Great Review for Matt Hult' Husk!

Our good friend John Milton over at AndyErupts has posted an excellent review for Husk, by BotD author Matt Hults.  Here's a bit of it, but to read the entire thing, go here.

"...Matt Hults’Husk takes the horror genre and gives us a new villain, the likes of which I can honestly say I have never encountered before…

One of the key strengths of Husk is the author’s development of the characters, their own storylines and particular arcs. To my mind, Hults leaves none of the leads of his story behind, devoting time, without sacrificing pace, to building up the integral players before uniting them for his grand finale… and trust me, it’s quite the spectacle!

Husk is ripe for a big screen adaptation providing it gets the right budget and certificate (would undoubtedly have to be an 18 here in the UK in order that it not betray the source material!) but some of Hults’ more “creative” scenes may have to be omitted, since I’m not sure that they would translate well to the big screen; and many in a more mainstream audience may baulk at some of the subject matter.

Hults takes what appears to be the story of a dead serial killer who is seemingly continuing to commit his signature crimes and adds a unique supernatural element to it, significantly beefing up what, if played straight, could have been written as a regular copycat killer/ police thriller and creates a worthwhile addition to the horror genre that is entertaining, memorable and horrifying."

And of course, to buy a copy of Husk, go here.

If you like what you've read here, you're gonna love Books of the Dead's other books.  Buy some here.

Part Deux: In Which We Discuss Becoming Socialized

Social media.  There I said it again.  If you’re over 40, you’re probably groaning at its mere mention.  If you’re under 40, you’re probably shrugging and saying, Yeah, so what?

OK, first off, if you’re under 40, go away for a minute.  Play some X-Box or whatever it is your mysterious, young generation does to fritter away the time.  Us old folks are going to jaw for a moment.

Are they gone?  Good!  It’s just me and everyone born before Tricky Dick resigned.  Now, all of us left are over 40, perhaps some of you substantially so.  I, myself, am on the cusp of 49, having been born right after the assassination of—and named for—John F. Kennedy.  Others of you may remember where you were on that horribly notable day.

Whatever.  The difference I want to get at here is the computer.  Some of us grew up with it; others of us had it thrust open them…and with that comes a certain amount of dubiousness and, let’s just say it…fear.  Fear of something we don’t quite understand.  Fear of having that thing make us look old and foolish and hopelessly out of touch…like the music of Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga, let’s say.

The way some of us choose to deal with this is to ignore it, which, in the case of both Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga is a perfectly acceptable reaction.  Not so with the computer and the things the computer brings to the table.

Now, I know many of you geezers are already shaking your heads.  I use a computer all the time, you’re saying.  I’m perfectly comfortable with it.  Sure.  You use a computer to write, perhaps, maybe to play Angry Birds or Farmville or send e-mails to the grandkids.  Sure, go ahead and consider yourself quite the technophile.

Are you on Facebook, though?  Twitter?  FourSquare?  Pinterest?  StumbleUpon?  Even—groan—MySpace?  Are you, in the end, on any social media?

If you are, congrats.  You are aging well.  If not, why not?  Do you prefer to communicate with friends and family via a Dixie cup and string?  Smoke signals?  Passenger pigeon?  Step into the 21^st century with the rest of us…it’s not so scary.

These sites are really just the electronic versions of talking to a friend or neighbor over the backyard fence…except the fence stretches around the world and you might be talking to 10,000 “friends.”  Same thing, just a new way to do it.

Why is it so important to get with it on social media instead of just aging like your grandparents did and shaking your fist at what the kids are doing these days?  Well, and I’m assuming we’re still talking to writers here…writers who want readers…if you want to reach readers with your scribblings, these places are where the readers of today hang out.  Reaching them means being where they are.

So, if you have a blog or a website of some kind (See Part One, below), great.  Now, let’s move some people to it by participating in today’s social media.  For a start, let’s consider Twitter.  I have to admit that I, like many old people, at first didn’t see the use of this.  Communicate in 140 characters or less?  Why?  What for?  What can possibly be said (of any value at least) in 140 characters?

