Roscoe Lee Browne

Roscoe Lee Browne passed away last week at the age of 81. He was an accomplished actor with a vast body of work in film, stage, and television, and he possessed one of the most distinctive voices an actor could possibly be blessed with. Among his many credits, he co-wrote Behind the Broken Words, an evening of poetry and dramatic readings celebrating the works of such artists as e.e. cummings, Dylan Thomas, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, which he produced and starred in along with his friend Anthony Zerbe (a distinguished actor in his own right). Browne and Zerbe originally conceived the show in Los Angeles in the early ’70s, and performed it in theaters throughout the country every year for over three decades. I met Browne briefly in April 2001, after watching he and Zerbe perform Words at the Luther Burbank Performing Arts Center in
Santa Rosa.  It was the second time I’d seen the show – I’d not only seen them perform it at Stanford in 1998 (after learning about it the year before, in the course of interviewing Zerbe for a magazine article), but wrote about it as a special piece for New Media Review. It’s a marvelous evening that, as I’ve said before, continues to remind me of why I became a writer in the first place. Browne was kind and gracious, and as I shook his hand I thanked him for stirring so many memories.May he rest in peace.

 Ed Robertson 

www.edrobertson.com, edsweb.wordpress.com 

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

“Platform” is among the most bantered-about terms in publishing today, and it’s particularly important for writers of nonfiction. 

Once upon a time, you’d send a proposal to an editor, and if the editor liked the project and strongly believed in it, he (or she) would buy it on the spot.  Alas, that’s less and less the case today.  With few exceptions, marketing departments often have the final say on whether a deal is made.  An editor may still want the book, but may end up passing on it because the folks in marketing feel that either the market for the book isn’t big enough, or that the author’s marketability isn’t broad enough. 

That’s why platform is so important.  Publishers today want to know how many readers your book might have, how these readers can be reached, what the author can do to help reach those readers, and how visible the author is.  Oftentimes, the answers to those questions come down to numbers, numbers, numbers. 

If you’re a first-time author with an established speaking platform, how many talks do you give a year?  How many cities do you travel to?  How many people come to hear you speak, who might also buy your book at the end of your talk?  That’s your audience, that’s your platform.  If you’re an established author, how many books have you written and how many copies have you sold?  What publications do you write for, and what’s their circulation?  If you have a website, about how many hits do you get per day, and how many unique visitors?  If you happen to do a lot of radio or TV appearances (or better yet, host a show or podcast of your own), what sort of audience do you have? How many markets are you heard in, and about how many listeners tune in? 

Publishers like it if they can market a book around an author or expert with an established audience.  An established audience is a built-in platform.  

Now … what if you’re starting off and don’t have a built-in platform?  Not a problem.  You can create an audience for yourself with a little research and ingenuity. 

I’ve done a lot of speaking and radio appearances in my career. But 15 years ago, when I shopped my first book around, I had no platform at all.  I compensated for that by coming up with a detailed marketing plan that outlined all the different markets for the book and how I proposed to reach them.  The publisher who ended up buying the book said that my book proposal was “one of the best he’d ever read.” If it worked for me, it can work for you. 

Let’s say you’re a yet-to-be published genre writer with a presence on MySpace. You have x-number of MySpace “friends,” plus you belong to several different MySpace groups related to writing and publishing in general, as well as your particular genre. By the time you add up all your friends, plus all the members in the groups to which you belong, you could be looking at anywhere from several hundred to several thousand people. That’s several hundred to several thousand people you have ready access to, that may be interested in buying your book.  That’s not a bad platform for starters.

Now that you have x-number of people potentially interested in your book, it’s time to think like the folks in marketing. This is where ingenuity comes in. Come up with a plan to reach those readers in creative ways … through the web, through a blog, through chat groups, through the library, through groups and organizations, through special markets (i.e., conventions, talks, and other non-bookstore ways of reaching people), or through a virtual book tour.

Virtual book tours can be especially helpful for first-time authors or authors of genre books, because they target blogs, chat groups, and podcasts and other specialty forums on the web whose audience belongs to the same demographic as that of your target readership. So be sure to mention a virtual book tour in your proposal as part of your marketing plan.  

