Finding Your Niche by Seth Harwood

I’ve been writing fiction for about 10 years now. I wrote a few bad novels and then started writing short stories. I’ve taken creative writing classes in Boston, Montana, and then at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where I earned my MFA in 2002. I’ve now published about a dozen or so in various literary journals, mostly print and not online. For a long time I thought this would be how I’d get noticed, but after about 10 published stories, hundreds of rejections and no agent willing to come within a mile of my collection, I began to lose hope. At the same time, my attempts at writing a literary novel weren’t going so well. Basically, I didn’t know what I wanted to write about. So I started writing my first crime novel, Jack Wakes Up and had a ball with it. I gave myself a deadline, finished the first draft before that, and then ended up spending the better part of 6 months revising it. When I first pitched to agents, I thought I’d hit gold: right off the bat, two wanted to see the whole thing. Then, when they got it, neither of them was interested. One suggested revisions, which I did and then re-sent it. I never heard back from the guy. It just felt like I’d written yet another project that I’d wind up tinkering at and revising until it drove me silly.

Then, about a year ago, I submitted a story to an online publication, Storyglossia.com. It was accepted and suddenly more people started reading my work than had ever before. I struck up a relationship with the editor and found out he had 2000 visitors a day and my story was consistently in his top 5. So I figured I’d better get a website and start putting up my work. All of a sudden it felt like a good way to find an audience. Around this time, a friend suggested that I try podcasting. I didn’t even know what podcasting was, but he introduced me to a few fiction podcasts, showed me the number of listeners some were drawing (over 20,000), and introduced me to Scott Sigler, the daddy of them all, who helped me work through the technical issues of production. I made a website and in July of 06, I started podcasting Jack Wakes Up. It just felt like a better process than spending my time sending out more submissions. I figured it would help me put the book behind me, read through it for final edits, and that once I had some listeners and success, it would only help my agent query letters. I felt like it was a way I could move on from the novel and start writing something else.

When I got through the 20 half-hour (at least) episodes of Jack Wakes Up in late fall, I’d learned A LOT about computers, site hosting, and sound production. I’d also drawn some recognition and over 500 listeners. I did this by getting help from other podcasters who ran promos for me, and by joining the site Podiobooks.com, which acts as a sort of library for podcast fiction. Then I went back to agents with my new queries, a ready-to-go manuscript and audience, and they brushed me off again.

So what did I do? I kept podcasting. Here’s the great thing about podcasting: during Jack Wakes Up, listeners started writing in, contacting me to say they liked what I was doing. That was the coolest thing ever! For the first time I was actually getting consistent positive feedback from an audience. I mean the goal of podcasting was to develop an audience, something I could say in a cover letter, like “I’ve podcasted this book to over 1,000 listeners.” But the thing was that podcasting became more than a means to a goal, it became something that meant instant promotion, a hard line relationship with an audience, and something that I was doing with writing that was fun!

Let me break it down: podcasting was

1) a way to feel like I was ready to move on from my first crime novel: while I was podcasting, I went over final edits, and came to feel like I was done with the book, that it was “out there.”

2) a way to read it through carefully and actually look at those edits

3) an exposure to a great audience: for the first time people I wasn’t related to were excited about what I was doing and following my work. People started to write in and get involved. I got to know them and they started helping me with promotions. Also, people wanted more from me: to know more, to read more, to hear more of my work. As a writer, it’s been great having that demand for what I write. So good that in the winter I started podcasting my stories.

4) Also, in market speak, I’m building an audience, growing my name recognition and “branding” Seth Harwood. I know a lot of my listeners would buy a book that I published. They’ve written in and told me so. I’ve seen Scott Sigler take his listeners and get them into a campaign that sent his second book to #7 on Amazon.com the first day it came out. He sold 4,000 copies in the first week alone, with no marketing budget, no money spent, and a tiny POD publisher. In each of my episodes, I’ve started talking about what I’m up to and asking my readers for help with things. For my second book, This Is Life, I’ve had listeners design the cover, add voices, make a pdf of Jack Wakes Up, and help me redesign my website. I now have a whole page of fan art on the site. It’s really cool. A lot of them want to do voices and like being involved.

5) Podcasting has been a great entry into promotions. This goes with 4, but basically by joining the podcast community, I’ve gotten to know a lot of other folks who’re doing it and since there’s not so many of us, we can all help each other. And people really are helpful. When I started my pitch to promote JP2, I was able to get a lot of people interested in having me on for an interview. It’s really helped me build momentum.

Now I’m asking published crime writers to come on and do cameo spots, introductions. They’re happy to do it because it’s free promotion for them in just a short phone call.

Now I look back at the hope I had of someone choosing my book from a submission and publishing it, and I know even if they had, the book wouldn’t have had any promotion. Now I am my own promotion, which makes me more attractive to a publisher because I know I can sell some books as soon as they come out. Has anyone woken up to that and signed me on yet? Nope. But as long as I keep building an audience, seeing my numbers grow up, and hearing from people who love my work, I’m finally able to be patient about it.

Seth Harwood is an an author and story podcaster. If you would like to know more about podcasting, or his work, visit his site at www.sethharwood.com to send a message.