for online use” (general service) and it was about the “independent bookstore scene in Milwaukee, and the economic challenge of running a small storefront business in the recession, and the growing awareness of the Buy Local / Shop Indie campaign” (which is in your area of expertise . . . or is now if it wasn’t before). Now you’ve created helpful key words to encourage search engines to notice your blog when someone is searching for info about that topic down the line.)

3. You get to reveal a little about how you work.
Are you cheery, experienced, detail-oriented? That can come through in your blog entry. What sort of tools are you in command of? How do you approach problems or concerns within a project (at the start or as things pop up). If you talk about those – briefly, positively, with pizzazz – you begin to build a better image of your business and its brand (what distinguishes it from the next shop down the Internet road.)

The ability to describe what you did in a positive, appealing way will help attract new potential clients who check out your blog. (They see it because you mention it to them; more about very simple ways to get the right people to read your blog in a later post in this series.)

Thank-you posts are similar in structure, which makes them easy to write. Just personalize them, add a couple of interesting details, and link to the client.

You may also want to send a hand-written note to the client . . . but the online blog post is a nice touch and doesn’t take long.

Let see now, did I put the right key words in this post? I’m saying this out loud for your benefit, to encourage you to realize that it’s a useful part of blogging. Business blogs, blogging, writers, small business, online marketing, branding, Litwave (my affordable coaching service to help writers, authors, and consultants set up effective, low-key, market-savvy blogs) . . . yes, I think I’ve hit the right notes.

(Next post: using blog posts as FAQ material.)

Blogs for Writers: The Benefits of a Low-Key Approach

You’re a writer (or run a small business).
Do you have a blog?
No?

Really? Why not?

I recently gave a talk (on story structure and practice) for the Independent Writers of Chicago (IWOC, excellent networking for freelance writers . . . thanks Dave Epstein for arranging my program!). As part of it, I asked how many had blogs (as a good place to develop their own business stories).

I was amazed at the small percentage, given the high level of experience and skills of that group. But I find this is true when I ask the question elsewhere.

My question stands: No blog? Why not? What’s the down side?

The answer, of course, is an impression that having a blog means (a) a requirement to post frequently,  (b) resulting in a blog that is useless unless hyper-active . . . and is doomed to soon be abandoned, due to a lack of time.

Plus, it’s not clear to many professional writers where to draw the line between the online journal of blog blather (what I had for breakfast . . .) and the glib, personable, über-blogger whose business success is related to the gift of gab. You know who I mean, those who were born to blog.

Let’s tackle those concerns.

1. Does it take a lot of time?
No. You can easily limit the time. In fact, you can put up a totally static, minimal blog (like a mini-website) in a few minutes, post a description of your services and contact info, and then walk away.

2. Cost?
Free, if you do it on a public-platform site like Blogger or (the one I use) WordPress. (I like WordPress for its multiple page options, making it look like a mini-site.)

3. Does it take long to put up a basic blog?
Maybe 15–30 minutes. Create an account, pick a blog name, register it, then take your contact info, bio, and services description . . . and dump that into an “About Me” page or post (or two).

4. But don’t you have to blog a lot to get attention?
You’ll hear about the search-engine attention you’ll get if you do a lot of short posts: 3 per week, or something like that. Yes, that’s true. But who’s got that kind of time? (Unless this is a major focus of your service.)

But you don’t have to do that. You don’t have to do anything. Think of it as a mini-website. You can put it up and walk away. It’s there, online . . .  and just might help someone find you if they search for your name, business name, city, specific products, publications, etc.

The hyper-active blogging is important only if you’re trying to move high in an topic that’s very popular. But if you want to start a blog about your services in your particular city . . . there’s a lot less competition.

Then, the nice thing about a blog is if you want to add something, it’s there and easy to access. You can do it remotely, at home or in the office or on the road. So if something good does happen (an article is published or you get an award) . . . or something newsworthy happens for you or a good client . . . or you stumble on an interesting professional thought or resource that you’d like to record and share . . . you can post a note in a minute. Without any need to go through a web master, without cash expense!

5. What the minimum I should post?
Hey, there’s no minimum! For a very low-key approach, just commit to one good, helpful, or interesting post a month. Seems like so little. But at the end of a year, you’ve got 12 posts. Twelve points of online contact. And they stay up and accumulate.

6. So what’s the cost/benefit?
Cost in dollars: nil. Time: not much for a minimalist business blog. Benefits: a bit of extra online exposure. It’s a versatile, extra directory listing, leading to you, without a drain on your checkbook.

Of course, I do have a short list of good things to do on a blog that don’t take much time (and can use existing material you probably have. . . .)

In the next post, I’ll address some specifics ideas for a few good things that might be good to blog about, once you have that business blog set up.

Of course, I do help individuals and small business set up market-savvy blogs. Check my website LitWave for more. It costs very little to get me to help you.

Or just check back here in a few days and I’ll post a few more thoughts about good things to blog about . . . for a literary professional like you.

Oh, The Places My Brand Will Go!

I’ve been reading several biographies of the peerless Dr. Seuss, and realized how gifted he was . . . not just in the field of children’s literature but also as a practitioner of personal branding for writers.

