Your A Game: winning promo for genre fiction

YOUR A GAME

winning promo for genre fiction

by

Damon Suede & Heidi Cullinan

Your A Game: winning promo for genre fiction by Damon Suede & Heidi Cullinan

Published by Evil Mastermind, LLC

First Publication: 30 June 2016

Edited by Sasha Knight

Cover design by Phil Pascuzzo of Pepco Studios

Book formatting by Booknook.biz

ISBN 978-1-945043-01-7 (Epub)

ISBN 978-1-945043-00-0 (Mobi)

Copyright © 2016 by Damon Suede and Heidi Cullinan, All Rights Reserved

Website: www.your-A-game.com

Contents

User’s Manual

The Game

The Odds

The Prize

The Challenge

The Play Styles

The Paths

SECTION I: BRAND (baiting your hook)

The Origins of BS

The Evolution of Advertising

Positive Peer Pressure

CORE: defining your draw

Niche

Building Blocks

Brand Plan

Brand Name

FACETS: building your kit

Language: telling your story

Style Sheet: showing your appeal

IMPACT: making your mark

Your Website

Co-branding

Healthy A-Game Relationships: family & significant others

Evolution: your brand span

SECTION II: PRESENCE (staking your claim)

The Case for a Public Presence

EFFECT: playing your part

Your Edge: turning flaws into fuel

Archetype: your game face

Involvement: taking the stage

Your A-gang: cohorts & colleagues

Gossip

Dressing Up: presence points your way

IMPRESSION: collecting your tools

Dress Code: your physical wardrobe

Digital Imprint: your virtual wardrobe

Online Press Kit (OPK)

Headshots

Voice

Messaging

Your Media Hooks

Media Training: the missing key

Gear

PLATFORM: planting your flag

Online Footprint

Social Media Presence

Blogs

Affiliations

Negative Space

Networking Dos & Don’ts

Assistants & Helpers

SECTION III: MARKET (finding your fans)

Art Not Science

Sensing Your Market

Reading Your Niche

Networking: the power of nodes

APPEAL: attracting your audience

Push vs. Pull Marketing

The Whole Sale

Genre Ambassador

Earn Your Readers: the magic of self-interest

Reader Communities Online

APPROACH: reaching your readers

Genre Readership: claiming your turf

Online Marketing: sharing your mojo

ACCESS: facing your fans

Conventions: meeting your tribe

Public Readings

Newsletter: sharing your updates

Street Teams

Local Events

Open Water: beyond your genre puddle

SECTION IV: PROJECT (winning your prize)

Uniquely Familiar

High Concept: the secret handshake

Free Prize: the power of soft innovation

Loyalty Rules

Scarcity & Abundance

PACKAGE: enhancing your work

The Experience Economy

Never Sell Your Book

Hacking the Market

Your Book’s Hook

Project Guarantee

Bait: title, tagline, logline, blurb

Book Cover Artwork

Partnerships: twofer tea

PROCESS: planning your campaign

Book Press Kit

Your A-game Campaign Timeline

Online Promotion

Getting Reviews

Wrap-Up: no rest for the wicked

PROMO: boosting your signal

Swag

Vendors

Networking with Colleagues

Author Blurbs & Endorsements

Awards

Favors

Pushing the Boundaries: new worlds to conquer

The Rules

The Long Game

APPENDICES

Appendix A: Terms

Appendix B: Game Plans

Game Plan: Performer’s A Game

Game Plan: Achiever’s A Game

Game Plan: Socializer’s A Game

Game Plan: Explorer’s A Game

Appendix C: Further Reading

Brand

Design & Typography

Presence

Typology & Archetypes

Market

Publishing & Entertainment

Project

Creativity & Cognition

Game Theory & Gamification

You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It’s the playing that’s irresistible. Dicing from one year to the next with the things you love, what you risk reveals what you value.

Jeanette Winterson – The Passion

User’s Manual

Congratulations! By opening this book, you’ve made a strategic move toward the career you want and the kind of success that makes genre fiction fun.

Most of what people think of as fiction is genre fiction: popular, plot-driven literature written to meet audience expectations for a type of story. Mystery, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, thrillers, horror, westerns, adventure—any narrative where authors and readers agree to dance around a particular imaginative flagpole in a specific sort of tent with a certain set of costumes counts as genre fiction.

