Back then, the only way to be published nationally was to be put out in print by one of the New York houses, and your print runs were determined by your sell-through in the various accounts. As a quick refresher, a sell-through is how much stock is moved within the first nine months or so of release. Everything that is not sold is returned to your publisher, and when your next book comes out, those accounts generallyspeaking only order what they sold the last time. In my case, with the Jessica Birds, the critics liked the books, but readers weren’t passionate about them, and with smaller account orders, came less shelf space, and less notice in the stores…and even less of a chance of getting my book into the hands of readers.
I was crashing and I knew it.
And there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to stop the downfall. Bear in mind, there was no social media at that time. No websites. No internet. Depending on your publisher’s investment in you, you might have been sent on a tour of bookstores, both chain and independents, and maybe you got some coverage in magazines and newspapers (if you were really big). But that was it for marketing and PR.
On that spring weekend in 2004, I felt utterly helpless—until a ray of light came in the form of a listing of fifty or sixty reading groups. Each one of them had ten to twenty members, and I was given the contact name and address for the memberships. Over the course of two days, I wrote each one of them a long letter about the book. I implored them to give it a try, give me a try, seek out a Jessica Bird book. I remember my hand getting stiff as I penned those missives over and over again, begging the universe to save me from the dreaded fate of not having my contract renewed.
My contract wasn’t.
Little did I know that the market would get even tougher fifteen years later. (Editing Jess add-on: This particular post was written in 2019, and yet it still totally applies. In fact, the barrage of entertainment choices and social media outlets feels like it’s even more congested.) Now, although we have social media and websites and the internet, the competition for leisure time and attention is even more fierce than ever. There is content everywhere you look, and I’m not talking just about books. We as writers are competing with FB and Insta, Hulu and Netflix,YouTube and blogs. It’s even more important and more difficult than ever to stand out, especially as platforms like Facebook are now all but pay for play.
So, what do we do about it?
For me, that answer goes back to what Sue (Grafton) always said: “The work must come first.”
Before any author starts to try to understand marketing books in this environment, they need to first get their craft straight. You cannot sell things to people if they don’t want them, and even through the distraction and background noise, good writing still sells. Word of mouth, once the kind of thing that was exchanged between booksellers and readers, now happens on groups, and Goodreads, and online reviews. (Editing Jess add-on: And in 2025, Booktok!) If you put a great book out there, people will take notice, and they will talk about it. It’s way more important to develop your inner editor, judge your own work clearly and dispassionately, and grow in your craft, because these are the only things we can control.
And in fact, trying to be better at what I do is the big thing for me. I’ve never had much luck trying to turn myself into something I’m not—and I remain convinced that the reason my Jessica Bird books didn’t go very far was because I was trying to be Nora Roberts in a marketplace where, hello, there were better Nora Roberts books being written…by Nora frickin’ Roberts. Shortly after my first publisher failed to reup my contract, my agent gave me the best advice. She said, “You need to figure out what a Jessica Bird book really is. Who are you as a writer? What are you compelled by? Figure that out.”
When I did, things changed for the better.
My rules for marketing are simple, unsexy, and unrelenting:
1) The work always comes first. If I have a marketing deadline, and I’m behind on my writing, the marketing will always be back-burnered. That is the reason I do not travelmuch, and I have not gone to a ton of conferences. Travel time is time away from the keyboard.
2) Don’t go corporate in your tone. This is a pretty obvious one. I’ve had some very well-meaning marketing and PR people suggest content for me, draft posts, tell me what to say. I always strong-arm that stuff. On the internet, people can tell slick from sincere. Be yourself.
3) Don’t expect everyone to like you, your work, your posts, your opinions. They don’t have to, and that is their right. (Editing Jess add-on: As long as we’re not talking about hate speech, racism, discrimination, etc.) If someone gets abusive, block them and move on. Do not invest any energy in them or their hostility. Time and attention given to that is time and attention away from your work.
4) There is no real way of quantifying how much marketing and PR actually helps. It’s an add-on that is a good idea, for sure, but it is not a replacement for the work. If you can afford an expert, buy one. If you have the time to learn, by all means educate yourself by going to professional conferences, attending online classes, reading about the newest platforms for spreading the word about your books. If you know other authors who are willing to share their best practices, definitely explore what they’re doing and ask questions and try new things. But NONE of this should ever be at the expense of the writing. The vast majority of your time and attention should be on your work.
So that’s really it. Unsexy? Yup, definitely. And I know for a fact that there are people out there who would be able to tell you all about what to do at Goodreads, and which blog tours are the best move, and how you should Pinterest yourself, and what newsletter services to use. All of that is very useful information, and I am not dismissing it, I swear. It’s just for me… I’ve always started with the book first. I’d much rather spend my time on my MS.
