If I could describe what’s inside my head right now, it’s like the first trip to Disneyland when you’re walking down Main Street and, oh my gosh, everything looks amazing and smells so good and the moment you turn your head there’s something new.
And you don’t want to miss any of it in case Mom and Dad never take you here again.
I’m a published author, finally…
It’s my release day for The Taming of Mei Lin! It’s also my digital release day for Butterfly Swords. Yes, indeed. You can buy the digital version of Butterfly Swords and The Taming of Mei Lin from eHarlequin. “Mei Lin” is also available via Amazon or Barnes and Noble. If you want a hard copy of Butterfly Swords, you’ll have to wait for October 1st. One more month…I’m bouncing with excitement.
Official Launch Celebration kicks off
The official launch celebration kicks off today. Spread the word and be entered in the celebration drawings to be held September 15, October 1, and October 15. Fans and friends have already started spreading the word. Check out the official Butterfly Swords promotion page at http://www.butterfly-swords.com
The blog tour also kicks off today. I’ll be giving away download codes for The Taming of Mei Lin from eHarlequin at a couple guest blogs. The first one is today The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood where I blog about “Writing Short and Not So Sweet“. Check out the rest of the Blog Tour for the rest of the month and October.
Warrior Women Month
To celebrate my feisty heroines and honor the strong women who inspired them, I’m dedicating September to Warrior Women on my blog. I’ll be featuring interviews from three kick-butt warrior women throughout the month: Wing Chun instructor Mandy Sayah, stuntwoman and Ninja Warrior Luci Romberg, and swords expert Linda Heenan. We’ll also be chatting about our favorite heroines – real and fictional throughout the month.
I saved the best for last. I was so thrilled to sell my first book, that I splurged a little and commissioned artwork from one of my favorite DeviantArtists, Wendy (Cha Cha) aka schumy330.I’ll be adding an autographed, color print of this to the Grand Prize drawing.
Her depiction of Ryam and Ai Li nearly brought tears to my eyes. I even love the little palanquin in the background and the armored soldiers. *sniffs*
P.S. Yes, I know that’s a jian she’s holding and not a butterfly sword (dao). It’s PERFECT and GORGEOUS.
Originally I was trying to come up with a way where people who’ve followed the Butterfly Swords and Mei Lin Blog Tour could enter the Launch Celebration drawings. Following and tracking all commenters would have been heinous. And I fully didn’t expect people to really want to read THAT many blogs.
So I came up with the idea of a trivia game. You can answer the trivia questions through a handful of the blog appearances. Now, I considered maybe a Blog Tour drinking game might be in order. One shot for every time Jeannie mentions “wuxia”!
But that would have had people tipsy real quick and wouldn’t be responsible of me since people blog surf at work. So instead I present to you Butterfly Swords BINGO.
Send me the five answers through my Contact form to make BINGO and you’ll receive 5 entries in the giveaway. If anyone is crazy enough to give all the answers for BLACKOUT: Um, I might be a little scared…but you’ll receive 10 entries into the giveaway. Enter “BINGO” as your subject.
Remember, your name will remain in the bucket from when you enter until the very last Grand Prize drawing. Drawings will be held on September 15, October 1, and October 15 for a variety of prizes. Have fun!
Rules: The gameboard is just for you to keep track. Print it out or bookmark this page if you like. You only need to send me the answers, not the gameboard. If you’re going through the center, use “Free Space” as one answer. And I will accept more than just the first BINGO.
I was asked to teach an online workshop for RWA-PRO on how to make book trailers, which made me think about book trailers and what makes them effective or not. I wanted to have a clear line of sight on the subject before I started advocating that authors spend hours of their time or too much money on producing trailers.
I’ve heard a lot of opinions from writers (but not purely readers, per se) about book trailers. Most have said that they’re cheap, cheesy-looking and ineffective. A book trailer would never make them want to buy a book. They rely on things like the blurb and cover, and reviews or word of mouth.