If you’re like me, you grew up with Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, The Cat in the Hat, Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, and all the other zany creatures, places, and situations devised by this master of the rhyming, readable children’s book.

Pick up any Dr. Seuss book, even one you haven’t opened before, and you have a good inkling of what you’re going to get. And each book delivers. This is the essence of branding.

In a Seuss book, you expect:

Rollicking, read-out-loud rhymes. Smile-inducing lines that stick in our heads for years: “I do not like them in a box. I do not like them with a fox. I do not like them in a house. I do not like them with a mouse. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-am.” From Green Eggs and Ham, of course.)

A memorable, intriguing pen name. Seuss was Ted Geisel’s middle name, his Germanic mother’s family name. It originally rhymed with “voice,” but later was Americanized to rhyme with “juice.”) The “doctor” part was an imaginary self-awarded accolade, something he’d never earned in school. It combined one part respectability, one part the wacky world of a patent-medicine quack.

A delightful overdose of imagination unleashed. Seuss wrote and drew a pantheon of imaginative creatures and landscapes, the likes of which we’d never seen before (no one knew what a Grinch was before Seuss showed us his nasty, conniving, easily irritated soul).

A plain but playful vocabulary. A Seuss book tosses words joyfully back and forth like a jump-rope chant, with pleasure in silly sounds, multiple meanings, and odd associations of words that rhyme or just pop out.

In the end, a moral to the story. Geisel said that in a story, there are only two choices: the good guys win or the evil ones win. He made sure the good ones did, so Thidwick wanders off a happy moose, his goodness intact after his antlers fell off, while his selfish freeloading friends get their comeuppance.

All this adds up to Geisel/Seuss having become one of the most successful children’s book authors of all time.

Born Theodore Seuss Geisel in a German-American family in Springfield, Mass., he attended Dartmouth, then England’s Oxford, but was more passionate for classroom doodles and comic quips than for serious academic studies. He came of age in 1920s, the clever-quipping, convention-breaking era of the flapper. After graduation, he plunged into the advertising business in New York City, submitting cartoons and writing jingles. His big break-through was a jingle for bug-spray: “Quick, Henry, the Flit!” The short tag-line was the core of a 17-year campaign; it became embedded in the American consciousness, a line used by radio comedians like Jack Benny for a quick laugh. Branding at its best.

So like many successful writers, Geisel thought hard and professionally about how to capture people’s attention and imagination quickly. And in his books, he knew how to talk about important subjects: friendship, exploring the world, telling the truth, doing the right thing.

(And like many, he also had to endure some bad reviews, such as a letter received from a convict on death row in Texas. It read, “If your stuff is the kind of thing they’re publishing nowadays, I don’t so much mind leaving.” Ouch! Ted kept the letter.)

One of his masterpieces, The Cat in the Hat, grew out of a challenge from a friend and publisher, William Spaulding of Houghton Mifflin. Following the public furor of a popular book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, Spaulding presented a challenge to Geisel: write a book for young readers using only 225 words of basic vocabulary, a list he provided.

It wasn’t easy. It was like trying to make, Geisel said, “strudel without any strudels.” But he stuck with it, and eventually the wily cat with the goofy hat and his canny cohorts, Thing One and Thing Two, came into the world to delight and enchant generations of young readers.

Laura Backes of Children’s Book Insider wrote, in a wonderful article, “What Dr. Seuss Can Teach Us” (reprinted in The New Writer’s Handbook 2007), why The Cat in the Hat not only encouraged kids to read but offered a new kind of literature:

It also changed how children’s book authors learned to write. Instead of telling a thin story based on a simple, everyday incident, Seuss packed the plot with action that escalated on every page. Rather than relying on one-note characters, he populated his book with quirky, complex and surprising personalities that didn’t always cooperate with one another, thus creating tension and conflict.

I highly recommend the biography, Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel, by journalists Judith and Neil Morgan, for wonderful insight on how Geisel’s successful techniques in marketing himself and growing a career. He invented a new brand of children’s book. And he built it one book at a time, thinking about young readers and what they liked to read, think about, imagine.

Myself, I never imagine a Dr. Seuss book except as a well-worn slim volume, held in my own hands as I read it to my kid brother . . . enjoying each page, again and again, as much as he did.

The books of Dr. Seuss are reliable in delivering a distinctive product: a combination of bright imagination, flowing rhymes, crazy critters, and a sense of what kids really like to read.

Now that’s branding.

The Goose and the Golden Egg (on Specializing)

Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”
– which is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention;”

but the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and
– watch that basket.”

- Pudd’nHead Wilson (central character of the 1894 novel by Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens)

Why specialize as a professional writer? Samuel Clemens also wrote: “The ruin of any work is a divided interest. Concentrate – concentrate. One thing at a time.”

Specializing allows you to:

• focus your creative energy
• keep track of important details
• build Rolodex and customer contacts
• focus your marketing to a smaller audience
• build your expertise, becoming more valuable to your clients

Many of us writers, myself in particular, are fundamentally interested in many, many things. Maybe too many. We want to see what’s behind every closed door. We hope to serve all potential clients. We think everyone should read everything we write.

