Publishing A Novel: Finding Your Audience

First up: My blog tour continues today with an excellent review of BAND GEEK up at Musings From An Addicted Reader. Head over to the site to comment -- and get a chance to win a free copy of my CD FLUTE PATH and a pair of my handmade music earrings!

I'm grateful to be getting so many positive reviews, of course, but one thing that I've noticed is that my audience isn't turning out to be the audience that I'd planned to get.

When I wrote BAND GEEK, it was with teens in mind. It's a story about high schoolers and definitely has a teenage sensibility. My heroine, Melinda, is naive, somewhat bratty at points and is still learning about the world. In some ways, she's very mature, but in others, she's way behind her peers. I figured that a 14, 15-year-old girl could relate to her and attempted to write Mel as realistically as I could.

To my surprise, a lot of adults have picked up and enjoyed the book! I suppose this shouldn't be that shocking to me; after all, I love young adult literature and read it often. I just didn't expect so many people who are in my age-range to be interested in a high school story. But I think that it's appealed to them because going to high school and being a teen is something that EVERYONE can relate to, whether you're still a teen or not. It's kind of a universal experience and readers are either dealing with that time in their life right now ... or are reading my novel with a sense of nostalgia.

I think it's also easier to get different types of books today, thanks to the Internet. Not that it was difficult before; bookstores stock every genre and it's not like I grew up in the Dark Ages (though sometimes it does seem like it as I can't even imagine being without my cell phone these days). But when I went to the bookstore with my parents, I'd generally hang out in the YA section while they looked around at what they wanted. If I wanted to get books from different genres, I had to find them in the bookstore or library. Nowadays, you just click on a couple of links and there you are. It's not a huge change, but it does making shopping for books quicker and easier -- and you never know what surprise book you may stumble upon in an online search.

What I've learned from this is to not market your work to just one audience. For my next novel, I'll pick a prime group of people whom I think may be interested and market to them, but I'm going to broaden my horizons, as well. You just never know who will want to read your story!

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, now just 99 cents!

Publishing On Kindle: Fears And Frustrations

There's an episode of Sex & The City when Samantha takes on the job as publicist to her future boyfriend, Smith, and she assures her actor beau of the following when it comes to getting recognition (paraphrased): "First come the gays, then the girls, then everyone else." This is what I'm sensing -- and hoping -- will happen with my book, as I try to get my name out there as an author. Though don't expect me to hang a nude ad of myself in the middle of Times Square as Sam did for Smith. Trust me, this will just scare everyone...

I am seeing the start of this scenario playing out, which leaves me hopeful. For me, it was first friends and family members who downloaded my book, as well as former high school classmates. Now I'm starting to get a bit of positive feedback from teens. From there, I'd like the word to spread and for this to become the type of YA book that appeals to everyone from teens to adults. I just have to wait and be patient... and it's no secret that I have a difficult time doing that.

Meantime, I'm working my butt off as I try to "sell myself." To those of you who spend all day tweeting and social networking, I don't know how you do this. Frankly, it's exhausting. I feel like I have to tweet and send Facebook messages constantly to keep the momentum going -- and before I know it, hours have passed. I actually got one of my Twitter accounts shut down for tweeting too much. Can you believe that? Oh well, live and learn. I don't mind doing the work, though, if it sells my books and lets people know my name.

There are days when I get very frustrated. Yesterday was one of those days where I was having doubts about both my jewelry and writing ventures. But I then forced myself to put my work away for a while (it was Saturday, after all) and went out for dinner with Jon and some friends. Some good German food and my friends' happy baby cheered me up and I was in a great mood by the time we returned home that evening -- and then I received positive e-mails from a fan of my book and a fan of my jewelry. This fired me up and the doubts began to fade.

That's the one downfall of having an artistic career, be it writing, painting, singing or doing anything else that's subjective to people's tastes. If you want to actually make money from doing it, you depend on others liking your work... and at times, that can be trying. I have a thicker skin than I did when I started out, but I'm not wearing armor, either. It still hurts when someone doesn't like my work or when I don't feel that it's getting enough notice.

This is why I have to remind myself that ultimately I'm doing this because it makes ME happy -- and that it's okay for me to sometimes take a break and enjoy other aspects of my life.

To read and review my book, check out REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.

Hey, Readers -- I Need Your Help!

If you're in the United States, chances are you're glued to the election results. This one is certainly a nailbiter. But if you're looking for a break from the drama, please check out my novel, REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, which is free on Kindle today, November 6.

As of this posting, my book is No. 41 in the "Romance" subcategory of free teen books. I'd really like to get it into the top 20 for this category, or even the top 10. How can you help? Head to my page and download it. It's free! What have you got to lose except, well nothing?

I find it kind of amusing that I'm campaigning so hard for my book on election day. Kind of fitting, no? But think of this as me sending all of you virtual bumper stickers and pins asking you to VOTE for REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.

