— Josh Kilen :: Stories and Ideas

Archive
Writing

How to Sell Art Your Way (Why Your Art Should Be Sold)

By: Josh Kilen
27-10-2011
Artists, Marketing/Connecting, Story-Narrative, Writing

how do you be an artist without selling outI’ve received some flack for being a salesman. They don’t mean it in a good way either.  If you read anything I write, you would know that the typical “salesman” with his focus on the transaction and just “getting the sale” is the farthest thing from what I advocate.

That said, I think sales can be a wonderful thing, if you focus on being good.

It’s like the Wizard of OZ. Glenda was a good witch, but to most people witches are inherently bad. If I walked up to you told you that I’m a witch, you’d probably give me the same look as if I walked up to you and told you that I’m a salesman. But witches, like people, are judged by their actions.

What are the right actions?

If you treat your artistic enterprise as a way to build, cultivate, and sustain relationships then you are acting like a good salesperson. If you treat customers as transactions and numbers, just trying to get their money, you are a bad salesperson (and rigthly deserve to have a house dropped on you).

I know a lot of people struggle with the idea of sales. I know this for two reasons 1) I used to struggle on a daily basis and 2) there are about 400 million sales and business books in existence trying to coax you into making yourself okay with with thinking about people as numbers.

So why do we worry about sales?

Because, if we create something amazing then we want to share it with the world. We could do that for free but our world doesn’t really work like that. We want to make a living as artists, creating value and beauty, but how do you find the people that want to pay for that beauty?

This is the problem.

Here’s how you can still be an artist (however you do your art) and run a successful enterprise at the same time:

1) Figure Out What Makes You Unique

What is it about your style, method, angle, your eye, your soul that creates something new. What about your art do people connect with?

This is your artistic vision and you know it, even if you haven’t defined it.

Example (My artistic vision): My writing is slightly humorous, with some quirk, taking different ideas and smashing them together. Everything I write shows a raging desire to see personal transformation in everyone. My passion is to see people change their lives for the better and begin living out incredible stories that they would be proud to share.

2) Find What People Like to Buy

You have to go where the people are. What are they buying? What’s the trend?

People don’t understand what quality is, not always. But sometimes they get sucked in.

Case in point: I wrote and published a series of bedtime stories. These are not run-a-way best sellers for many reasons, but my kid likes them and I honestly think that parents would benefit from reading them to their kids. This steps in line with my artistic vision.

I also have a desire to pay the bills. So I went to Amazon to see what was popular. My thought was that I could write a book about an up and coming topic that might sell better in the short run. I identified a couple of areas (ones in which I had some expertise as well) but held off writing until I found #3.

3) Apply your Uniqueness to the Trend

You must try this. At the very least you can see if it inspires you to do something great.

In my case, I found a couple of topics but I wasn’t exactly thrilled. One topic was social media marketing, the other was business productivity/self-help. My artistic vision will not allow me to do work without it, so I immediately applied my unique passion to these topics. Things began to blossom from that decision.

Self-help is a much maligned topic, and for good reason. It’s part and parcel with helping people realize their best stories, but it always seems so vanilla and blase. I almost dismissed it until I realized that there is one thing I know about that would really help people; getting past the panic to get things done. Suddenly, I found a new topic to write and it fits beautifully with my artistic vision. In fact, the whole book has transformed into a very personal and auto-biographical exploration. If I didn’t take other, commercially successful topics seriously then I wouldn’t have created this wonderful work.

Don’t Be A Sellout

You might look at someone who finds topics to write about or finds mediums for their art that are popular (like driftwood bottle cap openers) as sell outs. But as long as they bring their unique vision to the new endeavor, they are true artists. You can live in both worlds comfortably as long as you don’t forget who you are, you don’t leave behind your artistic vision.

 

Read More

The Danger of Authors Pretending To Be Publishers

By: Josh Kilen
17-10-2011
Marketing/Connecting, Publishing, Story-Narrative, Writing

Authors, welcome to the game.

It’s hard, and brutal. If you’re not careful it will swallow you whole.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Being a “self-published author” looked kind of glamorous, especially if you read stories about the likes of Amanda Hocking, JA Konrath, or John Locke selling millions of books in just a few months. After five or ten of those articles, my head swam with large figures as I counted my make-believe money, and imagined the love and adoration of my dream fans.

