From an interview by Kelly Spitzer - used by permission

Lisa McMann is the author of Wake (Simon Pulse, 2008) and its forthcoming sequel Fade (Simon Pulse, 2009), paranormal young adult novels with a “splash of romance.” Wake is a NY Times Bestseller, a Borders “Original Voices” nominee for the month of May, and is eligible for the Original Voice of the Year award. It has received favorable reviews from Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly, among other places, and is sold in bookstores all over the USA and Canada. Lisa is currently on tour for Wake. Find details on her website or Myspace page.

Wake has achieved tremendous success. Will you give us a brief plot overview, and discuss the marketing strategies and hooks utilized in launching Wake to bestseller status?

Seventeen-year-old Janie gets sucked into other people’s dreams. She can’t stop it. She can’t tell anybody about what happens – they’d never believe her, or worse, they’d think she’s a freak. So Janie lives on the fringe, cursed with an ability she doesn’t want and can’t control. Until she gets sucked into the nightmare of a guy named Cabe, and for the first time ever, Janie is no longer just an onlooker in someone else’s twisted psyche, she is a participant.

Marketing was a serious team effort. From the day I got the book deal I started marketing. I went out to find my readers on MySpace, message boards, Facebook…meeting teens, adults who love to read teen lit, librarians, teachers, booksellers, reviewers – even though all I had to sell at the moment was a paragraph-long hook from a query letter. I knew I had one shot at this – and if I failed, it wouldn’t be for lack of trying.

I began this journey like any other novelist – thinking that if the book is going to sell, it’s totally up to me. I expected to spend my entire advance on promotion. I came up with some catch phrases. “Don’t dream and drive” plays tightly into the story, and I used it on promotional t-shirts, postcards, posters and dogtags. I held regular contests on MySpace and gave away ARCs and bling. And most of all, I talked to people. I made personal connections. One very cool thing about this biz is that authors don’t have to be in competition with each other. There are tons of readers and readers don’t have to choose one author over another – they can read both. So I spent a lot of time discussing other YA books I liked with my future readers, and that is not only enjoyable to me but it grew my fanbase before I had a right to have fans.

Once Pulse decided WAKE would be a lead title for them, we worked together and it was terrific – I found readers, they catered to them and grew them exponentially. It was a delicious combination. I am more than lucky to have had this experience. I wasn’t expecting it, and I continued marketing the book as if I were going it alone. I worked very hard. I think that’s really important.

Where did you learn these self-marketing techniques?

By watching other authors. Reading as much as I could from other authors’ websites, blogs, etc. And having been a Realtor, I knew a lot already about the importance of establishing a presence for a product. Much of it is common sense — you use the channels you have or can create to build buzz. There are many great books available on the topic, too. And for those that can’t stomach it, one can always hire a publicist. Check out Bella Stander’s website — she offers all sorts of help with book promotion and public speaking, and she’s a wonderful woman who really helped me out when I found out I was going to tour (and would have to speak in public!! Talk about overwhelming fear). I highly recommend her.

Writers having to promote their own material is a fairly new trend, isn’t it?

I have heard this, yes, but I don’t know how new it is. I also have a hard time imagining someone writing a book, being one of the few to land a publishing contract, and then not doing everything in her power to sell the thing. So I would imagine that writers have always done some means of promotion for their own material, at least through word of mouth, but with the Internet, it has become much easier to do things at a very low cost, and more of that falls to the author now. I’ve heard publishers are on a tighter profit margin. I believe something like only one out of five books actually earns money. So yeah, I think that promotional stuff has gotten far more concentrated to the lead titles and many more authors are left to fend for themselves.

Let’s talk about MySpace, Facebook, and other internet venues where people congregate. I have a hard time understanding the allure of such sites, but they proved vital in getting Wake noticed. How important is it for an author to have web presence in today’s market? Do you think an author’s success rate can depend on it?

I think it is absolutely vital to have a web presence if your goal is to sell books or be read. If your goal is simply to say, “I have a book published,” then no web presence is necessary.

