Author: Dan Blank

This week I attended BookExpo America (BEA) in New York City, a trade show for the publishing industry. It is here that publishers, distributors, licensors, booksellers, librarians, and many others come together to do business.

Because publishing is a business.

Usually, there are yearly recaps of the show, and people try to determine “trends” or the “state of the industry,” but what really drives the show is this: people who want more exposure for their books, and more revenue in the process.

Is that cutthroat? Nope. These folks GENUINELY LOVE BOOKS. And perhaps that is the distinction between just being a casual reader who loves books, and being in the publishing business — the people at BEA are tending to that business.

In walking the show floor this year, I was thinking about the elephant in the room that some writers either don’t know about, or don’t want to know about: that to write is one thing (it is the first thing); but to sell, is another thing entirely.

We like to think that a good book sells itself. Looking around at the enormous show floor at BEA, I had to consider otherwise.

For a writer, if they want their book to find an audience, to ignore the sales process is to ignore how books have found readers for generations.

Last week, I shared a list that Emma Dryden of drydnbooks shared with me on the number of people who touch a book within a traditional publishing process. It had more than 40 roles listed, far more than many people know about.

As I journeyed through BEA this week, I considered: what are all of the sales tactics being used to sell books here? A partial list:

1. I have to start with this one: the first great sales tactic to sell a book is to indeed write a great book!
2. Location (the Javits Center in NYC is flashy and expensive)
3. Booths and booth design (you see lots of different strategies here)
4. Free books, including advanced copies of highly anticipated books that won’t be published for months.
5. Costumes (yes, there were people in costumes promoting books)
6. Autographs from authors
7. Celebrities
8. Swag: free stuff
9. Posters & banners (some 30 feet tall)
10. Panels, sessions, concurrent events. In some of these situations authors become teachers, but in all the person on the stage is facing their fear of public speaking. My gut is that 99% of them would classify themselves, to some degree, as an introvert.
11. Buzz panels — where certain books are pitched more fervently than others.
12. Contests and awards (some are simple contests within a booth, but others are juried awards)
13. In-person meetings (loads of these, with some huge portions of the show floor segmented off for these)
14. Sales material, sales pitches, demos, etc.
15. Social media (promoting hashtags, etc.)
16. Parties (lots of these in the evening, it’s not uncommon for someone to try to pop into multiple parties on a single night.)
17. Free alcohol (yes, they actually roll out these mobile bars onto the show floor at the end of some days)
18. Free food, such as promotional cupcakes with book covers on them.
19. Lots of messaging, links, business cards, and other ways to follow up after the show.
20. Singing (yes, I’m serious)
21. Nonverbal communication, such as smiling, body posture, and other cues
22. Nice clothes. There I said it: we all had to tuck in our shirts for this event.

One huge thing worth noting: many of these are age-old sales tactics, as relevant in 1975 or 1925 as they are today. If BEA as an event eventually disappears, these same tactics will remain — just in a different guise.

I’m preparing to launch two courses about how to create proactive marketing plans for launching a book and gaining readership, and yet I often hear from authors who tell me things like:

“________ doesn’t work anymore to sell books.”

or

“Why do I have to do that, shouldn’t I just write?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: yes, writing is the first thing, and if you want to just write, I am 100% supportive of that. Go, write.

But I also speak to a lot of writers who struggle to connect their book with an audience, and are frustrated by that. And when I look around at BEA, and see how the industry sells books within itself, I see a huge effort at every level. To be clear: this is not just sales people selling to other salespeople, the show floor is filled with authors, editors, librarians, and people from every facet of the industry.

You will see authors and editors feverishly pitching books.

I bumped into a panel that included Gay Talese and John Guare.

What on earth is Gay Talese doing here? He is 83 years old, does not have a new book coming out, and clearly doesn’t need promotion for his career. He’s a luminary.