So I sat down, wrote a book, learned how to format it for eReaders, designed my own cover in Photoshop, and finally published my novel.

Hooray!

And then something curious happened.

Absolutely Nothing

A few sales trickled in, mostly from friends and family, certainly nothing I could live on. I was not easily discouraged though and published another. But I found the same results. I “promoted” and got the word out, sales ticked up slightly but nothing like I imagined it would be.

Depression and disillusionment set in, where are the riches and glory?

Here’s the problem.

I was acting like an author, but not a publisher

Self-pub authors do publish their own work, making them publishers in the most basic sense, but simply publishing doesn’t make them a good publisher. It’s like saying that stringing some words together into a story makes someone a good author. It means you can write, it doesn’t make you good.

From what I can see, good publishers think about:

Good publishers worry about catalogs and overall sales.

Good publishers worry about how to get out more product before the new stuff is swallowed whole.

Good publishers do what it takes to get the book in front of people that want to read it.

Good publishers do a lot more than hope, dream, and wait for sales. Good publishers think about the bigger picture, they promote like crazy for their authors, and are always looking for the next big hit.

Authors need to start thinking like a good publishers, and eventually they will become a good publishers.

Here are some tips and ideas about how to start thinking like a good publisher:

1) Pay Attention to Your Customer

First and foremost. Above all else.

If you really want to control or influence your sales, find out WHO is buying your book(s), then find HOW they decided to buy it. From there you can make more intelligent decisions about how to promote your work to the right people in the right way.

This is not easy and why major companies (major publishers included) spend millions in market research etc… they do a lot of small things that make a big difference to the end user.

2) Write a lot more, with a Twist

Write like you’ve never wrote before. If you read writing blogs this may be the most common advice because it’s true. You should spend every waking moment you have getting new work out.

Or partner with co-writers to write faster. Use Google Docs to remotely collaborate on a novel or series with them and use the synergy to put out more titles.

Or find people that want to put out a book but just need a little encouragement, and publish the book for them. Walk them through the process of writing or find a ghostwriter (maybe yourself if you have time) to do the hard work.

The point is… get new titles out, period. Any way you can. Think like a publisher, not an author.

I’ve heard it said once that “Hope is not a sound business strategy”. While I do think that luck plays a big role in breakout success, it’s not enough. With all due respect to Konrath, sometimes luck needs a helping hand.

If you don’t want to market heavily or ride many waves of changing business practice, you have to hope that luck will swing your way. The best way to do that is to get new titles out all the time.

However, I think for the few that do BOTH of these, they will find long term success as a publisher. And as an author.

 

Josh Kilen writes books that help people live better stories. His most popular works are his bedtime stories for kids.  Meant to be read night after night in serial fashion, these novella length stories are broken into easy to tell 5-10 minute episodes that always end on a cliffhanger. Your kids will be clamoring for the next episode. In addition to more bedtime stories, Josh is working on a book about Social Media Marketing for artists and authors, and he’s finishing an epic tome on artistic motivation using story and game design.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More

Is Truth Better Than Fiction?

By: Josh Kilen
22-09-2011
Marketing/Connecting, Story-Narrative, Writing

truth and fiction in writingI read a tweet saying there’s not enough stories about people connecting, coming together, and fighting a common enemy. The context was community stories and wanting more stories about coming together as a group.

That got me thinking, did the writer mean that there was not enough true stories about such things?

Because the annals of fiction are filled with such stories; the lone dissident leading the rebellion, or a nation coming together to fight a common enemy. And here’s a secret, I hold many of those fictional stories in higher esteem than many of the true-life stories I’ve heard.

The very fact that it’s true can inspire us but I’m not sure can necessarily motivate us to action.  True stories tell us what is possible, and they can tell us what to do, but they lack the crucial quality of transporting the reader outside of himself (and his experiences) to treat what is not possible as reality, if only in his head.

In a true story, based on real life, we see the situation in parallel with ours, but with all the inconsistencies as well.

A fictional story is treated at once as “not real” but our minds deal with it in a very real way. We unconsciously make the impossible, possible. A very useful trick I think.

Do we need more true stories of community? I suppose it wouldn’t hurt. Do we need more stories  that inspire us, as well as make us believe in the impossible, that we can make what is not real, real?

That, I believe, is essential.