This book happened because of the following beliefs.

Every author has a unique A game only they can play (because it’s your A game).

Professional publishing has rules and obstacles that demand a winning strategy to beat the odds (because it’s your A game).

Promo must be fun and interactive, or it won’t happen (because it’s your A game).

With a subject this broad, we’re going to cover a lot of terrain, so we’ll start our journey with a board’s-eye view of what’s ahead.

First we’re going to glance over the philosophy that built Your A Game and the ways promo varies given different author goals and tactics. Following this introduction, the book is divided into four sections on the components of a successful promo strategy:

BRAND: defining what is remarkable about you and your work

PRESENCE: embodying your brand in public for best results

MARKET: extending your presence to reach your ideal audience

PROJECT: releasing work to your market that sells itself and expands your brand

In addition to these sections, at the back of the book we include several appendices: terms, game plans, and recommended reading with additional resources on our website.

Some parts of the book go into comprehensive detail about business, technology, history, or theory in ways that explain/support/expand upon our suggestions. If the nitty-gritty bores you, feel free to skip those. You may find them more illuminating on revisit or when your promo adventures make you more curious about the crazy logic of the industry.

We’ve done our best to facilitate whatever kind of skipping around, shaving off, or doubling down works for you. We designed this book to allow fast-forwards, detours, and U-turns. We’ll give some specific paths to consider for your journeys, but feel free to make your own way. Take what works for you and use it to find the answers and advice you need at this moment in your career.

Additionally, throughout the book you’ll find advice that has saved our bacon time and again in the form of Boosts, Traps, and Level Ups:

BOOST: advanced, play-tested A-game insight, fact, or strategy that will save you time/energy/resources.

TRAP: obstacles, caveats, danger zones, and misconceptions that a savvy A-gamer learns to avoid for sanity and safety.

LEVEL UP: razzle-dazzle career flourishes that require extra effort, but may score bonus points in unexpected ways.

In the game of promoting genre fiction to a large audience, there’s more than one way to play. In fact, there are infinite ways to play. No two games or players are the same. There are no recipes, no shortcuts, no cookie-cutter solutions or pithy sound bites that will grant you the success you want…just you, your unique talents, and your A game.

We hope this book will help you see book promo through fresh eyes. Our wish is that it brings out the best in you and inspires ingenuity, diligence, and passion, winning you trophies that won’t fit on any mantel. Most of all, we ask you to remember what we consider this book’s most sacred truth: the only requirement for your A game is participation.

You can’t win if you don’t play.

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. — Katie Salen Tekinbas & Eric Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals

The Game

Like most genre fictioneers, when we started out, we learned by looking around us. Inevitably, what worked for some tripped up others. Magic bullets misfired. Shortcuts led off cliffs. The go-to social media platform kept switching and imploding. Every sure-fire promo solution devolved into intrusive cliché. We realized careers (and books and people) are never interchangeable. The one constant we observed: the winners played the game.

We want to help you promote your genre fiction in a way that fits your skills and flaws. We’ve tried to create the unique guide to genre-fiction promo we wish someone had handed us when we were fresh on the scene.

We have chosen games not as a metaphor, but as a model. Like promo, games are something you choose to undertake, with rules and strategy and other players to navigate as you struggle to claim your prize. Surrounded by allies and enemies, gamers must pit their wits against shifting odds with imagination and courage. Games present crazy stakes, cooperative conflict, and an artificial danger; the disappointments may be real, but no one gets disemboweled because their bookmarks didn’t arrive in time for a signing. With a personal strategy and a sense of fun, everyone who participates comes out ahead. Everyone plays a game by choice, and no one brings their A game by accident.

BOOST: You are in control of your own career, for better or worse.

The Winning Strategy

In 1984, scientist Robert Axelrod published a book called The Evolution of Cooperation, a study which set game theory on its ear by explaining the reasons human cooperation persists despite the aggression and competition we associate with evolutionary survival of the fittest. Axelrod hosted an extended tournament of fellow academics that allowed them to play out strategies in a non-zero sum game known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma.[1]

For this tournament, a Russian mathematician named Anatol Rapoport submitted a strategic program he named Tit for Tat, which contained only four lines of computer code and completely dominated the competition. After the participants analyzed the results, Axelrod hosted a rematch in which players tried to best the Tit for Tat model…and failed. Tit for Tat remained the clear winner even after its plan of action had been dissected by opponents. In fact, its barebones clarity contributed to its viral efficacy: the more it won, the more others understood that they should emulate it. Its success was infectious.

