Guest post by Jeffrey A. Carver
Time travel figured prominently in my recently-published novel The Reefs of Time—travel back into the deep past of our galactic history. That was a pretty cool adventure for me, very cosmic. But that’s not the kind of time I’m talking about here.
I’ve been on a writing retreat this week, on Cape Cod, not far from Boston in the U.S., where I live. For anyone who loves the ocean, Cape Cod is a mecca. Sand dunes and saltwater marshes and sea. What better place to walk and soak in some Nature, and clear the mind? (It helps that I am doing this in November, when the seasonal crowds are gone.)
Today I was walking along the seashore, watching the sun go down over Vineyard Sound (the island of Martha’s Vineyard, where presidents like to visit, just visible on the horizon). I found myself reflecting on the inexorable passage of time, as I watched the sun droop lower and redder behind the scattered clouds. In particular, I found myself reflecting on the passage of time in my writing career. Perhaps I should say elapsed time, because—just as for a pilot, the runway behind you is of no use when the engine quits—for a writer, the time behind you in those years when you didn’t finish something new is forever history.
Ask any writing-career pundit, and they’ll tell you the key is consistency, and getting new books out as regularly as you can. I don’t doubt that it’s good advice. And if you can follow it, more power to you. But what about those writers who can’t seem to pull that off, who can’t—for whatever reason—produce that regular stream of new books, new stories? Are they doomed to failure in the marketplace? Obviously not everyone. George R.R. Martin is doing pretty okay. (Spawning a wildly successful TV series is not a bad Plan B.) Some writers (J. D. Salinger, anyone?) never need another successful book. But for most of us poor schlubs, if you don’t keep them coming, the audience is likely to forget you.
I am one of those writers who have had trouble keeping them coming, at least without distressingly long gaps in publication. The reasons for that are unimportant to this conversation; no one will contradict you if you just say I’m a slow writer. That was true even in the 1980s and 90s, when I wrote many of my books. That was when I was managing a novel every year or two. But my novels tended to be long, because that’s how my Muse works, and it was hard to keep it up. With my conception of The Chaos Chronicles, starting with Neptune Crossing in 1994, I tried to keep the novels shorter, while building, book by book, that big story insisted upon by my Muse. For a while, it worked.
But then I broke off to write Eternity’s End, set in my completely separate Star Rigger Universe. That took four years to write, which was almost long enough for people to forget me. It was well received, and was a Nebula-finalist, but still—the long gap didn’t do me any favors. And then I returned to The Chaos Chronicles, and I became like Frodo and Sam, scrambling over the Emyn Muil. For whatever reason, it took me eight years to write Sunborn, and eleven years to write The Reefs of Time, which turned out to be such a big book that I split it into two volumes, the second called Crucible of Time. By the time it was ready to turn in, my publisher was no longer interested. I published it under my own Starstream imprint, already established for my backlist ebooks, and together, they burst onto the scene in 2019.
Burst, yeah. Or maybe not exactly. I introduced them to the world with as much fanfare as I could generate, and my loyal fans, those who had stuck with me through the years, were joyful and appreciative. But what about the rest? What about the audience that had moved on, or who hadn’t even been reading books when I started my series, back in 1994? What did I do to bring them on board?
Well, believe it or not, I was working on this problem the whole time. I started with ebooks. Free ebooks. During the period when Sunborn was nearing publication, ebooks were just starting to come into their own. There were no Kindles or Nooks or iPads yet, but there were Sony Readers and PDAs and other devices that adventurous folk used to read ebooks. I made ebooks of the first three volumes of The Chaos Chronicles (the forthcoming book was #4), and I put them up for FREE FREE FREE on my website, and various other places. I wanted people to be ready and waiting for the new book! I was happy to give away books!
(I still offer the first book for free, though I have long-since created more thoroughly professional editions of all of them, and started selling them once the world offered KDP, Nook Press, Smashwords, Kobo, and so on.)
Did the scheme work? It’s hard to say precisely. Sales were disappointing, to be honest, but what would they have been like without this promotion? Also, Amazon—in a feud with Macmillan USA, which includes Tor—picked the month of publication of Sunborn in paperback to remove the Buy buttons from all that publisher’s books. Including mine. What did that do to sales?
Still, the next eleven years would be the hardest, because that’s a long time to go without a new book. (I actually met another writer at a conference, who greeted me with, “I thought you were dead!” apparently in all sincerity.) So what was my Plan A 2.0?
Social media! I hear you cry. Facebook, website, twitter, blog…
Yes and no. First of all, I basically hate social media and I’m bad at it. I do have a website, have had since the early days of the web. I finally gave it a facelift about five years ago, switching from plain HTML to WordPress, and making it look like it belongs in this century. I’ve had a blog since 2005 (I had to look that up!), called “Pushing a Snake Up a Hill,” after my experiences as a parent of young children. That’s where I put most of my thoughts for the world. It gets echoed on Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, and maybe some places I’ve forgotten. I engage in social media to the extent of interacting with folks who reply to my posts. I’ve written some guest posts (such as this one).
For the new books, I created nice flyers and beer coasters, and enlisted writer friends to put them out at conventions I couldn’t attend myself. In fact, I ordered a fresh batch of lovely coasters—1200 of them!—which arrived about two weeks before Covid-19 put an end to all in-person conventions everywhere. (I’ve still got them. If you want a nice coaster, send me an email.)
Newsletter! I can hear someone else cry. Yes, that’s an excellent idea! I have a newsletter, and I think I’ve put out two issues in two years. Why? Well, truthfully, I don’t know what to say in a newsletter that I haven’t already said on my blog! I know, I know…
Here’s the thing. One of the smartest pieces of advice I ever heard was: Pick what you can do and are good at, and do that and let the rest go. If something doesn’t agree with you, or you don’t feel you do it well, don’t do it. That’s why I don’t tweet (even though I have a Twitter account).
What can I do well, then? I can give away books. Or sell them at a discount. The single most effective tool I’ve found for myself is Bookbub Featured Deals. Sell a book cheap or free, and if you make some coin, that’s great, but the more important thing is, you can build your audience. I’ve run more than twenty Bookbub Featured Deals in the last decade or however long it’s been. (And if you’re saying, “But I tried and they turned me down,” just know that I got turned down multiple times for every campaign I was able to run.) The promotions are costly, but they have rarely failed to earn back the cost, and they have always resulted in additional sales of my other books at full price.
Facebook ads and Amazon ads? I might try them someday. But they’re labor intensive and hard to wrap your head around. See my previous remarks about do what you can, and let the rest go.
My final scheme to capture an audience and take over the world is audiobooks, and it’s looking like an important one. But that’s a big topic in itself. Perhaps we can talk about that another day.
JEFFREY A. CARVER was a Nebula Award finalist for his novel Eternity’s End. He also authored Battlestar Galactica, a novelization of the critically acclaimed television miniseries. His novels combine thought-provoking characters with engaging storytelling, and range from the adventures of the Star Rigger universe (Star Rigger’s Way, Dragons in the Stars, and others) to the ongoing, character-driven hard SF of The Chaos Chronicles—which begins with Neptune Crossing and continues with Strange Attractors, The Infinite Sea, Sunborn, and in 2019 The Reefs of Time and its conclusion, Crucible of Time.
A native of Huron, Ohio, Carver lives with his family in the Boston area. He has taught writing in a variety of settings, from educational television to conferences for young writers to MIT, as well as his own workshops. He has created a free web site for aspiring authors of all ages at www.writesf.com. Learn more about the author and his work, follow his blog, sign up for his occasional newsletter, and see all of his books here.