Years ago, when I first started seeing book trailers appear on YouTube, I was intrigued. Admittedly, there were a lot of rough ones out there with random images and text set to music. They had the production quality of a high school Powerpoint presentation. But when looking at a medium, it’s important to see not only what people are doing, but what people could do. There was potential there. A lot of potential. My mind started spinning.
So I’m going to come out and speak about what trailers CAN do.
We are now marketing to an increasingly visual generation. A generation used to watching videos, not only on TV, but on laptops and ipods and phones. This means that visual media will soon be at consumers’ fingertips all the time. The synchronization of images and music evokes an emotional response in us.
It’s not learned behavior. Music and sound naturally causes your heart to beat faster. We physiological respond to it. That’s why muzak is used to calm people down in elevators. That’s why drums are used in battle to gear people up.
Let’s look at the evolution of ads and music videos. At the beginning, advertisements were trying to be informative. If you look at old commercials for soap or Hershey’s chocolate or cars, they contained a lot of text explaining what the product did and why you’d want to buy it. Eventually, advertisers realized that the power of a magazine ad wasn’t to replace the verbal spiel of a door to door salesman, but to present an exaggerated image of the product and create an aura and specific emotional message. If you want to sell a guy a car, you don’t show the car and regurgitate the owner’s manual. You take a glossy photo of it in dramatic lighting with a gorgeous woman sitting on the hood. The ads aren’t selling a vehicle with four tires and a steering wheel. They’re selling image and sex appeal. Extreme example, but you get my meaning.
Music videos. Early music videos showed the bands usually in a concert setting, playing their instruments and singing. Again, video producers quickly realized that the power of music video wasn’t to recreate the concert setting on the television screen. You get none of the energy and fandom of a concert that way. Instead, music videos have become mini movie productions. They often tell a story or present some wonderful eye candy meant to evoke an emotional response.
Many authors are trying book trailers out, but most admit they don’t know if it really helps increase sales. Some companies can charge $50 on the low end for a trailer, hundreds of dollars on the high end. Big bestsellers have book trailers that use actors with costumes and stage sets. Some feature digital animation and effects. I’ve heard the bill can be as high as a thousand dollars or more. EEK! There goes most of our advances!
But is all of this useful?
I think it can be. I think there are still only a few trailers that are hitting the mark. Even the ones that look really good are sometimes too much buck and not enough bang.
The biggest way trailers miss the mark is by using the video merely to present a text heavy blurb and cover along with some pictures of the hero, heroine, and setting. It’s not that this can’t have some use — but like magazine ads and music videos, authors were trying to transfer the old tools of advertising – the cover and book summary – directly to video without using the true power of the medium.
The second way that many very impressive trailers miss the mark for me is by their length. Think of how long a television commercial is. Think of how long a movie trailer is. Not a lot of people without vested interest in the book are going to sit through a two minute trailer. Even a one minute trailer (which I have) is pushing it.
If you’re trying to judge the effectiveness of book trailers with a direct tie in to book sales, then they may fall short. There is no way to measure that right away. People are not likely to see a book trailer and run and buy right away, much like people don’t see a Coke commercial and immediately run out and grab one. The commercial is there to create an image for Coca-cola, tie the product with an emotional message, and foster brand recognition. That’s the same goals you want to aim for with book trailers.
A truly effective book trailer should align itself with the rest of the book’s marketing message. It should not just “look cool”. It should enhance the current marketing plan. It should bring additional exposure and buy-in to the product.
That being said, book trailers are not necessarily cost effective for all authors, depending on their marketing plan. Superromance author, Liz Talley, had a great point in that she doesn’t see the use for book trailers in marketing her books right now because she writes contemporary romance. Her stories don’t lend themselves to these huge theatrical book trailers and she can get more mileage out of interacting with readers on blogs and forums.
That’s not to say book trailers can’t be very effective for contemporary stories. But the point is, Liz identified her market and her marketing plan and made a decision that was aligned with that. An ineffective trailer is a waste of time and money. Worst case, it may turn readers off.