Platform may not be everything in publishing today, but it’s certainly a very important thing. If you can think in terms of who your readers are and what you can to do reach them, you’re more than on your way.  

Ed Robertson 

www.edrobertson.com 

edsweb.wordpress.com 

 

All We Need is One Yes

A journalist who recently interviewed me for a writing forum asked me if I had any advice for first-time writers.  In response, I drew on a mantra of mine that I believe applies to freelance writers in general, present company included. I thought I’d share my reply with you. One thing I always tell new writers is to remember that they’re about to enter an industry where nine times out of ten, someone tells you no.   

Doesn’t matter whether we’re writing a book proposal or pitching an article to a magazine.  Doesn’t matter whether we’re just starting out in this business or if we’ve been at it for 20 years.  More often than not, editors will say no.  This, of course, has less to do with our abilities as a writer or the merits of our particular idea as it does with time, space (as in “in this issue” or “in this catalog”), needs and other verities that are beyond our control. From a practical standpoint, people have to say no.  But at the same time, I encourage writers to remember the flip side. Yes, nine of ten editors will say no to you… but that also means that someone, sometime is going to answer yes.  And that’s all that really matters. All we need is for one person to say yes.  

Now it may not come today.  It may not happen until tomorrow, or next month, or next year.  But when you think in terms of the one yes, then each “no” we encounter means we’re that much closer to the inevitable positive outcome.  So we have to be positive, and we have to be persistent.   Of course, there are times when being positive is much easier said than done. We’ve all been there. We’ve all had stretches when it seems no matter who we pitch, or where we pitch it, nothing seems to stick.  

For me, those are the times when we have to … yes, be patient, but also remind ourselves that each success we experience paves the way for future success. Those are the times when the idea of the “one yes” becomes that much more important. In my case, I remind myself, “People have said yes before. Someone will say yes again.” Now, this doesn’t mean that every article or book idea I’ve pitched has always led to publication. Far from it.  Sometimes, it just takes a lot of submissions before a query is finally accepted. Other times, you have to rework the idea, or put it aside altogether and move on to something else. Those are also realities we have to deal with in our profession.  

The point is, it’s easy to focus on all the rejections we receive in the course of our writing careers. It’s harder to think in terms of the one yes.  But once we train ourselves to do that, two things begin to happen.  Not only does that mindset become second nature, but all those nos become secondary in importance.

Ed Robertson

www.edrobertson.com

Pros and Cons of Print-on-Demand

The following is adapted from a talk I gave a while back on the merits of POD, or Print-on-Demand publishing.  

POD still has a bit of stigma. There are those who say a book is not “a real book” unless it’s published by a brick-and-mortal house based in New York City.That said, there are enough success stories out there to validate POD as a legitimate way to go, especially if your book is one of those “niche” titles that traditional publishers are buying fewer and fewer of today. Whether you’re a first-time author or a writer with a built-in platform, you can use POD as a springboard for other possibilities. After all, few readers are as discriminating as editors or book reviewers. For most readers, a book is a book is a book. Doesn’t matter whether it’s published by HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, iUniverse or Lulu – in the eyes of the reader, you’re a published author. That gives you credibility, which can lead to opportunities that may not have come about otherwise. For example, if you’re a speaker, POD means you can always have books readily available for people to buy at the end of your talks. If you’re a first-time author, POD can help you establish a readership—which, if it’s impressive enough, may attract the attention of a traditional publisher down the road.I went the POD route myself back in 2004, when the rights to my book on The Rockford Files reverted to me, and I decided to update it and republish it as a new edition. While I considered shopping it around to “real” publishers, POD made sense to me because (1) the book is a “niche” title, and (2) I knew I had a built-in audience and media platform around which I could market the book better than anyone else.I re-released the book in 2005 through iUniverse, and it continues to perform well. So POD has worked for me. That said, there are minuses as well as plusses. With that in mind, here are some Pros and Cons for Going the POD Route, based on my experience:   