How could a four-line program win so handily? Give and take. Tit for Tat’s strategy was to cooperate with the opponent in round one and then continue by mimicking the opponent’s moves in subsequent turns. Essentially this is a child’s idea of justice (hence the name), but the genius of it was that while playing against many different strategic models, Tit for Tat operated with only two rules:

cooperate with other players initially

reciprocate in subsequent rounds based on the other players’ choices[2]

Even if injured, Tit for Tat forgave slights and betrayal as soon as they’d been punished, which forced other players to make amends by cooperating again. That forgiveness snuffed out any retaliations that would waste time and points. Nevertheless, retaliation had to occur because bullies or cheaters would take advantage of a naive optimist.

Simple reciprocity succeeds without doing better than anyone with whom it interacts. It succeeds by eliciting cooperation from others, not by defeating them. — Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation

Tit for Tat won with a good, old-fashioned show of courtesy. In game after game, hard-coded graciousness propelled Tit for Tat to a record number of points against players of every strategic bent.

In analyzing the reasons for Tit for Tat’s double triumph, Axelrod identified the four winning characteristics of any dynamic game:

Grace: cooperate and never be the first to attack or deflect. Selfishness backfires. Never cheat your allies. (Be nice!)

Responsiveness: retaliate when injured but forgive as soon as cooperation resumes. (Respond appropriately and instantly.)

Clarity: don’t get too clever or try to predict other players’ moves. Keep it simple. (Don’t get in your own way.)

Generosity: play fair and don’t envy the other players’ accomplishments. Celebrate other Tit for Tat wins. (Treat other players as partners.)

In other words, Tit for Tat is the root of every A game.[3]

No matter how complicated your genre-fiction marketing scheme, how complex your personal situation, how skilled or unskilled you are at promotion, or how many times you’ve read this book, at the beginning and end of every day these four principles—grace, responsiveness, clarity, generosity—will be essential to your success. Cooperate and reciprocate.

Successful business strategy is about actively shaping the game you play, not just playing the game you find. —Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff, Co-opetition

Zeros & Heroes

The first step in viewing the game of genre-fiction promotion is to address the question of what type of game it is, or isn’t. Specifically, we must address the common misconception that publishing is a zero-sum game.

Zero-sum games divide a limited pool of available prizes between the players. Like slicing a pie, every piece cannot be claimed again; for one person to win, another must lose. None of the players’ strategic decisions can increase or decrease the resources available to them during the game, so they compete against each other for their slice. For any triumph there must be a loss and each champion leaves losers in their wake. Scarcity defines and limits every potential success.

By definition, a zero-sum game is a closed system because the profits and strategies are limited: winner takes all.

Non-zero-sum games allow resources to be created and destroyed. Since new elements, players, and strategies can be introduced, a win by one player doesn’t require a loss by another. These games often produce collaboration within competition because awareness and cooperation maximize the rewards to everyone participating. Abundance spawns fractal possibilities.

By definition, any open system like publishing is a non-zero-sum game: many wins are possible because new rewards, new resources, and new players can enter and alter the game’s flow at any time.

Challenge your assumptions about publishing as a zero-sum game by considering these questions about the strategic challenges of genre promotion:

Does publishing have a finite pool of readers, writers, manuscripts, genres, shelves, formats, publishers?

If someone else sells a million copies of their book, does that limit the number of copies you can sell?

Do authors who attack or obstruct other authors have successful fiction careers?

Do genre readers restrict their purchases by any one author, subgenre, or publisher? Is there a limited supply of humans who read?

Abundance demolishes zero-sum strategy.

Like all entertainment (and indeed all business) publishing operates as an open system, producing new content, readers, subgenres, vendors, and profits daily. As e-publishing has flourished it has moved from scarcity to abundance.

BOOST: Genre fiction can never be reduced to a zero-sum game.

No one becomes a bestseller by tossing every other potential blockbuster on a bonfire and assassinating other authors. No bestseller stays at number one, on every list, forever. Readers who pick up one book do not lose the ability to pick up many others. All research indicates that the person who enjoys one book will probably seek out similar titles, so every book sold increases the chances another author’s reader might become one of yours (or vice versa).

