5 Common Book Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2020

Photo: Bill Barber, “1958 Edsel – Lousy Car But Great Planter,” visualhunt.com

 

Guest Post by Desiree Villena

Upon finishing work on your book — and I mean finishing everything, from editing to getting a cover design to actually publishing it — your natural instinct may be to sit back and relax. You’ve worked very hard, so at this point you’d just like to watch as readers come pouring in. But of course, your job’s not over yet: you still have to put your work out there to your potential audience before they can buy it.

Book marketing is far from a breeze — especially not in our media-saturated world. Whether you’re going down the traditional or indie publishing route, you’re going to have to put in some work. If you’re taking the latter approach in particular, it’s natural to be overwhelmed by all you have to do. And that’s when you make mistakes.

To help you succeed with this daunting task, here are five common book marketing mistakes that you can easily avoid!

Mistake #1: Trying to market to everyone

Very few products — books or otherwise — are bought by everyone. Generic things like toothpaste are quite universal, but even then, consumers will have preferences and distinctions. We have toothpastes for children and for adults, for whitening and for gum health, with extra mint flavor and with activated charcoal — the list goes on and on. Apply this same line of thinking to books and you’ll see that readers can be segmented into groups, a few of which will have much more interest in your book than others.

Thus, the important thing is to find, understand, and target those readers. Be specific about who you’re targeting. For instance, if you’re writing a nonfiction book on the psychology of children, ask yourself which groups of parents will want to read it. Will they be younger parents who are having kids the first time? Or will it be single parents who take a particular interest in your work?

This may affect some of your writing, but more importantly, it’ll help you reach the right groups of people when you promote your book. Fortunately, specificity doesn’t limit your potential reader base; in fact, it gives your book a unique and intriguing perspective that sets it apart from your competition.

Mistake #2: Doing a bit of everything

If you try to do a bit of everything, you’re fully committed to nothing. As with the previous mistake, authors tend to be overwhelmed by all the marketing choices available to us. To maximize your visibility, you’re often inclined to be on every social media platform and have ads everywhere, from Facebook to BookBub. You may also try to organize offline meet-ups, live events on social media, email marketing campaigns, and newsletter swaps with other authors.

You will fall into the trap of overworking yourself with this ever-expanding to-do list. What’s worse, when you’re occupied by so many things, it’s hard to take stock and examine any one strategy, in order to see how it’s doing and figure out what’s working and what could be improved.

One tactic that might help here is copying the strategies of authors who write books in the same genre as you. Say you’re a mental health professional who is publishing a book on social anxiety — consider going live on Facebook or creating forums on your site regarding this issue, where you can offer your expertise! On the flip side, Twitter’s character limit won’t provide you with the same opportunity to discuss things in depth, and you might discover that your target readers don’t “hang out” there. It’s thus better to make use of the spaces where more potential readers are active.

Mistake #3: Neglecting your mailing list

Growing a list of newsletter subscribers is crucial. It’s how you build a customer base even before you release your book. It’s a way to keep your most loyal readers by your side for future projects. And it’s a gateway for other marketing strategies, such as newsletter swapping. So don’t disregard your mailing list, even if you think many people sign up to newsletters without really reading them.

Of course, people read your newsletters — at least the ones who are actually likely to buy your book. And what’s more, you can actually use that list to customize who your Facebook ads target — just import the subscribers’ email addresses and use them as your audience! This way, your ad won’t be competing with numerous others, and your investment will be more worthwhile as more people who’d seen your ad would go on to buy your book.

Mistake #4: Not making full use of Amazon

When you list your book for sale on Amazon, what do you usually put for genre and keywords? Many first-time authors stick to one rather vague genre — like “Fiction” — and a few haphazardly selected keywords. Well, if you look at the list of sub-genres on Amazon, you’ll see that “Literature & Fiction” is separated into 20 others sub-categories, including geographical differentiations, such as British and American.

The key to selecting your category, and keywords, lies in picking the right balance between the relevant ones and the ones that don’t have overwhelming competition. You usually get to pick two categories and seven keywords, but you can contact Amazon directly to add more. Finding the best tags takes a bit of digging, but it will pay off when your book falls right into the lap of your target audience.