PROS 

• Quick turnaround time. Your book is usually available for purchasing within two to three months of the time you submit the manuscript.
• Decent distribution through all major online vendors (amazon, barnesandnoble, booksamillion, et al.).
• Relatively inexpensive. In many cases, you can get the book published for about $300. Not a bad investment, when you consider you’re investing in yourself.
• No returns, and therefore no dreaded “reserve against returns clause.”
• The book is out there, which wouldn’t necessarily be the case had you gone the traditional route.  This not only gives you credibility, but enables you to use the book as a vehicle for other things – such as back-of-the-room sales for talks or appearances, or as a nice “prop” for you or your agent to display when seeking a publisher for your next book.

CONS 

• Doesn’t have the same cache as being published by a traditional publishing house. Many newspapers and magazines, for example, consider POD to be no different than vanity presses, which explains in part why it’s difficult (though not impossible) to get a newspaper or magazine to review a POD book.
• Usually not available in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Customers can order your book through their favorite bookstore, but most stores will not order it for placement on the shelves. The reason why, of course, is that if the store orders copies and fails to sell them, they can’t return them as they can with books distributed through traditional publishers.
• It costs money. Yes, it’s less expensive than a lot of vanity presses, but it requires a financial investment on your part just to get the book published.   
• There’s no marketing department to speak of, so it’s up to you to promote the book.  However, since you’re a smart author, you’re going to promote it anyway. No one knows how to promote your books, or yourself, better than you, the author. (NOTE. While some POD companies have marketing packages available, they usually cost extra: anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 on top of whatever fee you paid to publish the book).
• There’s no advance-against-royalties paid.  In that respect, POD can be a real roll of the dice. There’s no telling how well your book will perform until it’s finally out there.

POD is like any other investment: you have to weigh the pros and cons, before deciding whether it’s the right route for you. But it’s also an investment in yourself. When you look at it that way, the reward is worth the risk.  Ed Robertsonwww.edrobertson.comedsweb.wordpress.com 

Take Advantage of the Web

A website really is one of the best marketing tools a writer can have.   I’m an author and speaker, as well as a ghostwriter and editor.  I use my website www.edrobertson.com to promote not only my books, articles and media appearances, but also my work in collaborative writing and editing. After all, that’s what working writers do.  We write (or we edit), but we also have to promote and market ourselves. After all, no one knows more about our books or our skills than we do ourselves, right?  So it’s important – especially today – to take the advantage of the opportunities the web provides.   

A website is particularly important to an author because it’s the window through which the world sees you.  It challenges you to think about how you’d like to be viewed as a professional, and provides you with a way of presenting that vision.  It can also be a great way to establish an audience, or keep in touch with the one you already have. 

I’ve been online with www.edrobertson.com since 1997. In my case, I’d already published three books by the time I first launched the site. I had a sense of who my readers were and what they liked about my books. That gave me a chance to tailor my web site accordingly. Toward that end, www.edrobertson.com has sections devoted to each of my books. Since I write a lot about television, each of my books on TV features the jacket blurb from the book, links related to that particular TV show, and last not but least, information on how to order the book.  In the case of my latest, Thirty Years of The Rockford Files, I included the Introduction as a PDF file, so that folks can sample the book before deciding whether to purchase it. For The Ethics of Star Trek, I included the back matter, a selection of reviews, as well as links to my publisher and a few other Star Trek websites.  I also have a page called Autographed Editions, where folks can order signed copies of my books directly from me if they so desire.   

Your website not only promotes what you’ve already done, but what you’re currently doing. And because it’s online, you can point people to it in real time during a phone conversation or meeting.

 

For example, a few months ago, I got a call from an agent who was looking for a writer to work with one of her clients.  We got to talking, and she said, “Okay, I have your books, I know what you can do, but my client still needs a little convincing.  Do you have something that spells out exactly what you can do for him?”  I said, “Are you online?”  She said, “As a matter of fact, I am.”  I said, “Okay, if you go to my website, you’ll find a button called Collaborations.  That has a thumbnail description of the kind of projects I’ve done, what my interests are, and how I work.”  And so, right on the spot, she went online, and said, “This is perfect!  This is exactly what I’m looking for.”  Long story short… she called the client and pointed him to my website while she had him on the phone. Bingo. The client then called me, and we proceeded to work together.