John Guare is 77, and it just felt striking to me to listen to these men reflect on a new book to be published by an old friend (now deceased), Oscar Hijuelos.

Gay made a very clear and passionate pitch for the book, and even ended with saying…“that’s called promotion.”

Too often, I think modern day writers assume that in earlier eras, writers didn’t have to worry about marketing books. But listening to this panel, it is clear: they were very comfortable marketing books. This is nothing new.

Let’s take a look at the show:

Okay, I have to start with this: I met Brené Brown!!! We chatted, and she called me a midwife for authors.

Enormous banners in the glass atrium:

What is so interesting is that the Wimpy Kid series is a runaway success. Yet, the publisher still feels that a 30 foot tall banner is needed:

The woman on in the center is protecting advanced reader copies… there is a long line waiting to grab them:

They couldn’t open these boxes fast enough, advanced copies of City on Fire:

A lot of attendees bring an empty suitcase, and then spend the show filling it up with free books they receive:

Autographing area, with Bernadette Peters signing on the left:

Julianne Moore signing:

Dr. Ruth signing:

Costumed character:

An author in costume:

Cupcakes being readied to be given away:

Emeril:

Private meeting area for Macmillan:

Private meeting area for Penguin Random House:

American Booksellers Association Indie Bookseller lounge:

A panel featuring a writer and illustrator for some of Marvel’s new Star Wars comics:

Booths:

The Penguin truck:

Lev Grossman signing and new book:

Jami Attenberg signing and new book:

Singers:

Free foam shields for a Rick Riordan giveaway:

There was so much more that I didn’t capture in photos.

So how does this translate to authors, and not just trade shows — what are the lessons that an individual author can take from this? Well, let’s look at one book I was able to get, an advanced copy of City on Fire. From what I hear, this book is highly anticipated:

Starting to read it on the train ride home, I noticed this inside the back flap:

The book won’t be out until November, but there are already blurbs when you open the book, and a long list of major promotion that the publisher is planning. Yes, the author seems to be pretty intimately involved in much of this.

All of this is not meant to overwhelm, because as I mentioned earlier, this is about the love of books and authors. I suppose I am reflecting on all of this for two reasons:

1. How profoundly fortunate I feel to work with writers and those who support them.
2. That yes, this is work to ensure books make their way into readers’ hands; and that this is work to be embraced.

If you are a writer trying to share your work with readers… which aspects of this fill you with the most fear; which with the most ambition?

Thanks!
-Dan

My most recent guest post for WriterUnboxed.com provides specific examples (with photos) of some projects I am working on that illustrate the need for writers & creative professionals to work outside of their comfort zones. I frame it in three stages of one’s career:

1. Writing
2. Publishing
3. Developing an audience

The post also includes a mind-blowing list of more than 40 people who may touch a book as it moves through the traditional publishing process.

Read the full post here.

Thanks!
-Dan

How do you ask for help?

A client and friend of mine is about to launch a Kickstarter campaign [update: it’s now live!], and today I would like to take you inside that process — that process of asking for help — and inside the Kickstarter company itself. We were able to take a tour of their headquarters, which was amazing (lots of photos below).

My friend is Sarah Towle (creator of Time Traveler Tours & Tales) who is developing a new book/app/tour that tells the story of the making of Michelangelo’s David. The StoryApp Tour not only tells the story, but is an interactive tour through Florence. You can literally walk around the city, guided by the StoryApp, and learn about history.

She has partnered with author Mary Hoffman for this project, which is titled, In the Footsteps of Giants.

This is the first thing that should be mentioned about Sarah and her process for creating meaningful work — she believes in the power of involving others, and in building a team.

Every week, I am on a team call with her and these amazing folks:

• Emma Dryden, who has edited nearly five hundred books for children and young readers.
• Deb Shapiro, who has created publicity and marketing campaigns for publishers such as Houghton Mifflin, Henry Holt & Company, Simon & Schuster and Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Caitlin Hoffman, Administrative Assistant & Community Manager

But that is definitely not all! For the Kickstarter campaign alone, Sarah has many other partners who are hosting the launch event, spreading the word, donating, creating content, and helping out in some way. In her regular non-Kickstarter work, her partners include the writers she works with, the developers who create her apps, and so many others.