To end this reflection, I’m posting two book trailers I’ve made so I can point the workshop participants here. One if for Inez Kelley’s Salome at Sunrise and one is for my upcoming release, Butterfly Swords. Both of these books have very strong visual elements, so a book trailer works very well in deepening that experience. The trailer is able to present the book in a way that a static web page couldn’t.
These are both low budget efforts, costing about $50 to produce. However, they were quite time consuming!! That’s why when people have asked me if they could pay me to do a trailer, I’ve always declined. I only do them out of love for the story and geekiness. But there is a method behind my madness and I hope I have something to offer the RWA-PRO workshop participants this week!
So don’t everyone rush out and make a book trailer. Think carefully about what you want to achieve first.
…that I did not in any way bribe, cajole, court, or exercise voodoo upon a certain someone at Dear Author.
I may, however, need to name my first child after her. Jane if it’s a girl and Jayne if it’s a boy.
I would then have to name my second child after the Harlequin art department. Jane and Harlequin Art Lin. I think they’ll be very popular in school.
You must be wondering what I’m rambling about. Dear Author has set up a page to invite anyone to submit reviews of Butterfly Swords to the Dear Author site. I learned of it from Twitter and was completely blown away.
jane_l: I made up a page where anyone can submit a review of @JeannieLin’s Butterfly Swordshttp://bit.ly/bjug54 to be posted at Dear Author
Actually, it’s not just DA. Many other reviewers have been so supportive by reading ARCs and getting the word out. Whether the reviews end up being good or bad, I’ll be forever grateful. And then I have to mention the amazing support from Harlequin and my editors, putting Butterfly Swords up on NetGalley and making it available because they were getting so many requests for reviews.
I believe the buzz all started with the Harlequin Art Department who came up with the bold and beautiful cover. The most common thing I heard at conference was, “You’re the author with that gorgeous cover!” Yes, I am my book. My book is me. At least for a little while — and I’m okay with that.
That cover still makes my heart beat faster. The promo page for Butterfly Swords says it all: http://www.butterfly-swords.com. Kimberly Killion, author and owner of HotDamn Designs, created the design. When she showed it to me, I couldn’t stop staring.
“That’s AWESOME!” I gushed. “I’d buy that. Wouldn’t you?”
And finally, in all this hub-bub, I’m blogging today at Unusual Historicals. I work harder for the Unusual Historicals posts than any other site because my fellow contributors are such conscientious researchers and accomplished writers. I always try to make sure my posts are up to the high quality of the rest of the site. That being said, I’m quite proud of this one in which I discuss a little history of women and literary discourse in China and how Lisa See’s Peony in Love brought that to light for me. Unusual Historicals Blog – Tragic Tales: The Lovesick Maidens of Hangzhou (Link live at 6:00 am)
No book excited me more last year than Cindy Pon’s debut, Silver Phoenix. I rushed out and bought the hard cover. I told everyone I knew about it. Plastered it all over my blog. One fan even wrote me after reading the book because she thought Cindy Pon was my pen name since I’d gabbed about the book so much! (I redirected said fan to the right place)
The morning I sold, I literally ran to my computer and typed an excited e-mail to Cindy. I felt like a giddy schoolgirl running through the playground to a friend who was a grade higher than me. “Cindy, Cindy! I sold!”
Silver Phoenix is lush and gorgeous and the original cover reflected the mood of the book perfectly:
Then I saw the cover of the sequel today:
And I saw how they want to rework Silver Phoenix:
The covers are dark and urban in appearance. The clothing modern. The faces hidden. To me, they look like so much of what’s out there in YA land. Black covers. Dark brooding mood.
I’m going to be emotional and unedited for a moment: They took away everything that was bold and special about Phoenix. They made it look modern and non-descript and non-Asian. The reasoning is that it will reach new readers this way. By hiding. By HIDING.
I lied about the unedited part. I’m a writer. Everything I post is edited. I thought very carefully about this post, because I do admit, I know next to nothing about the publishing industry. I don’t know about marketing books since I’m so new in this game. And I make it a habit not to rant too much about things I don’t know about.
