Word-of-Mouth Sales?

This week, I ran out and got Alex Marwood’s THE DARKEST SECRET. I’ve started reading and am enjoying it. I heard about it via word of mouth.

Well, kind of.

You see, I saw the following tweet by Stephen King: Rereading THE DARKEST SECRET, by Alex Marwood. If there has been a better mystery-suspense story written in this decade, I can’t think of it. Maybe THE PAYING GUESTS, by Sarah Waters. Both transcend the genre.

The book is living up to Mr. King’s praise. All of which has me wondering about the role of social media on book sales. How many times have I bought a book because a friend recommended it? Often times, this comes in the form of an author friend: Reed Farrell Coleman suggested Megan Abbott; SJ Rozan suggested Naomi Hirahara.

Maybe this is all a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. People have, after all, been swapping and recommending books forever. Goodreads has 65 million members and was born of this long-standing tradition.

Yet Goodreads, even with its seemingly large membership, is designed for –– and serves –– book lovers. But does success on Goodreads (strong reviews, etc) lead to sales? The data indicates this can be hit or miss, while NPR radio mentions and reviews in large-scale mainstream publications will produce noticeable results. One interesting item: 84% of Twitter users say they use the platform to look for deals, especially during the holidays.

So where does Stephen King’s twitter praise rank? Certainly, he’s not your typical word-of-mouth promoter. (I follow him mostly because his Donald Trump tweets make me laugh. And think.) I have no way of knowing how many sales it generated for Alex Marwood, but she was sure to tweet back.

Oh, thanks so much!

So I’m assuming King’s praise didn’t hurt.

10-minute (writing) workout?

Infomercials promise workout plans that can change your physique –– and, thus, your life –– in 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes a day. Sound too good to be true? Well, if it talks like a duck and it walks like a duck . . .

But what if we applied this theory, in concept and scale, to novel writing? Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t believe you can get into shape by working out 10 minutes a day. You can get your heart rate up, hold it there, and that’s a good thing. However, life-altering results, it seems to me, require more.

But novel writing? Creating a 100,000-word manuscript, even a rough draft, certainly takes a sustained, concentrated effort. In college, a professor told me he wrote poems because “writing novels takes large chunks of time.” Stephen King, in On Writing, says something to the effect that one should try to write a novel in three months. I understand his reasoning –– writing a book in such a short period of time guarantees that the story, characters, and conflicts remain burned into the forefront of your consciousness. It makes sense.

But it’s just not possible for many writers to write a draft in twelve weeks. Life usually gets in the way, and if it doesn’t, the fact is that few authors write as fast as Stephen King. And most don’t or can’t write as often.

Since many writers don’t have the necessary “large chunks of time,” can there be a 10-minute workout to turn your brilliant idea into a 100,000-word manuscript? Or more specifically, how does one write a novel without multiple hours each day dedicated to the task?

I try to write a book a year. That’s always been the goal. (It seems easier when a contract looms over your head.) And to do this, theoretically, one must only write a page a day for a year. Theoretically. But everyone knows the process on day 1 is not the same on day 51. Or day 251. The plot has a way of jumping up and grabbing you by the throat and squeezing the life out of you every hundred pages or so. (Or it does that to me any way.)

So I concentrate on time –– two hours a day. I can get 500 to 750 words of fresh copy written (or read through 30 pages) in two concentrated hours. It’s what I shoot for.

I’d love to hear what others who lack “large chunks of time” do to get their novels written.