 

Read More

The Group vs The Individual Story

By: Josh Kilen
19-09-2011
Story-Narrative, Writing

Every morning on Twitter, I ask people how I can help them.  A recent request asked for more stories about communities of people persevering, more stories that share the gift of groups. The Tweeter thinks we’re addicted to lone hero stories, and miss out on the gift of groups.

This of course got me thinking, can a story focus exclusively on a group? Can a group be a protagonist? We can certainly write stories with groups in them, but I believe that a whole group as the protagonist would be too much.

We couldn’t focus on the details.

It’s like looking at a forest across the lake. At first you can see the entire panorama, the grand sweep of nature’s majesty, but your eye is almost immediately drawn to the details. The individual trees, the large rock in the distance, the small islands in the lake, or the trees on the islands, all these jump out. Your eye needs something to focus on.

People need a face, an individual to connect to and a group is only a collection of individuals. (Side Note: Perhaps another reason for Jesus Christ to be sent, to put a face, a hero, to the idea of God…)

A great story is someone (or a group with someone highlighted) overcoming massive conflict to get something he/she/they want(s). That someone can be part of a group, or fighting for/with a group, but never a group itself.

Human beings are simply designed to focus on the individual, therefore those are the stories we connect with and enjoy.

 

Read More

Are you telling the right story?

By: Josh Kilen
15-09-2011
Business, Marketing/Connecting, Story-Narrative, Writing

Human beings are designed to focus on the individual, therefore stories focusing on individuals are the ones we connect with and enjoy. But how often do we tell stories that have no focus, or focus too broadly on general ideas or groups of people?

Apply this to your business.

Does your marketing focus on groups or individuals?

Do your sales messages talk about single people or large groups and broad ideas?

Focus on one person when you create business marketing and messages (stories), and write for that person, telling them about themselves. Just think about it, then do it. Your audience will be grateful.

 

Read More

Why Anguish Is Good

By: Josh Kilen
12-09-2011
Story-Narrative, Writing

In stories, anguish or pain can only be  effectively dealt with if neither are the exclusive focus of the story. Anguish is better introduced as a temporary state, something that must be overcome.

In the same way we must deal with pain, as a temporary situation, a signal that the enemy has besieged us or attacked.

It’s also our signal to strike back.

 

Read More

Painfully Bad Business Stories… But At Least They’re Long Winded and Boring

By: Josh Kilen
16-05-2011
Business, Marketing/Connecting, Story-Narrative, Writing
Long winded, boring business that don't say plainly what they can do for you

Image from Yahoo!

In doing some research on a company, I came across some vexing examples of written communication.  I begged the words to stop, but they laughed, gave me an inappropriate gesture, and rolled along anyway.

Here’s an example of their awe, if not headache, inspiring text (company name hidden to protect the guilty):

 

[Company] is the leading provider of web-hosted sales and use tax management services. [Company] mission is to provide end-to-end tax management solutions to businesses of all sizes and transform the sales, use and VAT tax process for customers with cost-effective state-of-the-art solutions. With its innovative, patented technology, [Company]helps companies from every industry eliminate the complexity of tax management by automating and providing accurate tax calculation, painless administration, effortless reporting and, timely remittance. [emphasis added]

Ugh. And there’s more:

Our Software-as-a-Service tax solutions integrate directly into existing workflow processes; eliminating the tedious work and complexity of calculating, collecting, reporting on, and remitting taxes across multiple jurisdictions. Offering integrations with more financial, e-commerce and point-of-sales applications than any other transactional tax solution on the market, [Company] is focused on providing the most convenient, accurate and affordable way for businesses to address all their statutory sales and use tax requirements. [emphasis added]

All the Company’s communications are like this.  From the website, to case studies, to marketing materials, they each offer something equally painful for the reader.

But what can they do instead?

Luckily this lengthy, eye-gouging verbiage can be boiled down to understandable, and decidedly unlengthy ideas:

  • Calculating sales tax from different counties, cities, and states is a waste of your time.  Who wants to worry about math when you have customers to help?
  • We take away that feeling that you’re missing something in your sales tax calculations.
  • There are only a few options for you; calculate all these different rates yourself, hire one of your kid’s friends to do a semi-professional job, buy expensive software, or let us handle the whole thing for half that price.
  • No more stress for you, no more worry.
  • This is one less thing you have to have on your plate.  We guarantee it [I didn't see this anywhere on the site, but it's a good idea].

