Helen Ellis on Book Promotion, Ten Years Later

I first met Helen Ellis back in 2001, when I interviewed her for Beatrice after the release of her debut novel, which I loved. We’ve kept in touch over the years, and I’ve always wanted to see something new from her—finally, there’s THE TURNING: What Curiosity Kills, the first in a new series of YA fantasy novels she’s writing for Sourcebooks. Although there’s a lot that’s different about the two books, to someone who’s familiar with Helen’s voice, it’s great to have her Southern Gothic sensibility back and in full bloom. When I invited Helen to write a new guest essay, she immediately hit upon the idea of looking at what had changed in the literary world since our last “official” encounter; she also came up with the idea of writing it as a letter—which, although it’s addressed to me, I think you’ll find friendly and inviting as well!

Ten years ago, I was straight out of graduate school and sold my first novel for six figures. To promote Eating the Cheshire Cat, I was told that bookstores sold books. And by gum, The Alabama Booksmith, Lemuria, and Eddie Suttles of a Georgia Barnes & Noble hand-sold the heck out of it. I was sent on a twenty-stop book tour, put up in legendary hotels like The Peabody in Memphis, spent my days being interviewed by local TV, radio, and newspapers, and met with one blogger: you.

In the end, did I earn out my advance? No, but before the first copy of the book was sold, Scribner’s attitude was that I would. And getting me “out there” was the way to do it. So I went and reveled in every minute.

And then I fell, slowly and despite my best efforts, off the face of the literary earth. I wrote a second book and my agent couldn’t get a publisher. I poured my soul into a third book for a new agent who, after taking it on, decided she didn’t really like it, after all. Without an agent, I started a fourth book, because I am a writer, and that’s what writers do. Hallelujah, I got an offer from Sourcebooks, and then got a trusted friend to agent the deal. Now I’m ready to promote THE TURNING: What Curiosity Kills, but I am hardly going anywhere. Physically, that is. It’s 2010 and 99% of my promotion is happening online.

A few months ago, lunch with my editor went something like this: “There’s a recession, folks don’t buy fiction like they used to, nobody goes to readings anymore. Today book selling is all about selling yourself. So get a website, get a Facebook page, get a channel on YouTube. Make a movie trailer for your novel. Go viral! Blog! Tweet!”

This might not be intimidating to some authors, but I’d never done any of the above. I’m a bit of a Luddite. I refuse to own a cell phone. Yes, I’ll wait for that tidbit to sink in.

So what to do? In fact, Ron, I listened to you. In an interview about book blogging, you advised writers to blog about something they’re passionate about. And that something should not be their book. Readers want to get to know the writer. Make someone curious about you, and they’ll be curious about what you’ve written. And thus was born www.helenelliswrites.com, aka: Diary of a Luddite.

Now, I’m not going to lie and write that filming myself demo how to use a rotary phone is as good for my ego as having a dinner party thrown for me by Mary Gay Shipley of That Bookstore in Blytheville. But it is fun. And there have been benefits.

My episode on what a magazine looks like drew the attention of a One Story blogger and I watched my Amazon ranking magically rise. As soon I announced my cyberspace book tour, my favorite graduate school professor, Dani Shapiro, pulled a “Gee-Your-Hair-Smells-Terrific” routine and told her friends to tell their friends. When I asked readers to email photos of the book—like a traveling gnome in exotic places—I instantly received a shot of novelist Joshilyn Jackson’s one-eyed cat posed with a copy. Then, one night, I was following Ayelet Waldman’s tweets from her miserable plane ride. On a whim I became the 1000th follower of a follower of hers. He asked his followers to say hello to me. A few seconds later, an author who I’ve admired for years and never met, tweeted: “Hello, @theturningbooks.”

That’s four laps of sheer glee I’ve taken around my apartment in a week. What Curiosity Kills has only been out for ten days, so I can’t rightly compare sales results of these new school ways to my old. But I can say this: I’m discovering a great big worldwide web of book-loving bloggers that make me jump for joy. I may not be on the road, but I am getting my exercise.

11 May 2010 | guest authors |