You are not in competition with your colleagues. You are not in competition with anyone but yourself. In fact, the more you work positively and dynamically with your peers, the more inevitable your success.

One of the greatest inducements to fair play is the prospect of repeat business, and genre publishing is all about word of mouth and repeat business. If everyone involved knows that they’ll be interacting again, they’ll go further to satisfy each other’s concerns by cooperating and making concessions. We see that logic operating with the what happens in Vegas mentality of rude tourists. If you know you’ll see these folks often, you probably won’t go swimming naked in the hotel fountain. The damage to loyalty and trust can be irrevocable, and so the possibility of repeat business discourages misbehavior that damages the professional ecosystem.

The wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win. — Zhuge Liang, military strategist of the Three Kingdoms period

For a game to progress, all players must agree to abide by the rules and engage each other at their best. Serious players bring two qualities to the table, generosity with other players and retaliation to anyone who refuses to play fair.

There is no substitute for caring for your colleagues and your readers. Your time is limited, your budget is limited, your output is limited, but your heart and your imagination are infinite.

Hospitality Sweet

Life is not fair, and humanity has spent most of its history trying to fix what luck, fate, and circumstance will not. As a result, the primordial laws of hospitality form the fabric of almost every human culture, ancient and modern, ensuring the give/take that prevents murder and wars through sharing, diplomacy, and prudence.

Communities begin with hospitality. It’s the invisible hand that keeps civilization civilized. When someone gives you a gift, you thank them. If a stranger appears at your door in need, you offer them aid. If you invite guests for dinner, you don’t poison them.

Nevertheless, hospitality doesn’t offer any free rides because it works in both directions, requiring a thank you for every please. Cooperation and reciprocation keep the peace. Needy strangers can’t make out like bandits, because accepting help creates a debt to their benefactor and an obligation to assist other needy strangers in the future. Violating hospitality betrays not only the giver but the entire civilization, which is why cheats, frauds, and traitors get shamed so harshly in mythology, folklore, and history.

Anyone who insists that they can succeed by trashing their peers or manufacturing shortcuts through other people’s turf has decided the publishing community doesn’t deserve their respect. That includes you and anyone else who gets in their way. Don’t expect fair play from people who refuse to understand it.

Cheats & Defeat

Attempting to cheat the system isn’t part of anyone’s A game. There is no substitute for hard work and paying attention. At its core, cheating disrespects other players and the game itself, repaying the grace and respect of your peers with betrayal and injury. If your behavior doesn’t make the community better, then you’re making it worse.

Many people struggling to break out in genre fiction operate under a passionate delusion that personal attacks, backstabbing, and shortcuts can propel any nitwit into meteoric success. They’re eager to break the rules but have no interest in the drudgery of launching and maintaining an actual career.

TRAP: Avoid anyone who tries to convince you that there are substitutes for hard work and paying attention.

These non-players are easy to spot. Their ample red flags include:

obsession with fame, power, and untold wealth writing will shower upon them.

rage and envy directed at anyone succeeding where they have not.

certainty they can find some magical bypass that will carry them to fame and fortune without any of that pesky work, luck, and tenacity.

vague, endless excuses that explain away their inertia, apathy, inattention, and sloppiness.

bitter bitching about the rigged game, the stupid readers, and that evil, undeserving bestseller who burgled their unearned laurels and imaginary loot.

zero-sum panic instead of collaborative ingenuity, squabbling over scarcity instead of embracing abundance.

These are the same people who believe that American Idol makes someone a pop star or that award-winning actresses get discovered in drugstores. Anyone paying attention can see that reality shows (and Hollywood studios) exploit talented people who then exploit them right back for promotional benefit in a perfect symbiotic bargain.

Play crooked and you’ll end up playing a lonely, losing hand of solitaire for the rest of your career. Play fair and the world will conspire to help you.

The Odds

Belief is powerful, and hope can keep us going when times are hard. Hope, however, is a terrible, useless strategy.

No one will show up simply because you write a great book in your garret. You must earn your audience and your success, and then you must maintain what you have built. No one can airbrush or reshoot your life, and it isn’t a dress rehearsal.

TRAP: Nobody owes you a successful career.