Before I really share anything about how Kickstarter works, I want to highlight how Sarah has invested in the most crucial element of what it means to create work that matters to others: She is a part of, and works to develop, a community of people who are passionate about stories and history.

Too often, people start with an idea, and jump right to ideas on how to fund it. But Sarah has spent years not just crafting her work, but investing in others.

When Sarah first began reaching out to others to seek advice about running a Kickstarter campaign, they all said the same thing: This is a full-time job for at least three months. Let me repeat that:

Full time job. For three months.

What have we found in our experience? This is absolutely true. Sarah has worked tirelessly not just going through our strategy, but navigating setbacks, managing partnerships, and ensuring the rest of of work (and family) keeps on ticking through it all.

She has been crafting a case study on various elements of the process so far:

• To Crowd-source or Not to Crowd-source?
• The Truth about Campaign Videos
• Rocking Your Rewards

There is a lot to be excited about here. Sarah is passionate about her work, has partnered with wonderful creators, and is taking action on a bold vision.

That said, there is a lot I am nervous about as well. (Sarah, this is where you should stop reading!) For one, we don’t know if all of this will really work! That is the problem with having a bold vision — it means you are navigating through some risky situations, which by their very nature, can feel harrowing.

I have been interviewing a wide range of creative professionals for my book, and see this theme again and again: risk is an inherent part of marrying one’s craft to their career.

Sarah’s Kickstarter launches next week (sign up for Sarah’s newsletter to stay up to date), and there is so much that is still being finalized. It’s exciting… and it’s terrifying!

Which is what I find is exactly the place you want to be as a creator, on that edge between excited and terrified. Because otherwise, you likely aren’t doing enough to push your work into the world.

One of the biggest surprises of all of this is how amazing Kickstarter, the company, has been during this entire process. Not just their tools and service — but their people! (Do you see a theme in this post?)

Sarah reached out to Kickstarter Publishing Community Manager Margot Atwell, who has been an amazing resource in helping to guide the campaign. And how cool is this? Margo competes in and teaches roller derby, and is working on her own book on the history of the sport.

A few weeks back as we were preparing for next week’s launch, the idea came up — “Could we actually visit Kickstarter?” Sarah reached out to Margot, who welcomed us into their amazing facility. Okay, let’s take a tour.

Emma Dryden, Deb Shapiro, Sarah Towle, and me as we embark on our journey from Union Square in Manhattan to Kickstarter HQ in Brooklyn:

Sarah and Deb talking strategy on our long walk through Brooklyn:

Things you pass while venturing through Brooklyn:

But we also passed the amazing WORD bookstore!

When you first walk into Kickstarter HQ, you look down upon their large communal kitchen:

Around the area is another eating area (I love a company this focused on food!!!), which I was told was designed to re-create the diner where the Kickstarter founders first hatched the idea for the company.

They have a gallery which showcases Kickstarter projects!

Each exhibit features the process the creator went through in turning their idea into reality, with the help of Kickstarter. Here is a headphone designer:

I completely forget what this was a design for:

We were like kids in a candy store as we toured their facility. It was like Willy Wonka’s factory for supporting creators turning their ideas into reality:

Okay, back to their kitchen (cool, right?!):

The bike room:

The enormous room where their employees have their desks:

I loved the natural light and the sense of space. Here is the other side:

This is where my mind was blown. They have a library. An actual library:

Margot shows the team the shelf of books funded through Kickstarter:

Another look at the library. Did I mention they have a library? They do:

While this seems mildly like a hallway from The Shining, it is actually their grouping of private offices, which counterbalances the largely communal workspaces that take up the rest of the building:

One of the adorable private rooms:

The big feature of their offices is not what is inside, but what is outside. An incredible atrium floods every room with natural light and a view of nature:

And their impressive rooftop garden:

How incredible is this view from the garden down through the atrium into their offices?!