The Bottom Line of Tragedy

Basically they need to let potential customers know that calculating sales tax is a pain in the ass, not really worth the business owner’s time, so why not let a fully automated service take over what they hate to do?

But this company would rather slip into techno-language and marketing-babble.  Unfortunately, this malady is not a single occurrence. After a quick look at the company’s competitors, it seems all these “leading providers” use the same unpleasant language.

It’s not just the bad writing, they’re also unoriginal

What bothers me even more, more than the painful copywriting or endless talk about “solutions”, is the lack of any unique differentiators.  I went to the top three providers in the sales-tax service field and not one could tell me why they were superior over their competition.  Not one could show how they stood above and apart.

You have to tell your client’s story

You can’t just talk about benefits (especially not using silly marketing lingo) or your solutions. Instead you have to target your audience, speak to them, and then tell them a story about how their lifestory will improve.  And the story you tell has to be unique to your company; it has to be cool, interesting, as well as relevant.

In the coming years there won’t be any way around this and any company who doesn’t start focusing on relationships and developing sustainable friendships will perish.

 

Read More

How to Write a Bio or About Me That Automatically Turns Heads

By: Josh Kilen
14-04-2011
Marketing/Connecting, Story-Narrative, Writing

Are you telling the best story about yourself?Recently I had to help some artists become storytellers.  They were masterful at putting brush to canvas but when it came to telling their unique compelling stories, they were finger painting.  So here’s some good advice for artists and the painfully un-artistic alike, so that you confidently create your story that compels.

Add an a generous helping of conflict

Conflict is absolutely the first thing you should know about creating stories.  Most “Bio’s” or “About Me” pages are all sweet and cuddly, filled with details that don’t get anyone’s attention.  So what if you were born in a regular town, to regular folks, in a regular manner.  I’m already bored.  But this is what most people do.  Without conflict you lose the reader.

Go easy, only a dash, of details

If you want a really compelling story, the details are not important.  Well, details are kind of important but only if they serve the main conflict.  For example, my wife is the oldest of five children, her parents are average folks, she grew up in Port Orchard, WA, now she paints with acrylics and enjoys painting flowers.  All these things are true, but they also make for mostly uninteresting reading.

Make them ask “Why is that?”

Now what if I told you that at one point she almost stopped painting forever?  I suspect that you ask yourself  “Why?”  And that’s what you should strive for when you are creating any story about yourself, to make the reader want to read more.  This is how I would write her general biography:

“I almost stopped painting, forever.  When I was a teenager, I had a horrible experience where someone completely shattered my confidence in my artwork.  For many years I believed the lies that person told me , so much so that I couldn’t bring myself to even touch a paint brush.

“Then, in 2006, this nagging voice in my head wouldn’t let go of the idea that I had something to give, that I was hiding my talent from the world.  Eventually the voice in my head won and I picked up the canvass and paint.  Out of that first flurry of pent up emotion and desire came one of my most loved works, Wildflowers, but I couldn’t stop there.

“Instead of giving in to the fear and negativity of the past, I decided to fight back by creating my idyllic world on canvas, making the world as beautiful as I saw it.   Every so often, the old fears creep back, but all it takes is a little bit of paint on canvas to remind me that the world can be a much more beautiful place.”

Let them get to know the real you

While a little dramatic, this passage is more memorable than just talking about your vital statistics.  People will be able to connect with your story more deeply if you include your pain and your struggles, all those things that you hide away and don’t want everyone to see.  You are an artist, people already see them in your work and this is simply another way that you can connect with people that want to know you.  Let yourself be free to be you.

Here are some quick questions that you can ask yourself when you are trying to craft your story:

  • Where is the conflict? What have you struggled through to get where you are?  Have you had obstacles or setbacks? When did these things happen? (dates and places provide mental foundations for the reader to imagine)
  • Do you have a defining moment in your past? Was there a point where you transitioned from a “non-artist” to artist?
  • What have you overcome to get where you are? Do you have mental or physical handicaps?
  • What is your theme? What one word describes you or your work? (admittedly this is one of the most difficult tasks you can do if you are honest with yourself, but the rewards are a clarity of purpose and thought)
  • Do you have a guiding passage, poem, or phrase that gives you constant inspiration? Why does it work for you?  Is there a story behind that?
  • What about your life or work is interesting, out of the ordinary, curious, or fascinating? People are just as interested in the unknown as in your conflicts.  Where you born in another country?  Did your parents raise you in a basement?  Were you a country-bumpkin and now you are in the city, how does that make you feel? How does that affect your work?