Mistake #5: Viewing marketing as a one-time thing

Today’s self-publishing authors, unfortunately, are not just writers. When you take on this job title, whether as a full-time or part-time occupation, you are making yourself a public figure. And just as you wouldn’t cut off contact with your literary agent or publisher once the deal is done, don’t stop reaching out to readers either!

How should you do this? Maintain an online presence through which you can communicate with your existing and potential readers. Simply telling them about your work isn’t enough; you should also encourage them to ask questions and discuss your book with you and other readers, thereby nurturing their interest in you as an author. In doing so, your subsequent books will have a pool of already keen readers who would buy and perhaps even recommend them to others. Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth — your readers will become your little publicists!

So suddenly disappearing after your marketing campaign is over won’t do you any good. Retreat to your writing crib to work on your next volume if need be, but let your followers know, so that they’re excited for what’s to come.

The true art of book marketing is finding the best way to connect with people who are as passionate about something (that thing you wrote a whole book about!) as you are. There will be ups and downs, trials and errors, but at least now you can avoid the biggest pitfalls that awaits you on this journey.

Desiree Villena is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors to the very best publishing resources and professionals. She’s particularly passionate about independent publishing and hopes to help as many aspiring authors as possible reach their dreams. In her spare time, Desiree enjoys reading contemporary fiction and writing short stories.

LAmericana2019

July 4th, 2019 — a block party in the heart of Los Angeles, celebrating Independence Day. It’s probably a duplicate of the block party that took place in your neighborhood today, somewhere in America. However, in case you missed it, here it is again — with all the required 4th of July elements — for you to enjoy, just as though you’d been there!

Flags on Fences:

Balloons and Chips:

Yummy Food:

Bubbles:

Raffle Tickets:

A Watermelon Eating Contest:

An Egg Tossing Contest:

Can You See 2 Wayward Eggs Below?

Oops!

One of the Happy Raffle Winners

I Hope You Enjoyed Your Independence Day!

PS: FYI — Today, the 4th of July, is the 8th Anniversary of this blog.

(c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT, author of The Therapist Writer (Revised in 2018)

Who’s Your Book’s Audience?

“You Are the Star” Mural in Hollywood (Wilcox Avenue) by Tom Suriya

The population of the world is currently 7.7 billion, give or take. Are they the audience for the book you are writing? (Answer: No) What about the 327 million people who live in the United States? Are they your audience? (Answer: No) What about the 2.32 billion active users on Facebook worldwide. Are they all going to buy your book? (Answer: No) If you’re a mental health professional, are your approximately 700,000 colleagues your audience? (Answer: No).

Then who the heck is the audience for your book? 

Even after all these years of books, talks, podcasts, articles, and blog posts, like this one, telling authors to figure out in advance who their buyers are, it’s still hard for many of them to “get” that they are not writing for “everyone.” If you don’t know your audience you may end up marketing to the wrong crowd which is a sad waste of both your time and your book. 

Some writers even scare themselves by imagining they’re writing for the wrong audience, such as a critical family member, a difficult client, a judgmental supervisor, or a competitive colleague who has already been successfully published. 

Forget about these scary phantom audiences. Let’s see if we can figure out who your real audience is—because they’re out there. You just have to find them. Most books have at least one obvious audience. In addition, they may have secondary or tertiary (third level) audience.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Audiences

The primary buyer for a self-help book written by a therapist, for example, is probably a woman. She either wants help with a problem she’s got or she wants to give it to a man for a problem he’s got. The secondary audience might be other therapists who need to stay informed and may want to recommend the book to clients. A tertiary audience might be non-therapists who write or teach about mental health topics and need the book for research purposes. This group can get overlooked during the book marketing phase.

Even when you think you’ve nailed down your audience(s) correctly, there can be surprises. A book may not appeal to a group as anticipated, or vice-versa–it appeals to a group of buyers for no obvious reason.  Go figure! Every book is unique, so when you start sleuthing around looking for your book’s audience, you could end up getting it wrong. “In publishing, we say a book needs to find its audience, and often that audience is different from the one envisioned by the author and publisher,” says Todd Sattersten, author of Every Book is a StartUp. You may think you’re writing a book for the elderly or the addicted, but the buyers turn out to be the folks who have to live with, or work with, or care for these demographics, so you’re really writing for them. That means even your cover will have to appeal to them. Once you see where you’ve gone wrong, STOP, recalculate, and shift your marketing strategy to target your real audience.