At the bottom you can see the large room where the main cluster of desks is located:

I can’t lie, we were pretty giddy:

A view across the rooftops of Brooklyn:

We sat on their rooftop deck with Margo and discussed how to improve the campaign to help encourage success:

Something that jumped out at me was the huge variety of work areas that Kickstarter provides its employees. Traditional desks, standing desks, couches, communal tables, small group tables, inside, outside, lounge chairs, benches, etc. Every nook and cranny of this place had a different type of space that their employees could choose to work for the day:

One last shot of the atrium:

Sarah, Emma and Deb preparing to venture back out into Brooklyn:

What I take from this experience is exactly that — the experience itself. The StoryApp Tour that Sarah is building is a wonderful focus, as is her mission to “turn history on” to young people by making stories from history accessible and fun. While I have no idea what next week will bring, I can say that Sarah and her team have embraced this experience in every detail.

Thank you, Sarah, for inviting me into this adventure.

In your own work, how do you involve others in asking for help?
Thanks.
-Dan

Today, I would like to take you behind the scenes to see what my professional life looks like. I’ll show you many of the projects that I haven’t talked about recently, and some of the wonderful people that fill my life.

The idea for this post came after reflecting on the words filmmaker Angela Tucker shared in an interview we did; how these two themes of her life jumped out at me:

1. The number of disparate projects and goals she juggles at any one time.
2. How incremental progress is. Success will come. One. Slow. Step. At. A. Time.

Sometimes it is easy to feel as though you are throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping something sticks. In truth: some projects succeed, but others fall flat. There is an expression: “fail fast and fail often,” which is meant to underscore the value of what you learn when something doesn’t work. Yes, sometimes this can feel invigorating, but other times, it is harrowing.

More and more, I define myself as “a writer,” but my work mostly falls into the heading of “creative professional.” I help people hone their creative purpose to ensure it reaches their audience in a meaningful way.

This week, I shared my interview with sound artist Margaret Noble. I found so much of what she said inspiring, but what truly stood out was the depth of her intention. How she makes difficult decisions to ensure that she finds the time to create her art, and to ensure that she grows as an artist.

So far, I have interviewed more than 15 people for my book Dabblers vs. Doers. This is research that I am sharing in real time, via podcasts and blog posts. And I have to say, from each interview, I am learning compelling things. These are the amazing creative professionals I have spoken to:

For each, I spend days researching and preparing. I recently shared a nearly 3,000-word blog post taking you behind the scenes of my research process for the interviews.

The book is a milestone I am working towards, and in reality, won’t come to fruition for another 12-36 months. Again, that theme of incremental actions comes up. This is on top of nearly nine years of blogging (here is the first post), and a decade of sending out a weekly newsletter (haven’t missed a week).

This past week another incremental project came up: I taught a career workshop for 5th graders at P.S. 123 in Harlem.

I have worked with this school for more than 10 years. Again, I am seeing the power of what it means to keep showing up for this community. We have tried a lot of different programs over the years, and not all have worked out as well as hoped. But each school year, I keep showing up:

In talking with the students about finding careers, I encouraged them to pay attention to the skills and work they love, and to find more ways to experience them. I remind them you never know where these moments will lead.

As I look at all of the work I am doing, and the people I interview, I’m reminded of the truth in those words. Put yourself in the position to experience what you love, and to meet others who love it too. That is where those moments of serendipity happen.

Recently, I had similar conversations on these topics. This past week, I ran a workshop at my local bookstore, Short Stories Community Book Hub, on Bookstore Day.

