Before the wildly successful Creatures,
Crimes & Creativity Con I posted a blog about some big mistakes authors
make, and during the Con there were several conversations involving that topic.
One thing we agreed on was that many writers
underestimate the importance of editing. With 300,000 or so books being published
every year, quality is an important discriminator for readers. Even if your
story and prose are both great, if your book is poorly edited readers will not
become fans and reviewers won’t want to finish reading it. I think poor editing
is the most common complaint I hear about books, especially self-published and
small press books.
It’s less specific, but one big mistake I
think writers make is failing to get good advice. People ask their friends and
family what to do with their stories, but sadly, those people are generally not
experts at publishing or promotion. Those same writers often fail to take
advantage of opportunities like the C3 Con, where they can sit with best-selling
authors and get marketing advice from highly successful writers. There are lots
of other, often free sources of reliable good advice such as social media
groups and writers’ blogs. The wise author takes advantage of these resources.
Yet another major blunder some writers fall
prey to is not putting enough focus on their specific market. The cool thing,
as CJ Ellisson shared in her master class at C3, is that today’s social media platforms
let you find and target the people who read books in your genre. And there are
lots of ways to cultivate these readers beside just getting them to read, buy,
read and review your work. Look at the number of writers who have built up a
solid group of beta readers – those people who read their books before
publication. Aside from providing valuable insight into the appeal of your
story, these folks become invested in your book and that can start the word-of-mouth
support you need to succeed.
I also have to list impatience as one of the
biggest errors authors commit. As John Gilstrap reminded us in his keynote
address at C3, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. It takes almost all writers many
years to become an overnight success. By
the time you hear about a writer he or she has probably already spent a lot of
time working on their craft, getting published, finding their audience and
building a following. You need to have a marketing plan, and you have to approach
it with the long-term in mind.
I can think of three or four other big
career-killing mistakes writers make, but they’ll have to wait until next week.