But I am a reader. A consumer of books. And yes, I am biased. I write historical romances set in the Tang Dynasty. I love wuxia fiction. I started writing what I write because there weren’t many books like Silver Phoenix in the English-speaking market.
So I’m going to speak as a fan. Perhaps sales were low and the publisher had a responsibility to try to change that. I get it. This is a business. But what principle of marketing says that the way to success is to downplay your strengths? Cindy Pon writes fantasy. The selling point of fantasy is the worldbuilding. What principle of marketing dictates that you should NOT differentiate yourself from the crowd? That you should look like every other product on the market? Maybe people will think they’re buying Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, but really they’re picking up the generic store brand instead.
And that brings me to my biggest confusion. What makes the powers that be believe that READERS WANT TO BE FOOLED? That readers will pick up a book expecting one thing, and will actually be happy when it’s not that at all? That’s one of the main complaints I read in reviews. I expected a different book. So what happens when a reader picks up Cindy’s next book expecting a dark urban fantasy and gets a sweeping and epic adventure instead?
Maybe 2009 was just a tough year. Maybe people just stopped buying hardcovers except for huge big name authors with established readerships. Debut authors need to build a readership and it takes more than one book. That’s what everyone keeps telling me right now. The best way to sell more books is to write the next book. Well, Cindy did that. Fury of the Phoenix is coming out in April and Silver Phoenix‘s paperback release is in February. If the publisher had stuck with the same look and feel, then they’d be building the brand and message. More sales on the second book, renewed interest in the first.
But the way they’ve done it now muddles the message. I don’t know what to think. If I wasn’t constantly checking up on Cindy’s blog, if I had walked by the bookshelves come April, 2011, I would have missed this sequel.
Consistent messaging. Building a brand. Increasing loyal readership. Aren’t these written into a big book somewhere?
I’m going to read Fury of the Phoenix in April. I’m going to tell everyone I know and I’m going to plaster it all over my lonely blog. I’m going to do it with love and not sadness or anger because I’m getting that out now. I’ve wanted to read this book since I finished the final sentence of the last one.
I hope the marketeers are right. I hope this new look nets a bunch of new readers who are happy to discover Cindy’s work. I hope all her current readers know to look for this book in April and buy it. Because I know the general reading public isn’t online and stalking authors the way I do. They’re walking into the bookstore and browsing shelves.
I hope the marketeers are right about this move, but I hope they’re wrong that an Asian cover doesn’t sell books.
July is almost here so it’s time to start the promotional push for Butterfly Swords. At least, I think it’s time. (???)
I took the wise advice of my agent who told me she’s never really seen an impact on a book due to having or not having a magazine ad. So I took ads out of the budget and instead invested in a publicity muse and a graphic designer.
You know how authors with big releases have publicists and/or assistants that take care of non-writing tasks for them? Well….I can’t actually afford a publicist or an assistant LOL. But between revisions and drafts and the day job, I figured out really quickly that it would be nice to have someone assisting me so I don’t have to do it all myself. Especially true because I’m most likely to overreach on publicity for my first book and try to do too much.
Enter Anna – Publicity Muse. She’s a mix of assistant/publicist for a limited engagement. Nowadays with authors worried about blogging and reviews and an online presence, it’s nice to be able to offload that to someone else. She’s setting up guest blogs and interviews for me and will take care of organizing and sending out ARCs to reviewers. So far, worth WAY more than an advertisement in a magazine. And it’s not even October yet.
My second ace is Jaxadora Designs. I enlisted author Jax Cassidy who’s also a graphic designer to put my bookmarks and postcards together. I absolutely love them. She made Butterfly Swords look like it’s a movie up for an award at the Cannes Film Festival. I love her website and book covers so I knew she’d do an awesome job.
I know there is a lot of debate in the writer-verse about what type of promo is necessary and effective. Since this is my first time, I’m trying a few strategies and keeping watch on what works. It’s kind of a fun scientific exercise in and of itself, no?
And, you know….getting bookmarks and such…it feels like part of the ritual of a debut release. Like the pinning of the corsage before prom. Maybe I could get through prom without a corsage, but I don’t want to be the only girl without one.