Googling for Audiences

To hunt down the primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences your book, begin by doing the obvious: Write down your book’s topic and then imagine the types of people who might want to read about that subject. Some writers even create a pretend profile of their ideal reader―age, sex, occupation, favorite recreations, major interests, goals, and dreams. Figure out what groups or organizations they might join and try to reach out to them that way. Searches within Pinterest and Googling for Instagram hashtags are great ways of reaching specific audiences.

There are probably more potential audiences out there than you realize, just waiting to hear about your book.  Don’t give up. Keep looking for them. Your book deserves it.

(c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT. From “The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published,” (Timberlake Press) Amazon (updated for 2019)

 

Book Marketing Independently

Happy 4th of July from LA! — Photo Credit Kevin H. on Visual Hunt

Happy INDEPENDENCE DAY, a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, as well as the anniversary of when I started this blog on July 4^th, 2011– before I had “indie” (i.e. self-) published my book, The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published. I recently updated the book for 2018 so if you’re interested, please note that on Amazon the updated cover has a little blue triangle in the upper right-hand corner that says, “25 Book Marketing Ideas A-Z.”

To share both this day of independence along with the anniversary of my blog, I’m going to give you some book marketing ideas, one for each letter in I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-C-E   D-A-Y.  I know that leaves out a lot of letters. Guess you’ll just have to check out the book on Amazon or Kindle to find out what they are!

Now, let’s go, starting with I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-C-E   

I is for Instagram — a photo and video-sharing site owned by Facebook which now has over 800 million users. Posts can be public or shared with specified others. People with services or products (like books) to sell are finding ways to do it here. Always do your homework and read all about it first. The same goes for all marketing tips.

N is for Networking – joining and attending groups, lectures, workshops, and seminars, where you’ll meet other indie authors involved in book marketing, can be energizing and inspiring and a much faster way to get new ideas and learn more about all things DIY.

D is for Discoverability – This has become an important term in the book-marketing field. How can anyone buy your book if they don’t know it exists? You have to find ways you can do-it-yourself that get you noticed. There is so much online and on YouTube about book marketing that it’s quite overwhelming. Just look!

E is for Elevator Pitch – Memorize a 10 or 15-second pitch about your book, what it’s about and how it helps and benefits the reader — just in case anybody asks you what you’re up to.  Search online for “elevator pitch” for plenty of good tips.

P is for Pinterest – Another “hot” social media site. Users can search, upload,, sort, and manage images—known as “pins”—and then save them on their “boards.” Think of a topic and there’s a Pinterest board about it! With a “business account” (also free) users can  promote their products (such as books). One cool thing is you can link a pin about your book to your Amazon book page, website, blog, or to an article. It’s your virtual storefront. You can use a program like Canva.com to create perfect pins.

E is for E-mail List – If you haven’t started an email list already, start one now. Collect emails of people who are potential book buyers. When you publish a book, one of the first things to do is send out a “book launch” letter to your email list — so you need a list! Give people an easy way to opt out or unsubscribe.

N is for Newsletter – Sending out a book-related newsletter used to be a hassle and a big expense. Now it’s all done electronically. You can use email programs such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or MadMimi. Most are free for up to 1000 to 2000 email names. If your email list is small, it will cost you only your time.

D is for DIY – The more you do-it-yourself, the less book marketing will cost you. Publicists are still out there willing to charge you, but save your money to pay hired hands for the things you can’t do or don’t want to do, and do the rest yourself.

E is for Email Signature – Create a little “ad” for yourself at the bottom of every email you send out (try “stationery” section). You can hyperlink your urls to your Amazon website, blog, or website. This isn’t in-you-face advertising. It’s subtle. People can click on your links – or not.

N is for Newspapers – Even though many newspapers have folded (meaning there’s less space for traditional book reviews), there are many  newspapers left and some are hungry for content. Think of all the “throw-away” papers just in your area. Search online for “newspapers” and you’ll get sites like: 50states.com/news; onlinenewspapers.com; thepaperboy.com, and more.