Many aspiring authors have a distaste for MySpace, Facebook, etc. One thing I did NOT want to do was get on MySpace and maintain one more site (on top of website, blog, Amazon.com blog, etc). But I bit the bullet and once I got my MySpace rhythm, my attitude changed in a hurry. Think about it, Kelly — if you cross-posted this blog on a MySpace blog, you could reach a whole new group of readers and have a great way (through bulletins and blogs) to alert all of your friends to a new post with the press of a button. Yes, it takes time and persistence to build up your readership, but you can target the people who would most likely be interested in reading what you write. And with MySpace, you have tangible means of watching that readership grow through friendships. A few months later, I started a Facebook page too.

I know that I have already sold hundreds of copies of books to readers who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of me — these are my MySpace and Facebook friends. It’s all about connections. Five of my MySpace friends (whom I’ve never met in person before) showed up on my tour to buy books and have them signed — and most of them drove more than an hour to see me. They made special WAKE T-shirts and sent flowers and chocolates to the bookstores where I would be signing. They take photos of themselves holding WAKE and post them on their pages — free advertising — and suddenly I’m not just reaching that one friend, but all their friends, too. They absolutely LOVE to read — and if I hadn’t been on MySpace, I would really be missing out — not just on sales and readers, but on friendships. I care about these teens and I have a place where I can communicate with them regularly — it’s much more personal than a blog or website. And now that the book is out, my MySpace page has become an automatic stop for those readers I don’t know. I have my MySpace address in the back of the book. It’s amazing that now, after a year of seeking out readers, the readers are seeking me out. The buzz is there. The momentum grows and builds and when book two hits the shelves in February, hundreds (thousands?) of my MySpace friends will be waiting anxiously with me for FADE, just like I waited anxiously with them for Stephenie Meyer’s ECLIPSE to come out, and Cassandra Clare’s CITY OF ASHES, and Harry Potter 7, etc. And the best part is that these sites are totally free advertising.

Is this sort of thing better for a YA author than it would be for authors in other genres or age groups? Maybe. But successful authors like Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath swear by it, too.

It’s worth it for me. But some people just can’t stomach it. I can respect that.

Are you introverted? How do you recommend an author overcome his/her shyness?

I’m not a complete introvert, but yes, I’d much rather be alone than in a group (or standing in front of 100 skeptical teenagers). I was so afraid to do a book signing, I couldn’t breathe. It was absolutely terrifying. Just thinking about it made my stomach churn. And I feel for the person who is horribly shy — I really do. But the question I’d ask is this: How badly do you want it? Do you want to be a successful author badly enough to suck it up and talk to people? Before you got your book deal, how badly did you want it? Don’t forget that hunger. Put your computer down and get thee to a Toastmaster’s meeting. Go to your kid’s school and talk to the class about what it’s like to be a writer — I don’t care if they are Kindergarteners, just get out there and get used to standing in front of humans. Walk into a bookstore with a copy of your book, introduce yourself and spend thirty seconds telling the clerk or manager about it. Sit your family down in the living room, stand in front of them, and say five coherent sentences about your book to them. Then do ten the next day.

There are millions of people who would give anything to be in your shoes. How badly do you want this? Enough to step out of your comfort zone and go get it? Enough that you don’t want to have to start this process over again because you were too afraid to promote your first book and it’s failing? If you want it, if you want this life as an author, if you ever want to sell another book, your goal needs to be this: You must do everything in your power to make this book succeed, because if you don’t, and this book fails, nobody gets fired…except you. The ultimate responsibility lies with you. Sure, books still fail even when an author does everything he can. But if you did everything you could possibly do and the book still fails, at least you will never look back on the experience with regret and say, “I wish I had tried harder.”

Try harder now.

Lisa McMann is the author of WAKE and its upcoming sequel, FADE (Spring, 2009).

She was born and raised in Michigan and has been a blueberry picker, bindery worker, bookseller, and Realtor. In 2004, Lisa and her family moved to the Phoenix area and now she writes from a green chair overlooking the Superstition Mountains.

Sometimes she wears a cowboy hat.
She’s not really a cowboy.
She just likes hats.

Many of Lisa’s short stories are published online and in print, like the one about homelessness. It won a cool Templeton award.

Now why not go friend Lisa over at MySpace or at Facebook?