In the meantime, I’ve been writing and writing. So everyone’s happy.
The unveiling of the Butterfly Swords cover snared some cool mentions on the interwebs. First from Dear Author who posted the cover along with some well wishes for romances set in the Far East.
Next and quite exciting, Jade Lee posted it on her blog and also gave it a mention on the Harlequin Blaze authors blog today in her post about Breaking the Rules. Her lovely quote appears on the back cover.
I also found a mention on a Thai romance blog, Mostly Romance. I used Google to translate the page (gotta love Google), but can’t seem to figure out if they’re excited or skeptical about the premise. Any fluent Thai speakers out there? Anyone?
And finally — quite excited about this — the back of my head appears on this month’s RWR magazine! The picture shows me receiving the Golden Heart award from Sabrina Jeffries. I know I’m being silly, but I’ve never appeared on the front cover of any magazine. I’m waiting anxiously for mine which hasn’t arrive yet so I can show Little Sis and she can laugh.
I’ve just sent out issue #2 of the Jeannie Lin newsletter. Interestingly enough, readers don’t constantly hover over the internet and live, eat, and breathe books….hmmm…fancy that! Even my friends in the writing community don’t constantly visit forums, so several readers have contacted me to express excitement over the October release of Butterfly Swords with a note to “remind them” when it’s time.
That brings me back to a time before I became immersed in Romancelandia. When I only knew books were coming out because I browsed through the bookstore and saw a new book by my favorite authors. Only once in a blue moon would I know in advance.
Hence, the newsletter. My little gossip column and monthly reminder.
In the June issue:
The dates and locations of my first book signings
A special promotion for newsletter subscribers
Find out how Robert Downey Jr. and Jeannie Lin are related
What happened on my recent L.A. tour
What? You don’t receive the newsletter yet? Sign up here:
I’ve experienced a sudden productivity spike, which I attribute to a couple of things. First of all, the day job is picking up. This means I can’t lollygag all day. So with less time to write, I write more.
Second, I’m still riding the adrenaline high from the new contract for two novels and two shorts. See how smoothly I worked that in?
1) I hit “The End” on a 10K-ish short for Undone just this Saturday. I’m really happy how it turned out. And I wrote a whole story and not a single swordfight.
2) I started author amendments on Butterfly Swords and I’ve decided that my fight scenes rock. There. I said it.
3) My friend Bria Quinlan introduced me to Tweetdeck and now I’m starting to see Twitter in a whole new light. I also glance up every time that little cricket noise indiciates someone, somewhere has said something.
4) I’m completely addicted to placing bids on the Brenda Novak Online auction for diabetes. The Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood basket is still available, by the way. Hidden among the goodies is a 3 chapter critique from myself, Cynthia Justlin, and Amanda Brice — the Power of Three. We all critiqued for each other prior to entering the Golden Heart in ’09 and we all finaled. I myself have won a critique from Pulitzer Prize nominee, Harvey Stanbrough. I’m really, really nervous at the thought of sending him 15 pages. What to send? Hopping zombie paranormal? Tang Dynasty romance? Or the woman’s fiction I’m urging my Little Sis to co-write with me?
5) Oh — about the previous item. I’m exploiting Little Sis’ pregnancy hormones to get her to start the women’s fiction historical we’ve always been talking about for years. Mwahahahaha!
6) Promotion — I got my first newsletter out to the 14 people on my list. Hello happy 14! I really hope a couple more people will join. Do it now and you can receive the coolest souvenir charm ever. See Special Promotion
7) More promotional items — I came up with another idea for a giveaway. Official Tang Dyansty of Jeannie Lin maps! I always dreamed of having a book with a fantasy map at the front….but since there isn’t one, I thought it might be fun to make a nice one on parchment paper for giveaways and such. Here’s what I have so far on the draft. What do you think?
By the way, the icons on the map — I’m very proud of the technique I’ve devised to create those. I still have to hand write in the major sites from the stories — Changan, Luoyang, Longyou, Yumen Guan, the Bamboo Sea, and Qinghai.