Start with the conflict and then you can get into the other details like theme and curiosity.  If the reader knows a little more of your real story, the deep and dark things that make up you, then they will care more about the other things.  And they will care more about your art.

Read More

How to Write

By: Josh Kilen
07-04-2011
Writing

If you are a writer, don't stop writingSince the book publishing industry has changed so dramatically recently, and the ability to reach vast audiences is at any author’s disposal, it just makes sense that anyone with a story to tell should write.  I don’t have a comprehensive guide for this, all I have to offer are a few tips that have worked for me.

Just Write

Write like it’s the only thing you want to do.  Write because you have to and don’t edit yourself.  It doesn’t matter if everything that comes out is terrible because you can always edit later.  What’s important is that you write and keep writing.

Let the words flow freely and don’t censor yourself

Don’t go back and correct your typos, if you see a grammar mistake, leave it alone.  Fix it later.  Speak in your voice and let that be the most you that you can put into yourself.  Embrace the small mistakes that sometimes can lead to the greatest insights.

If you stop, pick it up again

If you miss a day, start again the next day.  What ever you do, keep going.  Whatever you have done in the past is merely a prologue, it doesn’t write the rest of your story. You do, you decide, you act, you make things happen.  You either write or watch TV, you either write or watch a movie, you either write or you sleep.  Which will it be.

If you have a story to tell then the more you choose writing, the happier you will be

A website that helped me get into the practice was a site a called 750 Words.  It’s based on the thought that if you write about 3 pages everyday, that process will unlock your creativity for the day.  For me, it made me write every day and I will always be grateful to the owner of the site for that.  Check it out here.

I’m sure that I have more, but this will get you started.

Read More

Does Self-Publishing Pay?

By: Josh Kilen
15-03-2011
Marketing/Connecting, Publishing, Writing

Let’s consider a completely fictional Amazon story, but one that has a ring of truthiness.

Mrs. Average Kindle User just got a Kindle for Christmas and absolutely loves it.  At first she downloads a few authors that she knows from print, but she has to pay $9.99 or more for each title.  She loves their books, and downloading book is much cheaper than hardcover, so she’s happy with what she’s getting.  But after a month or two, she starts to look at Amazon’s book recommendations or the eBestsellers lists and notices other authors that she’s never seen before.  She has no idea whether these are “real” authors or not, but if their books are in the top 10 of all bestsellers then they must be worth trying right?  Plus they only charge $.99, which makes her suspicious, but that also makes purchasing less risky. She decides to go ahead and buy it.  She reads the book, finishes in two days actually.  It was a quick read.  And not too bad, at the very least it was worth a buck.

When in need of a quick read down the road, can you guess which novel she’ll buy?  Will she buy James Patterson for $12.99 OR will she go for John Locke or Jack Kilborn or Victorine Leiske at $.99 each?  Now her brain must do some interesting math.  She must decided, usually sub-consciously, whether reading Patterson gives her 13 times more enjoyment than the other books.  Unless an Expensive Book is HIGHLY recommended by a friend, I predict Mrs. Average Kindle User will begin to choose the less expensive authors more often.

I think that a majority of readers will pay more attention to the price of the work as opposed to whether or not it has a publisher.  And instead of being a deterrent, signaling a poor-quality work, the $.99 – $2.99 prices will draw people in at an ever quickening pace.  If the quality matches the price then why pay more?

So, most people don’t have a bias toward self-published books in an electronic format.  This is why currently, James Patterson is #12 on the Amazon eBestseller list and John Locke is #1, and #4, and #9.  And all seven of his books are in the top 100.  Locke is self-published but he’s sold 350,000 copies in the last 2 months, and his popularity is growing.  And I’ll let you in on a secret… his writing is not great.  But people BUY what is popular.  That may change someday but for now I think self-publishing in the electronic format is the way to go.

Read More

Don’t Forget to Sign Up!

Make sure you don't miss out on the every burst of storied brilliance.
Just enter your email address:

Secrets of Getting Published

Click to Get a Bedtime Story!

© 2010 —Josh Kilen :: Stories and Ideas. All Rights Reserved. Powered by Wordpress.

Designed by Wpshower

View in: Mobile | Standard