Too many authors embark on their careers believing if they write a great book, if they put their heart in it and trust and believe, everything will work out okay. This isn’t just patently untrue; this is toxic brew. No one owes you attention.

Authors often begin writing as a way to escape reality, so it’s natural to begin to believe your own fairy tales after spending months with a manuscript immersed in them. While drafting a story, this kind of self-delusion is probably for the best. Once you begin book promotion in earnest, however, you become a student of grim realism.

In the same way you crafted your fictional world, you can make promotion work for you. It will take work, though, and care, and study—the same way you wrote the novel you’re eager to launch. If you fail to plan, plan to fail.

You must do this work. Publishers and agents cannot magically transform you into a bestseller. Handing your manuscript to Stephen King will not land you on the USA Today list. Study and understand your market, your peers, your own strengths and weaknesses.

Making Luck

The truth is lightning does strike. Not often, but it happens. Sometimes the first book you float to market manages to rise above the noise and glow in its own flames as the thunder echoes around it and angels peel you grapes. Unpack those overnight successes, however, and you’ll discover all sorts of strategic foregrounding, lightning rods, and superconductors planted everywhere, and plenty of bone-breaking effort.

Lightning strikes where the ground is charged and conditions are right. Stand tall. Find fuel.

If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door. — Milton Berle

Sudden strikes are by no means the only way to publishing glory. Most authors succeed after building for years toward success. You might only notice their fire once it’s raging, but that doesn’t mean Satan struck the match. Even the lightning-strike authors only maintain success if they nurture it. If the only thing they had was that brief flash, that’s all they’ll ever have.

You can have success too. Court lightning or meticulously gather kindling, whatever suits your fancy. So long as you acknowledge you control the fire, you’re on your way.

Do not expect to wish your way to fame and fortune. Play your way there.

The Right Question

It’s natural (and common as mud) for authors to look at the success of others and ask, Why not me?

The whine is implicit. When you ask Why not me? you focus on what other people can do for you, what readers owe you, what bloggers owe you, what publishers owe you. It’s not that you shouldn’t think of your needs. It’s that walking into a room hoping people will appear and become happy slaves for you is ridiculous. Yet this is how a wide swath of authors navigate their book promotion.

My book is just like that other title that made a fortune. It happened to her, why not me?

My untalented friend charmed that agency and got signed. Why not me?

Everyone says I’m so talented and I dress like a superstar. Why not me?

We want you to replace why not me? with why not?

The single difference in those two questions is the absence of the pronoun me, but the psychological switch is huge. Why not me? is largely rhetorical, a dangerous invitation to self-pity and frustration. Why not? is a call to action. Why not me? invokes childlike hope and Little League games where no score is kept and both teams go home believing they won. Why not? connotes chance. Challenge. Fun. Possibility.

Let’s give both questions a whirl:

"So-and-so hits the New York Times Bestseller list. Why not me?"

Wham. You’ve asked an empty question that can never be answered and slams a door in your own face. You don’t really want an answer. You can never know all the factors and market forces that converged to put that person on that list at that moment. You have no idea what chasm separates their skills, talent, history, life experience from yours.

Why not me? is completely rhetorical. It expects no response because it is a complaint, a lament, an excuse. When you ask "Why not me?" you’re whining about the unfairness of fate and your powerlessness in the face of it.

TRAP: Be wary of folks who mistake whining for working toward success.

Okay, do-over. Let’s try the A-game version: "Am I a New York Times bestselling author?"

No.

Why not?

This question you can answer in exhaustive detail. The answer might be because I haven’t published my novel yet. Or not enough people bought my books to make the list. Or I cannot write a coherent sentence, and I’m a hostile snob with halitosis. Whatever your answer, there’s a sense of owning up and a reliance on facts. It nudges one gently to do homework and take action. It invites you to play your A game.

What does it take to be a New York Times bestselling author? That’s a measurable achievement with plenty of hard data available. To make that list, books must be reported to agencies tracked by the newspaper in formats they accept during a fixed period of time. Ranks are also dependent on the sales of surrounding books; distributor orders and vendor activity play a massive part. Genre categorization determines the scale and skill of your competition. Book purchases vary by season and economic climate. Sales figures that could put you on the list one week might get you nowhere three weeks later because you’ll be competing with different people in a different landscape.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Now, the New York Times list is not actually a competition. It’s only a report of figures that reflect a certain type of data. You could get your book on the charts by targeting a sparse genre, by piggybacking on a famous brand, by strategically placing and organizing purchases…but placing on that list doesn’t actually get you anything except permission to plunk New York Times Bestselling Author into your Twitter header and on the cover of a book.

