Seth Godin has written a great article on How Often Should You Publish. In the article, he proposes that you think about the question in a different way – by examining your tactics for your frontlist and backlist.

Frontlist

This is your new book release or your new published short story. The stuff that your fans are anxiously waiting for. The releases that make the news.

Backlist

Backlist is all of your books and stories that are not new. They aren’t in the news, they aren’t in the stores any more. Maybe they’re only available on Amazon or used book outlets.

The Strategy

1. Assemble a tribe, a group of true fans, followers, people who have given you permission. Give them all the frontlist they can handle. Make it easy for them to spread the word, to Digg you or bring a friend to your movie or buy your new book for their friends. If you create too much content for this crowd, then you’re publishing too much. They care, and they want to hear from you.

2. Promote your backlist. Invest significant time and money to make your backlist available, to recirculate it, to have it adopted as a textbook in English class or featured on Netflix or part of a retrospective on TV. Take all that money you waste in frontlist marketing and spend it on the backlist instead.

3. Repeat. Frontlist becomes backlist, backlist grows, fan base grows, it scales.

What Does This Mean for Writers?

Use your website to connect with your fans. Give your current readers as much of your work and attention as you can.

1. Post short stories on your site, especially ones written with your familiar characters or new characters in your familiar world, as a “reward” for your fans.
2. Answer as much email as possible and reply to comments on your blog. It gives your fans a feeling of connection to you.
3. Have an email signup for readers to opt-in and get emails from you announcing your latest release.

Make sure your backlist is clearly available through your website.

1. Use obvious navigation to your backlist page so it can’t be missed.
2. Give plot summaries for each book. Use your backcover copy if your publisher will allow it. If you can’t get permission to use the cover copy, write your own enticing summary.
3. Provide a suggested reading order for your books, especially if you write a series.
4. Provide printable lists of your backlist books so new readers can take them to the store.

Make it easy for your fans to recommend your backlist to their friends.

1. Provide links to your books on Amazon or an online bookstore so they are easy to buy.
2. Provide “Tell a Friend” links so that your fans can easily email book recommendations to their friends.

What other suggestions do you have for promoting your frontlist or backlist?

Have writer friends who might enjoy this post? Send it to them with my compliments!

I’m trying out Twitter this week. Twitter is one of the new social media sites. It’s a way to make connections with people, stay in touch.

Basically, you post short messages (140 character limit) about what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, neat things on the web, questions to your friends, anything you want to. People can “follow” you, meaning they will see your “tweets” on their Twitter page. They can reply to your tweet and you’ll see it on your Twitter page. You can follow others in the same way. And so conversations take place.

Twitter could be a great tool for writers to start conversations with strangers. Strangers become friends, friends become readers. I’ll keep you posted on my results. Stop by and say hi.

There is a great discussion going over at Nathan Bransford’s blog. Do author blogs sell books? The comments seem to be divided – some folks discover new authors and their books through the author’s blog. Some folks aren’t swayed at all by an author’s blog or are even turned off of an author’s book by the author’s writing style or content on their blog.

So should you start a blog? I say Yes. Just don’t expect it to sell your books (or future books, if you aren’t published yet). Any sales you make as a result of a reader visiting your blog are icing on the cake. Be happy when it happens, but don’t count on those sales to make you a best-selling author.

So for a writer, what is a blog good for, if not selling books? A blog is a traffic and marketing tool, not a sales tool. A blog can introduce potential new readers to you and your writing style. It can let them see who you are as a person, as a writer. If you blog about your writing process, they get a glimpse into what it’s like to be a writer–how a story is born and how it grows into a finished book. A blog is a casual conversation between you and others on the internet.

It’s a way to make new friends, not to sell books to strangers. If you’re a writer, you should have a blog (or a website). How do you get started blogging? One of the easiest ways is to use one of the free blogging sites like

• Wordpress
• Blogger
• LiveJournal

I like Wordpress myself. I use their blogging software here at Learn to Write Fiction. (You can download it for use on your own website.)

To start your conversation on the Internet:

1. Setup a free blogging account.
2. Customize your blog with some of the options available (themes, fonts, colors, etc.).
3. Decide what you’re going to blog about (your current work in progress, writing in general, the writing industry, other writers that readers should be reading, etc.).
4. Decide how often you’re going to blog (daily, every other day, once a week) and stick to your schedule.

Setup a blog today and start making new friends.