C is for Contests – Lots of contests out there to enter, but first make sure they aren’t scams. Go to the blog of janefriedman.com for her list of recommended and “safe” contests. If you win, place, or show in a legit contest, that makes you “an award-winning” author. Good for book marketing!

E is for Ezines – Ezines are online magazine. Today, most regular magazines have an online counterpart and it’s usually easier to have an article you write accepted there than it is in their paper version. Ezines have thousands of readers so it’s a good way to get the word out about your book. Some even pay a little. Try directoryofezines.com or ezinesearch.com.

You Go Girl! Market That Book! Photo credit: Visual Hunt

Now for D-A-Y:

D is for Description – Your book description is one of the most important things you’ll write. You’ll use it on your Amazon book page and in your launch letter, and in so many other marketing pieces. Write a short, medium, and long description to have on hand. Embed keywords and phrases and include benefits to readers and potential audiences.

A is for Amazon – Amazon is not only an online bookseller and publisher (CreateSpace and Kindle), it is a world unto itself when it comes to helping you market your book. It offers many marketing features – keywords, customer reviews, the Author Central page, their “look inside the book” feature, foreign sites, and so much more.

Y is for YouTube – YouTube is a candy store. You can find videos about everything on this list and you can make videos about your book to upload to YouTube, even have your own channel. Videos can be nichy, specific, and detailed. You could even make a short video on how you got the idea for your book — and people would watch it!

Okay, Independence fans, that’s it for now. Get to your independent book marketing. There’s more hints, tips and ideas where these came from. Later.

Off you go to book market independently! Photo Credit: Virtual Hunt

© The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published by Sylvia Cary, LMFT, Timberlake Press – recently updated for 2018.

 

UPDATED FOR 2018!

AWARD-WINNING BOOK “THE THERAPIST WRITER” NOW UPDATED FOR 2018 by Sylvia Cary, LMFT

DID YOU KNOW that getting a book published is the quickest way for a mental health professional to become known as an expert? It can lead to more attention, more referrals, more business, and hopefully more money!

WHAT’S IN “THE THERAPIST WRITER?”
 What Therapists Need to Know About Publishing 
 Why Getting Published is Good for Business 
 How to Start Building Your “Author Platform” Now 
 The Best Publishing Option for Your Book 
 Legal Issues for Therapist Writers 
 Finding a Book in Your Specialty

• UPDATE INCLUDES 25 PAGES of book marketing ideas from A to Z

• “FINALLY, a step-by-step guide for therapists to make their book idea into a completed manuscript.” ― Foreword by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D., LMFT, Author of The Introvert Advantage

• “THE THERAPIST WRITER: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published” (Timberlake Press) is available on Amazon and Kindle. (amazon.com)

NOTE: Make sure that you order the book with the blue triangle in the upper right-hand corner!

Nana’s Magic Pen

Definition of Magic: The art of producing illusions by sleight of hand; the use of means (such as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power. . .

          ― Merriam-Webster Dictionary

I’m not a fussy eater, but I am a fussy writer when it comes to pens. A pen has to be just right or it interrupts the creative flow, distracts me, and makes me go scrounging around for another. Without the right pen, I lose the muse.

As a result, I’ve owned a lot of pens over the course of my writing career, but never one as lovely as the pen I caught sight of one day at the discount store, Tuesday Morning. It was clear lucite―you could see right into its very soul―and only $18 instead of the original $80.  I bought it. I was not disappointed. It wrote “smooth as butter.” No skipping or yucky ink blobs.

When my granddaughter, Lily, then 6, came over one afternoon she went right for the pen. She immediately named it “Nana’s Magic Pen.”

“Can I use it, Nana?” she asked.

She cut up and folded some papers into a tiny book and wrote a story called “Nana Wants a Cat.” The story had the perfect three-act structure: The main character, Nana, loses her beloved cat. Now she wants a new one really badly, so she goes off on a quest to find a replacement cat. Her journey takes her to many animal shelters (where you should always get your cats) and she meets a lot of not-right cats and a lot of just-okay cats, which makes Nana so sad she’s about to give up — but then one day she finally finds a black and white rescue kitten and brings her home and names her Diamond.”

Lily proudly handed me her “book.”