(Editing Jess add-on: You know, as I read this now, I kinda want to boot myself in the ass for being a sanctimonious twat here. Well, don’t you get the gold star. Jeez. But the point does stand. That being said, I learned a ton when I went to ApollyCon this past spring. With so many indie authors finding popularity and readerships, the self-promotion thing is super important, and there are so many who do it SO well—andhave time to write incredible books. Just want to acknowledge this.)
Still, sometimes it can be hard not to give in to the marketing bug. I love my career and I love my books, and when I was struggling, I wrote those fifty-plus letters by hand because it was the only thing I could think of doing to help myself. I felt like I had written good books, but no one was really buying them. I wanted to DO something, and those letters seemed concrete in a situation that was desperate and hazy.
But they didn’t make a difference. I still got fired. And I suppose that is the reason that as much as I respect marketing efforts, I’m more worried about the writing. In this social media-dominated world we live in, keeping the balance between writing and marketing can be a challenge. I am, however, reminded of something my other writing hero, Stephen King, once said. Paraphrasing it: Hype you buy. Buzz is priceless.
Hype is marketing. Buzz is what happens when you write a sizzler of a book, and your readers are so blown away that they collectively, and on their own accord, grab the elbows of their friends and are like, “OMG, you HAVE to read this.”
You can write that kind of book. I swear. We all can. All you need to do is believe, believe, believe. And remember that magic happens in the real world when we put our work first.
Outlining…or as I call it, 1, 2, 3’ing my Rice Krispies.
So, this couldn’t be a better topic for me right now because I am currently outlining THE SINNER (Syn’s story, which is coming 3/17/20), and am up to my eyeballs in planning that book. I feel like I’m in a really good place with the outline because the main scenes have downloaded in my head and the order is set pretty much—I’m just laying it all out on the page so I can start drafting 9/1.
Now, before I get into the way I do outlines, I’d like to put out the reminder that there is no right way or wrong way to do anything when it comes to process. In fact, the “right” way is the way that works for you. Best practices are very individual, and your mileage may vary.
For me, any given book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series (or any of my series, but I’m going to focus on the BDB here) is made up of a string of scenes that have funneled down into my brain from wherever they come from. These snippets of story come to me at all hours of the day or night. They interrupt phone calls and conversations, keep me company while I run, intrude on cocktail parties and movies. They have no sense of boundaries or time. They’re the rudest neighbors coupled with those people who barge in front of you on exit ramps added to those bargain shoppers who are willing to rip something out of your hands over the ten-dollar bin of blue jeans.
And I wouldn’t change them for the world.
That being said, my scenes have no sense of chronology or story arc. They come to me willy-nilly, all over the place in whatever world they’re a part of and whatever book they should be in. When I was outlining DARK LOVER, for example, I had scenes from LOVER AWAKENED (Wellsie dying) and LOVER REBORN (Tohr and No’One) barging in (along with parts of all of the first ten books). When I was working on LOVER AWAKENED, I had scenes from LOVER ENSHRINED knocking on my door, and when I was working on LOVER ENSHRINED, I had scenes from LOVER AVENGED coming at me. And this is a small sample of the constant overcrowding in my chrome dome. Like, right now, there are scenes from four books in my head: The first of the Wolven books, then THE SINNER and THE JACKAL, and then also this other thing that I’m toying around with.
Outlining, for me, serves the purpose of ordering these scenes. Lining them up. Seeing what the book looks like—and trying to balance the plotlines. The thing is, you want to take the reader on a rollercoaster ride of emotion. You want the highs and lows balanced out. As Sue (Grafton) always told me, “High drama is boring. If everyone is ranting and raving, throwing things, weeping and gnashing on every page, not only is that not what real people do, it’s a one note. Just because it’s loud, doesn’t mean it’s interesting.”
When I order the scenes, I’m looking for proper chronology, of course (some scenes cannot take place before others because people haven’t met properly yet or something else needs to happen before they can interact), but I’m also checking to make sure there are calms before the emotional storms, the right poignant moment where you need one, and a crescendo at the end. Well, and lately, I’ve been having to balance Lassiter being…well, Lassiter (#goldenglobes). It can take me a couple of tries to get it all right, and I include differing levels of detail.Some scenes I put dialogue in. Others, for example the sex scenes, I just say they get it on. But I go through my outlines a number of times, always checking to make sure that the foundation blocks of the book are sound, that the layout makes sense, and that the conflict and resolution is on point.