To decide whether or not making the New York Times list is a worthwhile goal for you, take time to investigate the possibilities (Why not?) and the missing pieces (Why not?). Asking Why not? can inspire strategy and lead you to much more useful questions:

Am I authentically, appropriately branded in a way that showcases what makes my work exceptional?

Have I made mindful, dynamic use of my presence as an author during promotion?

What is my strategy to identify my ideal readers and promote to my unique market?

Am I working on the kinds of projects that position me correctly on the genre shelf both now and in the future?

Am I meeting my professional goals? Have I set clear professional goals?

Will placement on this list escalate my sales and position within my genre?

If not, why not?

Why not take a chance on what you really want? Why not do the work necessary? Why not hold yourself accountable for your failures so you can take credit for your successes? Developing an A game tailored to your strengths and weaknesses starts with acknowledging your wildest possibilities and your highest aspirations and mapping out the hard work between here and there.

TRAP: There are no shortcuts to success.

The Prize

Fiction is a rough career path. The competition is brutal, and the odds against success are stratospheric. New writers spend most of their time trying to convince people to take a look, and old hands spend a lot of time worrying how to stay in the game. Worse, because so much of the market and its reception of our work is subjective, authors struggle to know if they’re winning even when they’re holding the trophy.

What is your measure of success?

Before any professional undertaking, take time in advance to define the way you’ll gauge the results. Establish a personal metric to track your progress before beginning the process. The measure should be particular to the project and independent of external praise or the whims of the market.

Inspect what you expect. Know the rules before you play. Ask yourself, What do I want and why? and get as detailed as you dare in your answer. When you are faced with a task, a decision, an offer, take a moment to:

Specify your goals, the details in play, the risks, the variables, the timeframe.

Identify pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, skills and flaws.

Clarify a measure of success that rewards and inspires anyone playing with you.

Your measure of success can steer your entire career. As acting guru Michael Kearns puts it, every action should be framed with the phrase in order to.[4]

"I attended BookExpo America in order to meet with foreign distributors."

"I wrote this book in order to celebrate my connection to the Native American community."

"I signed with this publisher in order to place my books on the shelves at Target."

Know what you’re playing for and why. For best results, make your measure of success S.M.A.R.T.:

Specific: nail down a concrete, identifiable goal with clear terms and boundaries.

Measurable: establish a tangible, quantifiable indicator of progress.

Achievable: ensure it’s within reach of your current abilities and resources.

Relevant: stick with efforts appropriate and significant to your professional objectives and current career.

Time-based: use a firm schedule that focuses your work with a start and finish.[5]

Your personal measure of success may evolve over time, but it’s a good practice to define that measure with every new project so you can see how those molehills build a mountain.

BOOST: Aim for progress, not perfection.

The Challenge

This book teaches you how to define and refine your unique promotional strategy in a way that’s not only easy, it’s fun.

We understand the path to success is individual, and we take pains to help you find your way. We won’t waste your time convincing you to adopt ours. We don’t want to dictate some interchangeable tab-A, slot-B blueprint to promote all genre fiction and wouldn’t believe in one if it were proposed. You are unique. We want you to find the best way to highlight your work and your career for your audience.

Most books about promotion run the risk of going too broad or too narrow. In our experience, these titles fall into two camps: generic cheerleading with vague solutions (Promo Promotes Pros!), or granular step-by-step introductions with minimal depth (Tweet Your Way to a Pulitzer!). What’s useful to a beginner and what will rescue an embattled bestseller covers too much terrain to wedge into a single resource.

No two authors need the same advice at any given point in their careers, but providing customized answers to all possible dilemmas and contexts would overwhelm most of our audience and drive us all bananas.

To do a proper job, a book on genre fiction promo needs to allow for complexity and possibility, to be all things to most people. What readers enjoy and what they need would determine how they proceeded through the content.

Our solution: rather than packaging a set of recycled band-aids or aspirational platitudes, we’ve tried something different in Your A Game. We’ve built an interactive career adventure that lets any genre fictioneer choose a customized path to their own winning promotional strategy.

