Best selling author Jim Rubart talks about Rooms

Welcome, Jim Rubart, author of Rooms, the best seller that’s taking the CBA by storm. Jim is a marketing professional, speaker, family man, and outdoor enthusiast.

 The blurb for Rooms: A young Seattle software tycoon inherits a home on the Oregon coast that turns out to be a physical manifestation of his soul.

 Jim, what did you do before publication to give yourself the best platform from which to jump – or, what are the most essential five things authors need to do to prepare for launch?

 If Donald Maas is right, and eighty percent of a novel sales come from word of mouth, then a successful novel starts with a gripping premise. Given the description of my story people will either say, “Ooo, sounds intriguing,” or “Uh, too many Twilight Zone episodes as a kid, Jim?”

 In other words people will love this book or hate it. If you look at my Amazon reviews I have close to 100 five-star reviews and close to 90 one-star reviews. A small percentage are in the middle. Do I like the one-star reviews. No. (And most of them are from atheists who don’t like the God thing happening in the book.) But as marketer I realize that ROOMS has created a great deal of passion on both sides of the fence. This is good. As I tell my clients, “Love me, hate me, just don’t ignore me.”

 So the first step in developing a strong platform is to write a book people either can’t put down, or want to toss in the fire. Or put another way, time spent on developing your craft, coming up with a high concept story, and telling it in a compelling manner has more to do with sales (80%!) than anything else.

 The second step is to find people who will go to the wall for you. Friends who believe in you and are willing to promote your book to everyone they meet. People who pray for you, who encourage you, who brainstorm marketing ideas with you, who take it on as their personal cause to see you succeed.

 The third step is to affect the 20% of sales (advertising and PR) to as great a degree as you can. This can be paid ads, radio and TV interviews, blogs (yes, there might be some people that pick up ROOMS because of your posting this, Lisa. Thank you!). And one size doesn’t fit all. If you’re great on the radio, then do all the interviews you can. If you’re boring on-air, radio and TV will hurt sales, not improve them. Find out what you’re good at and concentrate on that.

 Fourth and fifth: Pray. A lot.

 How much of the success of Rooms is due to your know-how in your profession of marketing, having a top agent, being published by a well-known company, and/or having that company putting out for you?

 Great question with no definitive answer. All of the above? It’s such a combination of things. It’s timing, it’s the story, it’s getting on the right radio show, it’s having a publishing house that believes in you and your book. It’s God’s favor, it’s having your tribe promote you to all their friends, it’s visiting book stores and getting the people in the store to like you, and a million other things.

 One other thing to keep in mind: You need to market to more than readers. Before a book can get in a consumer’s hands you have to sell an agent, then an editor, then the pub board, then your publisher’s sales team, then the buyer at the store level, THEN the consumer. We don’t have time now to discuss specifics on how to do the above, but every step is essential.

 Please share your top five marketing tips with our readers. 

1. Don’t be boring. Be fascinating. I’m serious. Most authors spend years perfecting their craft, learning from editors, agents, critique partners on how to be stellar at writing. But they spend little time on learning how to present themselves, brand themselves, etc. It’s why authors hire me. I teach them how to be interesting. If you are intrigued by someone’s personality it’s more likely you’ll pick up a copy of their book.
2. Learn marketing. I know, you’re a writer, not a marketer. But it’s not an option any more. Understanding the basic principles of marketing are essential to establishing a brand in today’s one million books a year market.
3. Use the power of Social Media and the Web. But don’t just become friends with other authors. That helps, but reach out beyond the writing world. For example, I had a client who wrote a coming of age baseball novel. We did two minutes of research and found a Web site that specific to Little League. They have a newsletter (which are always hungry for great content). I suggested he write an article (on spec) that would run in their newsletter and of course he gets by-line that talks about his novel. He should facebook baseball communities, not just his author buds.
4. Talk to everyone. Remember, Word of Mouth is power. Whenever a stranger asks me, “How are you doing?” I respond, “Well, the biggest dream of my life came true.” Everyone says, “What’s that?” I tell them my novel ROOMS hit the bestseller list. They smile, congratulate me, ask me what it’s about, I hand them a card and within minutes I have a potential new reader. And it costs nothing.
5. Pray. Pray a lot.

 Where do you go from here?

 My second novel, BOOK OF DAYS, releases in January. My third, THE CHAIR, hits shelves in November of 2011, and BACKSPACE will be launched in July of 2012.

 In between I’ll continue to work with authors and publishers with their marketing.

Thank you for your time and wisdom, Jim.

 Thanks so much for having me, Lisa!

Here are the blursb for Book of Days and for The Chair:

BOOK of DAYS

“…  in Your book all my days were recorded, even those which were purposed before they had come into being.”  Psalm 139:16

Young Cameron Vaux’s mind is slipping. Memories of his wife, killed two years earlier in a car accident, are vanishing just as his dad predicted they would. Memories he knows he has to remember.

His dad claimed Cameron’s only hope was to find God’s book of days–described in Psalm 139, that records the past, present, and future of every soul on earth.

Cameron follows a lead to Three Peaks, Oregon, where New Age guru Jason Judah is the only one talking, but Cameron’s gut says stay away.

If only he could crack enigmatic ex-newspaper man, Taylor Stone, who Cameron is convinced knows all about the book’s deep secrets.

When Ann Bannister, hotshot host of the TV show Adventure Northwest, arrives in town Cameron wants nothing to do with her.

But while she believes the book is as likely to be found as Bigfoot, she ends up becoming his strongest ally in his quest to restore his memories, and discover if the Book of Days exists on earth.   

BOOK OF DAYS will release in January 2011 from B&H Fiction.

THE CHAIR

When an elderly lady shows up in Lee Roscoe’s antique furniture store claiming to have a chair made by Jesus Christ, he laughs her off. But after she delivers an ancient looking chair made of olive wood three days later—with a cryptic message attached to it—he begins to wonder.

Lee’s world shatters as he searches for the truth about the artifact, and the unexplained phenomena that seems to come from it. And he’s not the only one who will do almost anything to possess the power that appears to surround the chair.

THE CHAIR will be published in October 2011 from B&H Fiction.