I am sure you will all agree that this is proof positive that whenever a writer uses a magic pen, well-told tales with happy endings are the result.

Every writer should have a magic pen.

 (c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT; Photo credit: Sylvia Cary

Keeping up to Date Can Get You Down

 

My book had been out for 5 years, so I started looking for just a few now-dated references and marking them with sticky-notes. I used a whole lot of  sticky-notes!    Photo by Sylvia Cary

Ever bite off more than you could chew? I did that recently. I made the mistake of re-reading my own book, “The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published,” which I  had indie-published on Amazon and Kindle, as well as on LightningSource, five years ago. While reading, I was stunned to realize that while I was out there marketing the book, publishing gremlins had been sneaking into it and making it sound dated! Dated! Imagine that! How the heck did that happen?

Well, it happened because during that five years the publishing industry had been rushing ahead and making changes, hundreds of changes, big and small. For example, there was no IngramSpark under the LightningSource umbrella when I published my book, so I had no mention of it.  At the time, a self-publishing author could get an ISBN number for $10 from Amazon’s CreateSpace. Today you can’t. It’s $99. “No wonder I’ve been reluctant to market my book the last couple of years,” I said to myself. “There are now mistakes in it and I’m embarrassed. Obviously, they were put there by those publishing gremlins!”

I made the decision right then and there to “update” my book, tweak the cover, and market it all over again. Then I upped the challenge to myself: “No, I’ll come out with a Second Edition with new chapters, which of course means I’ll have to get another ISBN and a new cover, front and back — but then I can really go to town marketing it in all the ways I neglected to market it before! I’ll be a changed author/promoter.”

I took a second pass through the book and put a sticky note wherever I caught something that was dated or needed fixing (see photo above). I set forth with great determination to track down every change in the publishing industry over the last five years and document each one.

Trying to keep up. . .

Within weeks my apartment had every surface stacked with books, notebooks, and printouts. To catch up with “the latest” I was watching YouTube videos, listening to webinars, writing new chapters, and driving around town to panels and workshops. I began to feel overwhelmed and sick at my stomach when I looked at the months of work ahead of me, not to mention my new, about-to-be-created re-publishing expenses.

My bed of research books became a nightmare.  Photo by Visualhunt.com

And for what? I finally asked myself that all-important question: Why was I doing this? It was stupid. Why compete with all the hundreds of new books, Kindles, newsletters, webinars and videos about “the publishing industry” when I already had a unique niche audience (therapists who want to write) that I should be focusing on in a more laser-like fashion. I’d been making that mistake authors are warned about of trying to sell to everybody. “Stick with the shrinks, Sylvia,” I said and felt better already.

Knowing when to hold and when to fold       

So I walked back my plan for an update or a snazzy Second Edition and decided to Keep It Simple. I went through the book a third time just to tidy it up enough so I’m not embarrassed by statements of facts that are no longer facts. They’ve changed. I deleted some things, corrected some things, switched the first two chapters around, but it’s basically the same book, same cover, same number of pages, minus the errors (or most of them I hope). I’m about to upload it to CreateSpace as a “correction,” not a reinvention!

Getting good ideas is great, but knowing when to quit helps you sleep at night.

(c) Sylvia Cary, The Therapist Writer

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the Blurbs

 

 

 

 8 Ways to Get “Blurbs” for Book Marketing     Photo by Morguefile

“Blurb” is a great little word, a sort of nickname for the more official-sounding words such as “testimonial,” “acknowledgment,” “endorsement,” “review” or “comment.” A blurb is a snippet of something that somebody says about your book that you can then use in your book marketing. It can be anything from an eloquent celebrity endorsement that you’ll probably want to use on your front cover to an unfortunately useless comment (“Great book!”) that a reader puts up on your Amazon book page as a “customer review,” but may quickly get disappeared by Amazon because it doesn’t fit their review criteria.

Why Blurbs?

There’s a whole history (just Google “blurbs” and you’ll see) about why blurbs have gotten to be so important, especially for indie authors publishing on Amazon, but the bottom line is that — aside from a good book with a good cover — you gotta have blurbs. An author should never launch a book on Amazon “naked” (meaning with no customer reviews), yet many do. That’s not good. Blurbs legitimize your book and make people feel more comfortable about buying it. Going to a book site with no reviews feels like going to a movie when there are only one or two other people in the theatre. It feels uncomfortable. You want out of there. Buyers go elsewhere.