This book is a game. We invite you to embark on a professional quest through these pages to seek the kind of victory that counts to you.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. — Anais Nin

Promotion isn’t a chore; it’s the way you connect to the people you’ve been writing for all along. The end move of your A game is getting your book into the hands of the readers who are dying to buy it. The line between those two points doesn’t have to be complicated or onerous. We will help you find that path.

Play to engage. Think we, not me. Publishing is a gigantic collaboration that involves many thousands of talented people who’d be happy to help you become a bestseller if they knew how. Help them help you.

Play to have fun. Adapt to circumstances with the tools you’re given. Publishing isn’t a race to a finish line but an adventure that never ends with an amazing cast of characters. Instead of moaning Why not me? explore the possibilities of Why not? Share your joy!

Play to learn. We can all improve. Paying attention to market forces and gifted colleagues will give you repeated opportunities to get out of your own way and change the game.

Play to stand out. Don’t blindly follow someone else’s strategy and expect an identical outcome. Use your wits and bits to achieve your best outcome every time. You only compete with yourself and you only beat yourself.

Play to share. Like all art forms, genre fiction requires an audience. Books are not a product but an experience. Don’t lose sight of the circle of people eager for you to tell them a great story. They’re looking for you as much as you’re looking for them.

Play to inspire. Genre readers crave satisfying emotional experiences; they want familiar tropes with unexpected flair. Leave your fans, your colleagues, your events, and your genre better off than you found them. Put the right letters together and change the world.

Play to win. Exceed expectations! Bring the absolute best to every part of this wacky challenge and help others do the same. Participate! The only essential component is you.

Why not? Your A game is waiting for you to play it.

THE A-GAME RULES:

Measure Up: Define clear goals that you have the power to achieve.

Pay Attention: In your career, every detail counts. Get in where you fit in.

Forget Shortcuts: Take every step. Overnight success is a myth.

Play Fair: The buck stops with you. Respect the game and fellow players.

Work Hard: Invest in your own success rather than whining and waiting.

Mind Manners: Become the author you wish to see in your genre.

Aim High: Cheap is expensive. Make sure your reach exceeds your grasp.

Have Fun: Don’t postpone joy! Embrace the tasks that make you happy.

The Play Styles

Why are games fun? There are certain types of interactions we each enjoy and jackpots we pursue. That’s true for board games, team sports, and giant multiuser arenas like online roleplaying games, paintball… and genre promotion.

In 1996, game theorist Richard Bartle identified four ways users join and participate in multiplayer games and virtual worlds.[6] He based these gaming styles on the kinds of fun people seek out and the way they behave during play in an artificial game space. He arranged game play along two axes:

Player/World: focus on the other participants vs. focus on the environment

Act/Interact: control vs. connection…(or) doing TO vs. doing WITH

Understanding different players (and their goals) allows designers to build better games, prevent negative experiences, and extrapolate the kinds of value and entertainment possible. After all, Candy Crush, Grand Theft Auto, and D&D appeal to very different players. Nobody wants to play games that are boring, scary, or frustrating.

Because of the parallels between gaming and publishing, these same four modes of play offer a useful taxonomy for writers navigating the terrain of genre fiction. For players read PEERS (fans and colleagues); for world read GENRE (industry and niche). In the next few pages we’ll list general traits and preferences to help you find yourself in these categories.[7]

Think of your play style as your piece on the A-game board. (e.g. Heidi always had to play the iron in Monopoly and for Clue, Damon was a diehard Professor Plum). The play style (and path) you choose will change the discoveries and lessons you’ll encounter along the way. You can always mix it up the next time, but for now, play for what you want. Consider what means the most to you at this moment in your career.

What’s your primary focus right now? What kind of a promotional strategy appeals? What sounds like the most fun way to develop your career? What kind of success do you want?

In other words, what kind of an A-gamer are you?

Players who take charge by showmanship and dominance, advancing via influence and maneuvering their fans and colleagues. They enjoy the stimulation and excitement of the game, and they’ll claim center stage through charm, confrontation, and interpersonal politics. They can be sweet as pie or psychopathic, but they’re in it to win it and they will run the show.