Each new project, idea, or networking contact has a natural intrigue because of their freshness. There’s an excitement in tackling new, untraveled mountains to see if they can be climbed. When I was younger, I hitchhiked each summer to the Rockies, Grand Tetons, Sierra Nevadas, to explore the heights, often rambling solo through sun and storm like my hero, John Muir. My first published work, in fact, was a poem, published in a mountaineering magazine, based on experiencing a tremendous storm in the Tetons.

But I’ve learned over time that there’s much to be gained by walking the same path over and over. The trails through the ancient woods near my Milwaukee house, a magical place of towering beeches, maples, oaks, basswood trees called the Seminary Woods, are never, ever, the same. The place changes with the weather, the time of day, and the seasons. Not to mention with my moods and thoughts.

By walking the woods over and over, I get to know them really well. I discover the smaller trails. I find where the different types of spring ephemerals bloom: trout lilies, trillium, spring beauties, jack-in-the-pulpit, marsh marigolds, skunk cabbage, bloodroot. I discover the tree where the great horned owl lives, get to hear its call on the winged hunt.

For writers, learning to become a specialist will advance your career tremendously. It’s a core concept of personal branding.

For a great book on the subject, I recommend one I worked on as editor some years ago: Ready, Aim, Specialize!, by Kelly James-Enger. Her own career is exemplary. (Her other book, Six-Figure Freelancing, gives you an idea of her earning power – an income goal she achieved in her sixth year of freelance writing.)

Ready, Aim, Specialize!: Create Your Own Writing Specialty and Make More Money (2nd edition, Marion Street Press, 2007) teaches you the ins and outs of specializing. It includes:

• 20 queries that nabbed assignments for new writers
• Why to develop a niche of your own
• The top ten writing specialties and how to break into each (health, parenting, home & garden, travel, business . . .)
• How to better market your work; how to research and write more efficiently
• How to find experts and data for articles in each of the ten areas

Check out either of Kelly’s book. Then, choose your basket, gather your eggs, and keep an eye on them. And think strategically about how to find the special goose that lays the golden egg for you.

Mark Twain and Personal Branding

“Earn a character first if you can, and if you can’t, then assume one.”
– Mark Twain (pen name of Samuel Clemens)

Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, was one of the first American writers to become a national celebrity. Clemens recognized and practiced many of the features of personal branding:

• He wrote in a distinctive style. He adopted a downhome conversational style, a homespun flavor, full of sardonic humor, laced with folk wisdom and dialect. He made fun of fools and pompous people. He championed the virtues of plain speech and storytelling, the richness of choosing the right word (“the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning”), the clear phrase, the memorable image.
• He assumed the visual trappings of brand image: a white suit, a cigar, a distinctive mustache.
• He adopted a pseudonym: Mark Twain. (The phrase came from his day as a professional pilot on Mississippi riverboats. The pilot would get calls from men working a sounding line, dropped to measure the depth of the river. “Mark twain” meant two fathoms, or twelve feet. A big riverboat typically needed a fathom and a half (nine feet) or more, so “mark twain” meant the river was passable, but just barely. It seems a choice that fit Clemens’ self-deprecating persona: just enough to get by.)
• He tried other pseudonyms early on, but abandoned them. The likes of “W. Epaminondas Adrastus Blab” were comical but impossible to remember. Mark Twain is punchy, plausible, memorable.
• In addition to his novels, he published many brief pieces: speeches, articles, short stories in newspapers and magazines.
• He pioneered new styles in literature, like the fanciful comic travelogue, and experimented with new technology, like the typewriter (Life on the Mississippi is thought to have been the first book typed before being sent to the printer).
• Besides writing books and articles, he got out on the lecture circuit, honing his delivery skills in public presentations, meeting his public, hearing live feedback, polishing material old and new, making his name well known.
• He knew how to speak in “sound bites,” to deliver zingers, to offer up short, quotable epigrams. (Such as: “Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.” Or, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Or, “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” Or, “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”)
• He had a good understanding of book marketing, actively encouraging his publisher to push advance sales by door-to-door subscription peddlers, rather than just relying on bookstores to passively display his works.

In a 1908 speech, he talked about a conversation with Robert Louis Stevenson, talking about the role of that broad public awareness:

Robert Louis Stevenson and I, sitting in Union Square and Washington Square a great many years ago, tried to find a name for the submerged fame, that fame that permeates the great crowd of people you never see and never mingle with; people with whom you have no speech, but who read your books and become admirers of your work and have an affection for you.

. . . [I]t is the faithfulness of the friendship, of the homage of those men, never criticizing, that began when they were children. . . . and you will remain in the home of their hearts’ affection forever and ever. And Louis Stevenson and I decided that of all fame, that was the best, the very best.

Samuel Clemens was a practical man. He knew that commercial success as a writer required skill in craft, plus business savvy. He made sure in many ways that people knew who Mark Twain was and what they could expect from a Mark Twain story.

In short, he knew the secrets of personal branding. Creating a brand involves, he realized, not just earning it but also assuming it.

You don’t develop a brand without some active involvement in creating its form.