Plenty.  But before you start bombarding people with your 140-character musings, you have to register for the service.  Then you have to build an audience.  That means searching through the audience to find like-minded people.  Write horror?  Then look at other horror writer’s followers and follow them.  Hopefully, they will follow back.  Spend some time doing this, use a service to unfollow those who don’t and soon you’ll have an impressive list of followers who will receive and hopefully read your tweets.  (For more on doing this successfully, I point you toward Books of the Dead’s publisher, James Roy Daley, and his instructional postings on our main site, www.booksofthedeadpress.com.  See them here.)

OK, now you’ve built an audience.  What do you say to them?  Well, it doesn’t have to be what you ate for breakfast or the fact that you’re currently singing hymns at Aunt Florence’s funeral.  Those are fine, if prosaic, uses of Twitter and plenty of folks tweet the minutae of their days with all the fervent energy and rampant self-absorption of teenager.

But consider, oh writer, the fact that you now have an audience of like-minded people who might be interested—nay, induced to purchase for real money—your work.  It might be a good idea, then, interspersed between your daily toilet schedule updates and callouts to other drunken friends, to let them know about your work and where to get it.  Twitter kindly lets you add specific links to where those works might be found—Amazon, let’s say—so that your audience can simply click away, if so disposed, and buy your works.

Using Twitter to point your audience to your website or blog, and connecting said website/blog to your Twitter feed is a self-sustaining promotion machine.  Just don’t be too spammy.  Retweet stuff from your followers.  Tweet news articles you see, pictures, whatever.  Be sparing in how you use it promotionally, but use it promotionally.

Same can be said for Facebook or Myspace of whatever.  Use these social media to get out there and talk to people.  To build an audience.  To talk to that audience.  To sell to that audience. 

Unless, of course, you’re more comfortable with the telegraph.  In which case, definitely get off my lawn.

Next up:  List Building. (And don't worry, we'll get to what readers can do soon!)

Like what you read here?  Support us by purchasing some of Books of the Dead's fantastic titles here.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsors...

OK, so Roy (our friendly neighborhood publisher here at Books of the Dead) has told me to make this blog, the marketing blog, mine.  To do with it, as it were, what I will.  I’ve put some placeholder stuff up on the blog to this point.  Mostly interviews with BOTD authors that, while interesting and fun, haven’t really captured what I want to do with this site; namely, draw people to the site and sell 'em some books.

I got to thinking the other day about what I’ve done to help move my own BOTD book, the extremely well-reviewed (ahem) Little Deaths.  (2.99 for Kindle/ $11.99 for paperback at Amazon.  Also on Nook and at Smashwords.  Buy it.)  And it got me thinking what other authors are doing for their book.  Or not doing, as the case may be.  Because if you think that most publishers are swinging for the bleachers to move your specific title, even the big publishers, you are on illegal narcotics.

So, I thought I’d jot down a few things that I’ve learned about authors moving their own books.  Maybe some of this will help.  In Part Deux of this article, we’ll take a look at what readers can do in this new egalitarian book publishing world to help move their favorite books and need to come down from your ill-advised high.

But, since we’re here already and I am one, let’s start with them that brought us to this dance…the authors.  And for the sake of this publishing company, lets restrict our discussion to horror authors specifically.

Marketing 101

So, you finally moved from “I want to write a book” to “I’ve written a book.”  Great!  Congratulations!  You’ve officially moved farther along the writer path than 99% of everyone who says “I want to write a book.”  Now what?

Well, let’s jump ahead now and say that you’ve taken whatever difficult, agonizing, ego-crushing efforts necessary to find a publisher willing to publish your masterpiece.  Again, congrats!  You’ve moved farther ahead than 99.5 of everyone who says “I want to write a book.”

Now, I bet you’re planning on sitting back and waiting for the royalties to come rolling in while the gears of the publishing world grind your book out into the marketplace.