I'm Naomi and I approve this message...

More Excerpts From REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD

Here are a couple more excerpts from BAND GEEK:

Josh offers to drive home Melinda for the first time and she's surprised by his car. FYI, my mother-in-law, Sharon, is an avid Star Trek fan, so his car decor is in her honor:

Josh led me across the parking lot to his car, which turned out to be an old, beat-up station wagon. Several bumper stickers were plastered onto the pea-green vehicle, including ones that said, "Honk if you love Tribbles!" and "I break for Spock."

"What?" Josh said, when he caught me chuckling. "This belonged to my Aunt Sharon. She really loves Star Trek."

"I'm sorry," I said. "This just isn't the type of car I expected you, of all people, to be driving. I thought you'd have something cooler, like a motorcycle." I tried to open the door to the passenger side but it wouldn't budge. He crawled across the driver's seat and pushed it open for me.

"It only opens from the inside," he explained. "But really," he went on, as he cleared a bunch of soda cans off my seat (none were Coke, I noticed). "What did you expect me to drive? I mean, I'm 16 and have hardly any money. I'm just glad my aunt was getting rid of this old thing."

"Well, you're lucky you have your license at all. My parents don't seem too anxious to teach me how to drive when I get my permit." Actually, they haven't wanted to discuss it at all. Whenever I bring up the idea of getting my permit, my mom will be like, "You don't need to drive. There are a lot of crazy people out there." I think she's so reluctant for me to get my license because she hardly drives herself, only on Long Island, but never in the city. But I love the idea of being able to get in a car and go wherever I want. I love the thought of being able to escape when I need to.

Josh turned on the engine and the car made a few choking sounds. "Get someone else to teach you to drive," he said. "It's not like your parents can make you do what they say forever."

"You don't know my parents," I sighed.

In this excerpt, Mel talks about her paintings. Fun fact: In college, I had several Dali posters in my room. I then invited over this guy I liked ... and he was horrified by the paintings. He thought that I was "sweet and nice" and was appalled that I liked Dali's out-there work. Needless to say, he and I didn't end up dating...:

For my last birthday, Lana gave me a professional painting kit, mainly because she thought I needed a hobby other than playing the flute. "It's perfect for you," she said as I opened her gift. "It's artsy and it's the type of thing you can do for hours without having to talk to anyone."

At the time, I'd jokingly told her to shut up, that I'm not that much of a shut-in, but she is right about me loving the arts. Before my dad started working such long hours and my mom began to take care of my grandfather, they'd take me to the city to see concerts and visit the museums. My favorite was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is huge; it took us all day to go through about a quarter of it, but I loved how every time we entered a different wing, it felt as if we were going into a new world.

As for my own paintings, I've been on a Salvador Dali kick lately. After Lana gave me her present, I purchased a bunch of art books so I could see what various painters' styles are like. I really like Dali's. His stuff is really strange; for instance, he has this one painting called "The Persistence Of Memory" that has all of these melted clocks in it. I love how his stuff looks like one thing at first and if you keep looking at it, you see something else.

So I've been trying to do some Dali-like paintings myself. Right now, I'm working on one where I'm making everything in my room appear melt-y. I was in the middle of painting a melted version of my bed (which is harder than it looks because the cover is floral and I had to make all the flowers look distorted) when I heard someone come home. I looked at my clock (which isn't melted, by the way); it was 9 p.m.

Please read and review REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD, now only 99 cents!

Selling An Ebook On Kindle

Writing my novel took 10 years of blood, sweat and tears, but actually selling my book on Kindle is a whole new challenge -- one that is admittedly frustrating so far.

I've had a lot of experience selling my work online. I have a jewelry shop, Naomi's Designs, on Etsy. I write for HubPages, another online enterprise. I sell my CD FLUTE PATH online. And I keep a jewelry blog. So I'm pretty familiar with tags, keywords and basic SEO.

Still, I've had mixed success with it. I've done fairly well in all of these things, but I've never been one of those people who's sold millions and millions of items, either. I'd love to do that with my book, though I'm realistic.

Right now, my book is still very new so it's waayyy in the back of Amazon's search engines. It's so frustrating. I've waited 10 years to see my novel in some form of print .... and now that it finally is, I have to patiently wait for it to be in a place where people can actually FIND my work. I've incorporated all of the SEO -- I've used all of my tags and am pretty secure in the categories for which I chose to place my book. I just have to wait and see. I really wish that I can get at least one good review because that would help a lot. Yes, my book has only been out for a week, but I wish I could jump ahead in time to when it's a big success, LOL.

Seriously, the two things I've learned from working online are a) you have to work really hard to get results. This means blogging, networking, doing whatever you can to get your product out there. And b) You need to be so patient. You won't find success overnight, mainly because it takes a while for your Web pages to get in the system. I'm still working on both!

Please check out and review my novel REVENGE OF A BAND GEEK GONE BAD.