Then another in the series of “Momentum” meetups I have been holding in Morristown, NJ with my friend Scott McDowell:

In these discussions, we explore the challenges and opportunities around pursuing creative work. One person made a really interesting distinction: how they can establish a habit of going to the gym, but avoid writing, which is their deepest passion. Their reasoning was that they know they will never be a great athlete, so it’s easy to show up to the gym because there are low expectations.

But their writing — they care deeply about it, about being good. So even the mere act of writing has become a terrifying exercise they avoid because they are nervous to discover their greatest fear: that their writing isn’t good.

Of course, the reality becomes that their writing doesn’t exist at all, because they never make the time for it. They are so afraid of failing that they release themselves entirely from the experience of writing.

It was a wonderful topic to explore, and what I tend to find is that the work I do often leads to conversations like this — explorations of deeper motivations and fears. The opportunity to work through them is what is so exciting.

I have been working with some wonderful clients this year — authors who are honing their focus, preparing to launch their books, and needing assistance in knowing how to ensure their work connects with an audience. For one client, we are preparing a Kickstarter campaign, which means I have been studying Kickstarter as a funding source. On Monday, I actually get to visit the Kickstarter headquarters in New York to chat with the their team. (More about the work I do with clients.)

The online courses I teach continue to be a big part of my creative life. I have had more than 100 students pass through them in 2015 so far. (More info on the courses I teach can be found here.)

In one recent course, a writer shared this after digging into the first lesson:

“I wanted to share something with you all — a kind of breakthrough happened for me. Thank you for giving me the safe space to work through an obstacle. I realized that I stop at “good” because I’m terrified of extraordinary. So, I sabotage myself, not in a way that is harmful physically or really mentally, but in a way that I accept good and settle for it, telling myself, ‘Well, at least you are good at it.’ I’m making a commitment now, to myself, to my family, to be extraordinary. I’m not sure how I’m going to get there, and it’s a little scary. But, I know this course is the start of something magnificent.But, I want extraordinary.”

Can you tell why I love doing what I do?!

Recently, I had the honor of being mentioned in Professional Artist magazine, sharing some similar themes about the the value of connecting directly with like minds via email:

I did some webinars for two wonderful organizations recently. This was was in the Random House offices for their authors:

This one was for She Writes, a webinar series I conducted with Jennie Nash:

This summer, I am speaking at the Romance Writers of America annual conference, Writers Digest Conference, and at Write Canada for The Word Guild.

Recently, I announced that I am hiring an intern this summer, and provided an update on the incredible value I have received in bringing employees on board at WeGrowMedia.

I have also begun work with the team again at Morristown Festival of Books for their second event this coming Fall. I’m helping out with social media and marketing, and I will say they have an exciting event lined up! I love connecting my local community with these authors.

As I write out these updates, it’s easy for me to see that so much of this is about surrounding myself with people who inspire me — who are driven to create meaningful work in their lives. Learning from these people helps me grow and allows me to help others in bigger ways.

To be honest, there is so much I didn’t include in this post: new partnerships I am currently planning, new ideas I am brainstorming with colleagues, details around private consulting clients, etc.

In the day to day of building all of this, I am driven by enthusiasm and caring for the people I come in contact with, but there is always a haziness around knowing what may work. What will lead to a sustainable practice for my business, and therefore, the foundation for supporting my family.

What I have found mostly is that, looking at these photos above, the practice is the goal. That showing up everyday is the goal. Pushing myself to take chances, to embrace risk, to explore new ideas and new partnerships is not in service of a bigger milestone, but they are the moments to embrace.

In the end — decades from now, hopefully — I may not remember the details of the projects or the revenue, but I will remember the people who were kind enough to share their lives and their enthusiasm for creating meaningful work with me. I will remember their faces, voices, and the moments I shared with them.

If you have read this far, I would love to know:

• How can I better assist you in your goals?
• How can I help this work reach more people that you know and feel have these challenges?

Please let me know at dan@wegrowmedia.com.
Thank you!
-Dan