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How Do You Define Success as an Author?

Written by: Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Article Overview: As an author, what does success mean to you? How do you define it? What do you yearn for? And are you open enough to success that you will see what you have to do in order to obtain it? Here are some tips to help you through the stages of success from an author's perspective...

How Do You Define Success as an Author?

Often, authors define success by pre-set industry standards, like making the New York Times bestseller list, selling 100,000+ copies, having a movie made from a novel, or being invited to be a guest on Oprah. Certainly, those ARE successes and are not to be taken lightly. It is a long haul to achieve any of these, but with persistence and dedication, nothing is beyond your reach. And if you count the smaller successes, the journey will be far more satisfying. From the time of conception of a story idea, you will benefit from setting smaller goals. Setting realistic and attainable goals will ensure that you don’t set yourself up for failure.

Here are 10 tips that will help you achieve success:
1. Finish writing and editing your book. Many writers give up part way through. Don’t give up! See it, believe it and achieve it. Put it aside for a month, then go back and edit again. This becomes your first success. You have done something many people only dream of doing.
2. Have your book professionally edited. If you want longevity as a writer, you must treat this like a career. This means that even self-published, author-originated works must be edited professionally by someone who knows HOW to edit. If you put out an inferior product you will lose fans and sales, and bookstores will not promote you. If you’re going to do this, do it right! You are competing with every other book out there.
3. Once your book is published, promote the heck out of it! Too many authors leave marketing up to their publisher. This is your baby, no one else’s. Not even a publisher can market your book as well as you can, and if you don’t know how, LEARN.
4. Create a solid internet identity. What will we find if we Google your name right now? Will we find someone else with the same name who sells lawn ornaments? Are there 10 hits? 1000? 100,000? Check out this article: http://ezinearticles.com/?Creating-an-Internet-Identity---For-Authors&id=90814
5. Blog every day. Or at the very least, 3 times a week, on numerous blogs. Blogging about anything sells books. Readers like to see the human side of their favorite authors, so blogging should not be a hardcore sales pitch every post. Find a controversial or thematic angle within your book and blog about that. My novel Whale Song dealt with assisted suicide. I not only researched the topic, but I blogged about it and was then contacted by a radio station because of my blog post and then was interviewed.
6. Hold a virtual book tour. VBT’s are an excellent and inexpensive way to get the word out about your book. Other bloggers are now promoting YOU. Check out this article: http://openhorizons.blogspot.com/2007/09/authors-tour-world-with-virtual-book.html
7. Sell your book on a specific day by holding a contest. If you ask people to order from one major retailer, like Amazon.com for instance, on a specific day and offer them some kind of incentive, you will have the opportunity to make Amazon’s bestsellers list. Pick a day, offer a prize they can’t turn down (remember: never make your book your prize—at least, not the book you are trying to promote) and have a proof of purchase to ensure sales are submitted on one day. Once you make Amazon’s list (and don’t forget, books are broken into categories), you can say you’re a “bestselling author” with a “bestselling novel”. That statement alone attracts more success.
8. Find out where your readers are. The goal is not to have your book in every bookstore. First, very few books achieve that. Second, having them in a store is no good if no one is buying them. So find out where your readers are. If you write mysteries, find out where mystery readers meet in your town. Become a guest author at a book club. Look for online reading groups or sites like GoodReads.com and start schmoozing with readers.
9. Cultivate personal relationships with bookstore staff. Most authors underestimate the power of signing books in a store. Too many authors focus entirely on sales, or lack of sales. Forget sales! Think about relationships instead—with store staff, customers and potential fans. That is what is important. When you build these relationships you will have store staff who will hand sell your book and go out of their way to promote you, invite you to special events and feature you on special front-end shelves that most publishers have to pay for. Customers can turn into media contacts and interviews. Potential fans can turn into lifelong fans who will buy everything you write and recommend you to their family and friends.
10. Contact media for every event or set of events. If holding a bunch of signings during October, call it your “fall tour” and promote it. Send out press releases to local TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Send out online releases to services like http://www.24-7pressrelease.com and free online services. Just Google ‘press distribution services’. Many authors consider interviews a form of success, and the more you create a need for your area of expertise (whether writing, getting published, or a particular theme from your book), the more media will want to interview you.
Success is a personal quest. One author’s success might be to publish the family memoir or cookbook for future generations. Your idea of success might be to sell enough books to make your money back. Or it could be to capture the attention of a New York publishing company, or a Hollywood film producer. Success can also be measured in the emails you receive, the ones that tell you how much your book affected them, or how it healed a broken relationship.

The road to success is a bumpy one and there may be many detours. But those who stay the course and move forward, learning their craft and perfecting it as they go, will find that there are some obvious signs along the way. Learn from those who are doing it, those who are moving forward. If you want to BE an Amazon bestselling author, learn from someone who IS one. If you want a New York agent, learn from someone who has one. If you want Hollywood knocking on your door, learn from an author whose book has already been adapted by Hollywood. Success attracts success, so be sure to acknowledge even the smallest one.

©2008 Cheryl Kaye Tardif

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