Players who want to impress others by winning public challenges while developing their prestige, skills, and renown in structured, measurable ways. They enjoy the social status acquired by completing tasks and winning badges and titles; they view these prizes as reward for diligence and proof of mastery.

Players who focus on connecting with their cohorts, building relationships that extend beyond the confines of the game. Socializers seek to help their community and transform the world. They enjoy discussing the conduct and accomplishments of themselves and others. Empathy fuels their work and they thrive in trusted groups with emotional connections.

Players who prefer to investigate their environment, discovering hidden rewards and accumulating knowledge about the way the virtual world works. Explorers love to solve puzzles and improve the status quo. They enjoy analysis and often learn more about the game than the creators because they never stop searching for answers and solutions.

Go with your gut. Each of us has shown all of these behaviors at one time or another. These player styles literally arise from what interests you and what you find rewarding.

It bears saying: none of these play styles are inherently negative or positive, and none of them are more or less likely to succeed. There are humble Performers and selfish Socializers. Over your career you will probably operate as all of these at one point or another. What distinguishes each type of player is what motivates them and what they want to accomplish.

Rest in reason; move in passion. — Khalil Gibran

If you’re wavering or uncertain about which path is currently right for you, or if you want a more comprehensive picture of your current play style, we host a short online play style test at your-A-game.com which uses some basic career questions to identify your play style at the moment.

Identifying a play style only provides a lens to help focus your professional A game.

Movable Types

Play styles aren’t static. Bartle’s four player types distinguish and characterize general attitudes and behavior that overlap and evolve over time. As our goals and motivations change, our style of play evolves. Today’s Achiever is tomorrow’s Socializer. You may bounce between Exploring and Performing depending on your current subgenre.

Even before Bartle formulated his gamer types, he observed a general progression between the play styles that also mirrors a common career progression for many genre authors: beginners commonly start out as Performers (wanting to influence/lead their colleagues and fans) then develop into Explorers (learning the genre and developing a serious skill set) then Achievers (competing for rank and recognition from the industry), and ending up as Socializers (supporting, mentoring, and nurturing the genre community). The important takeaway is that over time, your focus and goals change.

As you choose your route through this book, your play style will point you toward the kind of answers you’d probably find appealing and useful. If halfway through you decide that you’ve stopped feeling like an Achiever and want to get your Explorer on, it’ll only keep you on your toes moving forward.

As we proceed, we’ll discuss these four play styles further and how they can help focus your promo efforts. For now, choose the one that speaks to your current pressing goal.

If you’re not certain which applies to you at this moment or you just want to turn the page and splash around, go with what feels fun and makes you curious.

Remember: with your A game the only requirement is participation.

The harder I work, the luckier I get. — Samuel Goldwyn

The Paths

A-game careers don’t trudge forward in parallel lines; they zigzag and spiral, mutate and evolve.

We want Your A Game to stack the deck in your favor, whether you’re dealing with an immediate PR crisis or laying the foundations of a first-time promotional strategy. Technically, you can open this book to any section and find advice or a practical solution to your current challenge, but we’ve created paths tailored to your interests and goals. Some of these will be links (or page numbers for print readers) within the text, and some will appear as a hub page with several branching options.

Each chapter (and most sections) will end with links to several possible next steps on your journey. From these, we will point you toward the information, checklist, or advice most likely to appeal to your current predicament, career point, and area(s) of focus.

At any of these topical crossroads, we’ll offer you a range of forking paths. You can choose to:

turn the page and read forward (if you’re actively interested in what comes next).

jump directly to distinct sections currently of interest, either directly or via a table of contents for that section (if you’ve thought of a tangential question you want answered immediately).

answer an adventure question that will point you in an appropriate topical direction (if you’re looking for guidance on a particular dilemma or situation).

follow your current play style (as identified above) through the book. If your current goal and interests are clear, look for the path bars (illustrated below) and travel the play-style links to skip over details less relevant to your immediate interests.

choose the paths based on your current experience level (Novice, Apprentice, Expert, Cynic). In the path bars (illustrated below), you can also track the experience links to access material that may appeal and apply to your career at the moment.

PATHS:   Performer | Achiever | Socializer | Explorer | Novice | Apprentice | Expert | Cynic

This book can be read in any order. Sometimes the way forward is to double back or wander off on a cool tangent to find answers to your questions. You can proceed in a straight line if you’d like, although the volume of