Where to Use Blurbs

• Indie authors want blurbs mostly in the form of customer reviews on Amazon. Set a goal of 100. (I know! Yikes!). Blurbs are also used for . . .
• Front cover (hopefully from a celebrity or thought-leader in your field)
• Back cover (as a powerful sales pitch for your book)
• Inside the book where you can include pages of blurbs — which is why you’ll want to get a bunch of them in advance of publication
• On your marketing pieces (business cards, postcards, bookmarks, flyers, “one-sheets”)
• As part of your email signature
• On your website, blog, or landing page
• On certain social media sites (pretty-up a blurb for Pinterest)
• Stamped on your give-away items, such as mugs or pens

 How to Get Blurbs

      Before Publication . . .

1. Send out pages of your work (or a chapter to a specialist in the area you’re writing about) to get feedback and a usable “comment” (to later be put up on Amazon).
2. When your book is close to its launch date, set it up on Amazon (pre-order status) so you can ask the people who’ve already read your pages or sections to write a “customer review”. Give them How-to directions.
3. Order “proof” (advance) copies to give out for peer reviewers or whole-book readers for additional reviews. People do tend to procrastinate, so give them a deadline and offer some incentives for getting their review in quickly.
4. Some reviewers who procrastinate are very relieved to have you write their review for them and they can just sign off on it. Saves them a lot of time!

 After Publication . . . 

5. Launch Day: As soon as your book is up on Amazon, officially published, grab the link from your book page and paste it into an announcement you’re going to send (using an email program like Constant Contact) to your email list telling them your book is published, asking them to click on the link to see it, and begging them to write a customer review (I like to use the word blurb or “comment” because it sounds less like a book report!). Explain How-to and why – because it helps you sell books!

6. If you’ve sent out a lot of announcements, some people will write reviews on Amazon, others may write you personally and say nice things about your book. Immediately, email them back and ask, “Would you mind putting that on my Amazon site?” (Give How-to directions). Otherwise use their blurb for something else.

7. Whenever you run into anybody you know at the market and they say something nice about your book, ask them, “Do you mind if I use that as a blurb.” If they can put it up on Amazon themselves, great, but if not you can use their blurb elsewhere, so write it down before you forget it, then email it to the person who said it to make sure you remembered it correctly!

8. This is like looking for spare change in the couch, but look though older emails and social media posts to find blurbs about your book you forgot you had. You may actually find a great blurb you didn’t realize was a “blurb” at the time that you read it. Now you recognize it for what it is and realize it’s just perfect for a press release you’re writing.

Blurbs are in the Air

There are many more ways to get “blurbs” (reviews), such as tracking down Amazon Top Reviewers  or doing the whole guest blogger thing (which is getting harder and harder as there is more and more competition for attention for one’s book). There are, as well, some really terrific books and Kindles by known experts in the book marketing business, but for now keep it simple and do these basics. And keep in mind that the next time somebody tells you, “Your book really touched me, especially that scene . . .” ask them, “Can I use that as a blurb?” See, blurbs are in the air.

(c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT, author of The Therapist Writer: Helping Mental Health Professionals Get Published.

Is It Okay to Write About My Patients? *

 Loose lips sink ships. ― World War II poster

Before you pick up that pencil, read these tips.

Occasionally one of my therapist colleagues will approach me because they want to write a book -– maybe an academic book about their specialty, or a how-to, or a memoir, novel, or even a children’s book. They may have been sitting on a book idea for years and want to get it off their bucket list; or they want that instant credibility that comes from being “the author of. . .” a book on their specialty; or they may just want to have a carton of books in the trunk of their car to to sell at seminars, workshops or conferences, or give away to colleagues, clients, friends and family as gifts.

No matter what the book’s topic or genre or what the therapist’s reason is for wanting to get published, the first question I usually get asked is: “Is it okay to write about my patients? What if my patient reads it? How do I not get sued?”

Let me reassure you that licensed mental health professionals definitely can write about patients. Thousands do it. But there are some Do’s and Don’ts involved. That’s what we’ll look at here.

