I HOPE I’M WRONG

By Raegan Teller

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about bookstores. As a child, I believed they were magical spaces. I could spend hours walking up and down the aisles, running my hand reverently across the spines of beloved books. It never occurred to me that one day I would doubt bookstores are relevant.

Over the past year, reports have enthusiastically proclaimed headlines like “Independent Bookstores Are Thriving” or “Independent Bookstores Grow for the Second Year After a 20-Year Decline.” After reading many of these articles and hoping they are right, I’m not convinced. While many of the independent bookstores have survived, and even grown, they have drastically changed their business models. Many are in smaller towns, and they host a wide variety of events, not just the typical author signings. These stores have rebranded themselves as entertainment and social hangouts. I applaud their vision. However, it’s likely many of the other, less visionary, indie bookstores won’t fare as well. And, the future of big book stores, like Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, is definitely not good.

What does this all mean for writers? Where do we sell our work? As one author recently said to me, “You can’t think out of the box, because there is no box.” She’s right. I suspect if you looked at all the places, physical and online, where writers have an opportunity to sell their work, you’d see that there are more places than ever. Short fiction is on the rise again, and people are reading on their phones, listening to audio books or to serialized books on podcasts. Despite the current decline, I think ebooks will rebound, because it’s just too darn convenient to carry hundreds of books in the palm of your hand. The bulk of today’s readers are middle-aged, and as they grow older, many of them may turn to e-readers, like Kindle and Nook, because they can enlarge the print. Young people today use digital textbooks, so it’s highly likely that if they read a book, it will be an ebook. Having said all this, my point is not to make a pitch for digital or audio books. In fact, I sell far more print copies of my books that I do ebooks. I want bookstores and print books to go on forever. But I’m also a realist.

The point I am trying to make is that writers should not assume the decline of physical bookstores necessarily signals a further decline in reading. As my statistics professor pounded into me, “correlation is not causation.” These two issues are related but separate. As writers, we must seek out alternative venues for book signings, explore audio and digital options, develop online sales opportunities, and keep the faith. I believe humans crave stories and will continue to seek them out in some form. But I also believe that bookstores will become irrelevant.

Just know that I hope I’m wrong.

REALITY CHECK

By Rex Hurst

A lot of times when we’re all starting out as writers - no matter what age we throw our hat in the arena - we often stumble about trying to find our place in the vast and crowded literary marketplace. Everyone wants to be the next Harper Lee (except I don’t think Harper Lee wanted to be Harper Lee) and produce the great literary novel that fills the minds of generations with soulful insights. But that’s probably not going to happen.

In fact, let me assure you that the email inboxes of various “legitimate” agents and “serious” publishers are full of proposed great American novels. Maybe five percent will make it to market. I myself fell into this trap, sending serious story after story to these various despots, these self-proclaimed last bastions of literary merit in the West, only to be rejected and spit on at every turn. In reality these places are filled with nepotism and incestuous relationships, so if you’re not in the club, you’re not even considered.

As such I found myself adrift, constantly questioning whether I had talent or not, that's when I wrote my first horror story - or rather novel. It was supposed to be a short story but took on a life of its own. Well I put that together and it was snapped up by the first publisher I sent it to. With that encouragement I wrote up my next one. It too was immediately accepted by the publisher I sent it to.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to see that I had found my niche. Out of desperation, out of anger, out of sheer exasperation I found it. My point is if you are stuck in a rut, can't get anything published, try writing in a different genre. It could be that you haven’t found your niche. Romance, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, mystery, crime, and so on. Try your hand at a bunch. See if you can’t get a nibble from a different type of story.

USE DIGITAL LISTENING TO PROMOTE YOUR WORK

By Kasie Whitener

My friend Big Redd once discovered a conversation between a baseball player and his favorite Christian Rap artist in which the player thanked the artist for providing his walk-up music. Big Redd reached out to the player and promoted his own album. Three days later, it was his song being played on the Rockies’ PA system when that player stepped up to bat.