So if you haven’t got a website yet, what are you waiting for?  Now more than ever, it’s the most essential tool a writer can have.  

Ed Robertson
www.edrobertson.com

Longtime Author, First-Time Blogger

First of all, I want to thank Clary for inviting me to participate in this blog. I’ll be posting at least twice a month, possibly more often should time permit.

I listen to a lot of talk radio… mostly news talk on commercial stations, though I occasionally catch Terry Gross and Ira Glass on NPR. I like the interaction between callers and hosts, and if you listen to a show long enough, you get to the point where you recognize certain callers, their ideas, their sensibilities, their humor, and how they relate to the host. Before long, you come to think of them as being as much a regular part of the show as the host himself. But it’s also fun to hear new voices. You can tell they’re new voices, because they always introduce themselves the same way: “Hi, I’m Jim – longtime listener, first-time caller.”

That’s sort of how I’m approaching blogging.

I’ve been writing professionally for over 15 years, and have been online for over 10. I’ve provided web content on behalf of others, as well as manage two websites of my own. I’ve participated in chat groups, bulletin boards, virtual seminars, and other web forums. I’ve co-produced and hosted my own podcast, and am now a regular co-host on a talk show streamed on a global radio station. I don’t claim to understand everything about the Internet, but I like to think I have a working knowledge of how it works – and even if I don’t, I’m always trying to learn more. About the only thing I haven’t done yet is blog.

All of which is a long way of introducing myself. “Hi, I’m Ed – longtime writer, first-time blogger.”

I write extensively about pop culture, entertainment, and media (film and television, in particular). I’ve had five books published, and have a written for many print and online magazines, newspapers, video liner notes, and other media venues since 1990. I’ve interviewed a lot of television celebrities and media personalities, and have written books and articles on such influential shows as The Rockford Files, M*A*S*H, The Fugitive, Six Feet Under, CSI, and Lost.

I also specialize in ghostwriting, book collaboration, book doctoring, and developmental editing. I work with experts from different fields who “have a book in them,” but who either lack the writing expertise to develop their ideas onto paper, or simply do not have the time to do so because of career, family, or other commitments. So they turn to people like me to help them with the “heavy lifting.” I’ve specialized in this field of writing for about 10 years.

Ghostwriting and collaboration is not exactly something I set out to do, but it is something I enjoy doing. For one, it’s taken me in directions that I may not have necessarily explored, had I stayed strictly within my niche.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love film and television. My latest book, Thirty Years of The Rockford Files, is on James Garner and The Rockford Files, plus I write and edit for a number of entertainment venues. It’s just that as a ghostwriter, I work on both fiction and nonfiction projects covering a wide range of topics: biography, memoirs, history, politics, business, leadership, personal growth, true crime, and much more. The way I see it, I have the best of both worlds.

It’s funny… I started my writing career writing about television shows and TV characters – particularly, TV private detectives like Jim Rockford and Harry O. But in a way, it wasn’t until I began ghostwriting professionally that I began to appreciate what characters like Rockford and Harry do for a living. For instance, I meet people and learn about subjects I may not have discovered otherwise. So in that respect, it’s kind of like being a private eye. You never know where the next “case” will take you, which always keeps the process fresh and exciting.

Plus, to write effectively in another person’s voice, you have to know how they think, how they talk, what they feel strongly about – in essence, who they are. The best way I know how to do that is to ask lots of questions and, just as important, listen to their answers. That’s what private detectives do, and that’s certainly what I do as a ghostwriter and collaborator. Listening is a big part of my work, because the answers my clients give me take me in the direction I need to go in order to “solve their case” – or I should say, tell their story.

My wife is also a writer. We’ve been married five years. She’s particularly fond of the metaphors “journey” and “adventure” in terms of describing our life together (personally, as well as professionally).

My writing career so far has been an interesting adventure, and I continue to learn things along the way. I look forward to sharing some of my perspective, as well as hearing yours.