Confidentiality

All writers, not just therapist writers, should concern themselves with the possible consequences of what they say in print, just as we should all think before we speak. Blabbing off can get anybody in trouble. However, unlike “regular” writers, licensed mental health professionals have to be particularly vigilant when it comes to writing about clients because we have some extra legal and ethical restrictions. Our main concern is always the issue of confidentiality.

“Protecting patient confidentiality is the bedrock of psychotherapy,” says Gerry Grossman of Gerry Grossman Seminars, a company that provides California mental health professionals with exam preparation and continuing education courses. “Breaking this trust . . .puts the therapist at risk for losing his or her license.”

Yikes! Agreed! Nobody wants to get sued! That’s definitely not a perk of getting published. So let’s go over a few guidelines before you hop on the computer. If you just follow these hints and tips you should be just fine.

The Art of Disguise

This is standard. When you write about patients, always disguise their identities. This doesn’t mean just changing their names! Changing a name is never enough, especially if the other details or situations in the piece could help readers identify them. For example, stating that a wealthy female patient is “married to the Chicago-based CEO of XYZ company” doesn’t work for obvious reasons. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to do an Internet search to find out the name of that CEO and know immediately the identity of Mrs. CEO. So also change the name of the company. Change the location. Change the nature of the company’s business. Change their adult son to twin teen daughters. And if any of these things are really just fluff and not crucial to the story, leave them out.

Rule of Thumb

Danielle Ofri, M.D., physician and author of the books Incidental Findings: Lessons from My Patients in the Art of Medicine,  and Medicine in Translation: Journeys with my Patients, commented in an article (“Harnessing the Winds of Change”) that as writers we of course have to change names and identities of patients, but that’s not all: “My rule of thumb is that the description must be different enough so that it will be tough for anyone, other than the person being described or close associates, to recognize them.”

Psychoanalyst Judy Kantrowitz, M.D. interviewed 141 fellow analysts on the subject of writing about patients and found there wasn’t consensus on exactly how to disguise patients, only to do it. Kantrowitz came up with a similar conclusion to Ofri’s above, only she went a step further: “Disguise a patient so when they read it they don’t even recognize themselves.”

Self-Disclosure

What about a licensed therapist who wants to write about themselves, not their clients? A memoir perhaps, or a novel that’s obviously based on them? While it’s not illegal or unethical to do this, not all therapists think it’s a good idea. It often depends on the therapist’s training. A psychoanalytically trained therapist who believes in the “blank screen” approach is probably never going to write a memoir or disclose anything personal in a book. On the other hand, a therapist with a personal recovery story (addiction, e.g.) that’s related to their specialty may feel quite comfortable writing about it, seeing it as an appropriate self-disclosure which can be an asset to the therapeutic process, even inspiring some clients: “If my therapist can beat the problem, then I can beat it, too.”  The yes or no choice is up to the writer.

Informed Consent

An alternative to mastering the art of disguise in writing about patients is to get signed releases from them (“informed consent”) prior to making their identities known for some specific purpose or event, such as a case presentation at a conference, a teaching video in a classroom, or the publication of an article or book in which the patient might be identifiable.

A psychologist friend of mine who has published four books and is fairly well-known in her specialty area of weight management, has been a guest on many of the big daytime TV talk shows where she has talked about her private practice cases. Sometimes she will even have a client join her on camera. Advance discussions with the patient and signed releases are what make this possible.

Be Kind

The play Tea and Sympathy by Robert Anderson was a hit on Broadway in the 1950s and later became a movie. It’s about a shy young man in a boarding school who has an affair with the wife of the headmaster. At the end of the play the wife tells the young man, who is about to leave school, “Years from now when you talk about this, and you will, be kind.”

When writing about patients (ditto friends, family and neighbors), do the same thing ― be kind. You can rarely get into trouble for saying something nice about somebody. Leave the mean digs alone. In your description of your pudgy client, say “slightly overweight” not “fat” if weight is relevant. If it’s not relevant, skip it. Just don’t throw anyone under the bus. Remember, “First, do no harm” as it says in the Hippocratic Oath. And in the Twelve Step recovery groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, members are encouraged to be forthcoming (if they wish) about their own shortcomings (referred to as “taking your own inventory”), but it’s frowned upon to “take the inventories” of others. No loose lips!

