Joe Konrath is a promoter. Everything he does he does with an eye toward building himself as a brand.
Some writers find that hard to take, but I don’t. If you want to be read by four people, become an academic. But if your goal is to be read by thousands, get out and hustle.
Konrath is straightforward. Break down a year and you find he’s at his keyboard writing 20 percent of the time. Eighty percent, he’s speaking at conferences, workshops, bookstores, libraries, and schools; he’s writing for his website and his blog and posting on Facebook and a handful of other social networks; he’s answering email/fan mail; and he’s whipping out new contests and promotions for his books.
And this is just a short list.
Perhaps he can invest so much time in building the Konrath brand because he’s a fast writer. Joe can turn out a finished manuscript—well polished—for a novel in a month.
I caught up with him when he came to the University of Wisconsin/Whitewater where he made a special presentation. Read on and enjoy the story that grew out of our afternoon together.
A writer who gives away his stuff
Joe Konrath gives his books away—chapters and sometimes full novels.
Go to his website, jakonrath.com, and there you can download the first seven chapters of four of Konrath’s Jack Daniels books, the full manuscript of Whiskey Sour—his first Jack Daniels book—and full manuscripts of four novels he wrote before the Jack Daniels series. You also can download “School Daze,” a Konrath short story.
Free.
All of it.
Says Konrath, people like you and me are wandering around the Internet, looking for information and entertainment, and he’s there to supply the entertainment. He compares what he does to the guy who stands out in front of the Panda Express restaurant in the mall.
“He’s got a platter and he’s giving out samples of the Kung Pao chicken,” Konrath says. “He gives out a lot of free samples. What do people do after they try it? They were headed to McDonald’s or the hotdog place, they try the Kung Pao chicken—they taste it—and they go right inside for the Kung Pao chicken.”
As Konrath sees it, people who read his material and like it, some will buy his books.
At the beginning, this business of giving away your material centers on building name recognition. “Then later on—knock on wood—the money will come in,” Konrath says.
With downloads, the reader either has to read the free stuff on his or her screen or print out the pages if he or she prefers to read hard copy. They can, however, get real books from Konrath by entering his contests. Here’s a promo from his October 2008 newsletter: “I’m having a contest to give away some free books. The free books in question are hardcover and trade paperback copies of Afraid by Jack Kilborn. Jack Kilborn is JA Konrath, and JA Konrath is me. Afraid is being released on November 13 in the UK. It’s a very scary book. The US version is coming out in paperback in April. It’s also a scary book. In fact, it’s the exact same book, except in England they use single quotes rather than double quotes for dialog, and they spell words funny like ‘realise’ and ‘centre’ and ‘colour.’ Also, if you ask for a fag in Britain you get a cigarette, and in the US you get something else entirely. . . . For info about Afraid , an excerpt, and the infamous Afraid flash game, visit http://www.JackKilborn.com. For info about how to win free books in the Official Jack Kilborn Halloween UK Afraid Contest, visit my blog at http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.”
From contests to libraries is quite a leap, but not for Konrath. He loves libraries. Every chance he gets to boost them, to make presentations at them, he’s there.
Recently, the Chicagoan drove up to Wisconsin, to the library at the University of Wisconsin/Whitewater to make a presentation to 40 fans and writers. While there, he looked into the records to see whether anyone was checking out his books.
“I got $3 [royalty] for the latest hardcover the library bought. That book was checked out a dozen times already,” Konrath says. “Did I get $3 a dozen times? No. I just got the three bucks for that book. So am I making any money off of libraries? No, but libraries are wonderful places to discover authors, just as websites are. It doesn’t matter that I’m not making the money up front. There is the trickle-down effect.”
Some of the readers who discover Konrath at the library will buy his books. He’s convinced of it.
“There is a lot of competition out there. There are a lot of people who are writing. It’s very difficult to get people’s attention, so if you give people something for free”—and that includes a free read at the library—“a certain number of those people will become fans, and a certain number of those fans will become buyers of your books.”
Incidentally, the librarians at UW/Whitewater won Konrath’s appearance. Normally, he charges libraries a bucket of money to do programs for them. A couple years ago, he ran a contest for libraries—win J.A. Konrath for a day. He didn’t call it that, but that was the essence.
Four hundred responded. UW/Whitewater’s entry was picked at random. Whitewater was convenient for Konrath because it was close to home. “But if a Texas library had won, I would have driven there,” he says.
“What was great about the contest for me is a lot of libraries checked out my website, and I assume a lot of them bought books, but I also got to do this two-hour event at Whitewater which was very well publicized, the librarians gave me stuff, and I sold 20 books. What a great experience it was for the Whitewater library—at least I hope it was—and it certainly was for me, and it all was the result of a contest.”
Giving away something for free.
Sidebar
Konrath writes one Jack Daniels novel a year, and he writes that book in February. Twenty-eight days—29 in a Leap Year—and he’s got the job done.
“I write 3,000 words a day,” he says.
It works this way. On Day One, Konrath writes 15 pages.
On Day Two, he reads and rewrites those pages, and writes 15 new pages.
On Day Three, he goes back 20 pages—and reads and rewrites those pages—and he again writes 15 new pages.
That’s the process from then on to the end of the month. Go back 20 pages each day, read and rewrite, and write 15 new pages.
“So by the time I’m finished, by the time I have my manuscript ready to send to my agent,” Konrath says, “I’ve done three rewrites.”
Cherry Bomb, the book Konrath will write next month and the sixth in the Jack Daniels series, will come out next year.
© Jerry Peterson.