Big Redd’s strategy of “social listening” was to find the conversations that are relevant to your topic and then participate in them to promote your work. He called it “social” because he uses Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook social media platforms to do his listening.

I call the strategy “digital listening” because I expanded it to the blogs, podcasts, email newsletters, and events being promoted by other writers. You can practice this marketing strategy in three easy steps:

Find the influencers.

You probably already have your favorite writing blogs (like this one) and you may have liked several authors’ Facebook pages. Expand that list of follows to include the hashtags being used on Twitter and Instagram to link conversations. Then make a list of the eight or 10 places you’ll visit on your digital listening tour.

Create a habit.

Take to the internet once a week for research. Work through your list of bloggers, email newsletters, Twitter and Instagram hashtags, and Facebook groups and author pages to see what everyone is posting. Look for repeated phrases and common themes. Then Google those phrases to find even more content (or not) written about that subject.

Last week our Write On SC radio show had the topic “traveling to break writers’ block.” It didn’t start out that way. It started as “the traveling writer” because I figured every writer uses road trips for inspiration. When you Google “travel” and “writer” together you get endless blogs for Travel Writers which is a genre in and of itself. As these were not what I was after, I kept re-combining the words until I found some resources that talked about using travel to break a block.

The lack of search results told me that this topic was a place in the digital world with little to no content. I should write about it! That’s step three.

Join the Conversation.

Create content that contributes to the conversation. Using the keywords, hashtags, and influencer posts you’ve discovered, build something new. Then share that something new with all the people and conversations that you researched. Tweet your article using their hashtag. Comment on their blogs with a link to your own.

As writers, we often create out of an inspired frenzy making our efforts more self-serving than audience-serving. But when we need to market ourselves and our work, we have to find the audience. Let the digital world be your pond. Go fishing for readers by joining the relevant conversations already in progress.

THE NEXT CHAPTER

By Sharon May

May 11, 2019, starts a new chapter in my writing career with my retirement from teaching. I started working summers at 15 while in school, and had my first full-time job at 21. With work and school, I’ve always had excuses not to write anything besides academic papers and comments to students – no time nor energy.

Wasn’t like I didn’t have lots of ideas for creative non-fiction and fiction. I wrote in spurts over the years and have several incomplete manuscripts in a file cabinet, waiting. I promise myself that I will do what writers are supposed to do: write daily and immerse myself in the craft and business of writing.

I’m an early riser, but my circadian clock might shift. I plan to start my day with writing, just after breakfast, for at least an hour or two. By then, my wife should be up and about, and we will decide what housework and errands we need to knock out that day. I will use time away from writing for incubation to assess what my work and determine the next step. Maybe I’ll be driven to write more later in the day.

Reading improves writing. I tell my students that once a day. It has been difficult to read fiction as much as I would like to or need to with paper grading hanging over me for the past 30 years. My new schedule will allow me to set aside at least a couple of hours a day for reading. God knows I’ve got enough books on the shelves.

Of course, there is also a plan for exercise – daily walks in the neighborhood and personal training twice a week. Need to get fit if I plan to live long enough to finish all those manuscripts.

Getting more involved in writing community would also be a benefit. Besides writers’ workshops, I would like to attend conferences, at least a couple a year, particularly those held in Appalachia. Conversations about writing spurs my creativity.

There will be times I can’t keep this schedule. While traveling, I plan to journal. I usually carry a laptop in case I have a chance to write, but honestly, our vacations have very little downtime. The key is to get back writing immediately after traveling.

Will I stick to writing plan? I’ve made excuses and procrastinated long enough. It is time for discipline even when distractions come along. I need to be better with setting boundaries with friends and family. With discipline, I will revise my novel into a second draft and start shopping it around as well as continue working on my memoir.

I’m looking forward to this new chapter so much so I’ve found my job to be a struggle for the first time in my career. I just want to write, read, and of course, travel, and I want to start today. I am chomping at the bit. Yeah, my head has already retired.