Fearless Writing

Don’t let these legal and ethical restrictions on writing about clients scare you, just be aware of them. Basically, it’s just common sense. Put yourself in your client’s place: How would you feel if this or that were said about you? Abide by the guidelines of our profession. And then write on and prosper!

* (c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT. This article is from Sylvia Cary’s book, The Therapist Writer, which is currently being updated since things in the publishing industry change at lightning speed. Please email sylviacary@gmail.com if you are interested in being informed when the updated version of The Therapist Writer launches. Website: sylviacary.com.

 

 

 

 

 

The Declaration of Independence – A Document for Writers and Cats Alike

My rescue cat, Pearl, reading The Declaration of Independence that was printed in the New York Times today. She is appreciating no longer being in a cage.

JULY 4th, 2017 – The country’s birthday and my blog’s birthday. I started it on July 4th, 2011, and even though I’ve neglected it terribly the last few years, I do always blog on July 4th.  This morning when I picked up my New York Times from my doorstep, I discovered that they’d printed a copy of the Declaration of Independence. I read it twice. What a great piece of writing that is — brief, clear, well-structured, moving — the kind of writing that always takes the longest to write!

As a writer — as a human being — I am grateful for what this document means. Pearl, at this moment looking a tad anxious because fireworks are going off outside, I’m sure agrees.

Happy 4th!

(c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT, author of The Therapist Writer

Gimme a Fiverr

Book Covers, eBook Formatting, Marketing & More for $5

Self-Publishing Has So Darn Many Parts 

When an author steps into the world of self-publishing for the first time, carrying what they think is a finished product (their book manuscript) under their arm, they are in for a big shock. That finished book they may have spent years writing is only the first of many parts making up this thing called “getting published.”

Aside from the writing, there’s the editing, proofing, formatting, interior design, cover, ISBN number, printing, distribution, promotion, marketing, copyrighting, and any number of other apres publication tasks such as endless networking and social media. It is so time-consuming that some authors fear they will never get to actually write again. While a few learn to do these tasks themselves and become one-man-bands, others hate it and have to hire experts to do the tasks for them.  Until a few years ago, that was about the only choice a self-publishing author had: DIY or pay a lot.

Then along came Fiverr.com

What is Fiverr.com?

Fiverr.com is an international talent website, started in Tel Aviv in 2010. It’s an actual building as well as a large collection of freelancers and small businesses in some 200 countries using many languages. (You can check the language you need). Instead of paying $1000 for a book cover or hundreds to have someone format your paperback into a Kindle Ebook,  you can probably get the same services for $20 or $40. Plus, it’s a really fun website.

When you go there you’ll see hundreds of little TV-like screens, each one with an expert hawking his or her expertise: “I will design a stunning CreateSpace cover . . . I will convert your ebook from mobi to ePub. . . I will design a great logo . . . I will write your blog posts . . I will write engaging press releases . . .I will show you how to apply for an ISBN . . .I will illustrate your children’s book . . .I will make a video book trailer . . .I will market your ebook to 1.5 million people.” Other sellers offer PR, translation, animation, audio books, tech services and business card designs. . . and so much more.

Fiverr.com offers services or “gigs” starting at $5 (hence the name) but you can add little extras and frills and give a tip, but it’s still soooo affordable!

When I needed a cover for the Kindle version of one of my books (see Woman & Longterm Sobriety on right), I searched Fiverr for an hour or two looking for a Kindle cover artist I liked, then I emailed her a photo that I got for free on morguefile.com (the photos can be used for commercial purposes), plus I emailed some other information the seller asked for, and I left the rest up to her. (You get revisions if you want). Three days later she sent me a great-looking book-cover file that I uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing. I’ve since used her for half a dozen other covers for author clients through my book doctor business.  To date, I have ordered “gigs” from publishing talents in the UK, Pakistan and two in Texas.

 

As with everything, do your homework. Plan to spend a few hours the first time, searching for the service you want, look at the examples of the expert’s work, read their reviews (good and bad), and make your judgment call. You may hit a dud once in a while — but it’s worth the gamble. So gimme a fiverr!

(c) Sylvia Cary, LMFT – photos from morguefile.com