Hah…hehehe…oh my, let me catch my breath, and wipe the tears from the corners of my eyes. At this point, you may as well believe in the tooth fairy, William Shatner's hairline or the efficacy of trickle-down economics.

Let’s leave the world of fantasy for a bit and talk about reality.  Stone cold reality.  And the reality is that you are as much—or even more—responsible for the success or failure of your book than your publisher.  And that's not counting writing the very best book you can.

You’re now obliged to market it.

In effect, you’ve got to come out of the cloistered, solitary little world you inhabited as an author, pull on your big boy or big girl pants, and go out into the great, big, indifferent, uncaring world of the buying public and sell yourself.  Hard.  So, whaddaya need?

  

Author Site

First things first, in this brave new electronic world, do you have a website…a blog…a Facebook page?  You’ve got to have some kind of base from which to work your marketing magic, and in this age, it’s got to be on the interwebs.  Any of these three choices are fine, as long as you’re easy to find.  If your name is John Q. Frenulum and you’re a horror writer, your web address had better be www.johnqfrenulum.com or www.johnqfrenulumwriter.com or www.jqfrenulum.com.  Not www.vervetlover.com or www.airyfarts.com.  Similarly, if your e-mail address isn’t your name, but rather drwhofantatic@aol.com, change it to your name.  (And really who uses AOL anymore anyway?)

The point is you need a base and it needs to be easy to find.  Besides if your just getting started, you want your name out there everywhere, on everything you do.  It might sound silly, but everything you do should be working to generate name recognition, which is the key to the selling game.  Why would you want to generate awareness of your love for vervets instead of your name? (And besides, vervets carry diseases, man.)

Right!  Once that’s established, now what to put onto your author site?  Well, start with the basics.  A bio would be nice, an authorial picture or two might be good.  Just restrain yourself with pictures, though.  People coming to your site don’t want to see the drunken shots of your 32^nd birthday party at Hooters or your kid’s first doo-doo picture.  Keep it sweet and simple and to the point.

Next, how about some credits?  Some list of the stuff you’ve had published, where, when and how an interested reader might find them. Links, as always, would be helpful.  If you don't have these yet, don't sweat it.  Maybe a list of the stuff you have written and are circulating...you are circulating your stuff, right?

Links to other authors, writer’s sites that you like or other genre sites you enjoy would be good.  This is called a blog roll, and is way to point people who come to you site to other like-minded sites; it’s also a way to promote other sites that could be swayed to promote you similarly.

So, bio, pics, credits, blog roll…umm…oh yeah, content!  It’s not enough just to put up a static page with this stuff on it.  It’s not enough just to have a site up that doesn’t change.  People will come one, take a poke around, then perhaps come again a week later or so.  If nothing has changed, however, they probably won’t be back again.  Why bother?  

Add some content to your site; which means, of course, that you’ll have to actually write shit…often.  Regularly.  Right about what you’re up to, stuff you’ve read, other authors you like and why, or well, just about anything. 

Make it interesting, make it different every couple of days at least, and people will come to the site often. 

Then, of course, you can sell them.  If you’ve got pieces that are for sale at Amazon, be sure to include links to them.  If you’ve got a few things up at Amazon, create an Author Page.  It’s simple and provides an easy place for readers to go to find all your stuff.

OK, first step:  base of operations.  Check.  And now...

Next Up:  Social Media.  Yeah, I said it.

In the meantime, click the Bookstore link upper right, and get some great books!

Two BOTD Authors on The Electric Chair Show!

Both Tonia Brown and John F.D. Taff are featured on the great horror podcast The Electric Chair Show.  Hosted by Midnight Corey, these podcasts are a great insight into the person being interviewed, as well as some discussion about a favorite horror movie.

Tonia's featured in Episode 16, where she discusses her work, including Badass Zombie Road Trip, and the movie Prince of Darkness.  You can download it here.

John's featured in this Sunday's episode, Episode 20.  He discusses his collection, Little Deaths, as well as An American Werewolf in London.  Find it here this Sunday.

John will also be featured on Tonia's own podcast in just a few weeks.  More on that later!