What's In an Author's Name?

            When I put my mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance, up on Amazon last summer, there were quite a few decisions I had to make about it. I now realize I messed up on one that should have been easy.

            That would be the decision about what name to use as the author of the book. My friends all know me as Mike Wallace, but since that name also belongs to the late longtime anchor of 60 Minutes and to an all-pro NFL wide receiver, I rejected it out of hand. I didn’t want to confuse anyone, or have anyone feel they’d bought my book based on false pretenses.

            So I went with my full first name, and put the book out under Michael Wallace. I’m pretty conversant with the mystery section of the bookstore and had never seen that name on anything, so figured it would be pretty safe. I now realize that I should have gone a step further and done an author search under that name on Amazon.

How Many Michaels Are There?

            Had I done so, I would have realized there were a number of Michael Wallaces with books on Amazon, writing in a number of different fields. I should not have added another Michael to the list, if only because it makes a search by author name a lot more work. And the more work you make the customer do, the less likely you are to get the sale.

            It would have been a relatively simple matter to use some other variation. I could have called myself M.E. Wallace, Michael E. Wallace, or used my middle name in some variation: Eugene Wallace, Eugene M. Wallace. As glaringly obvious as it seems to me now, I didn’t bother to do the check because I didn’t realize the ginormous number of authors on Amazon and how common a name Michael Wallace really is.

            Maybe that’s not entirely a bad thing. The flip side of being hard to find in that thicket of Michaels is that some people slogging through that thicket, in search of one of the other chaps, will find me and my book. I know that’s already happened at least once.

Best Thing He’s Written

            One of my eight reviews on Kindle is from a complete stranger who apparently bought my book on the assumption that it was written by one of the other Michael Wallaces. The stranger gave The McHenry Inheritance five stars, for which I am deeply appreciative, and wrote a short review along the lines of, “it’s not like his other books, but it’s one of the best things he’s written.”

            As an author, I am happy when anyone reads my book all the way through and likes it, and if someone finds the book by mistake but still likes it, so much the better. As we all know, it’s tough to sell a book these days.

            Still, I can’t help feeling I should have used a more distinctive author name, something that would stand out and be appropriate for the series of fly-fishing mysteries I hope to write. This week it came to me. Instead of my real first name, I should have used another that carries a resonance of the Old West; that is the name of one of my favorite trout streams; and that, when coupled with my last name, doesn’t show up on Amazon and would have been a unique author. The author name I should have gone with is Carson Wallace.

           

           

Talking to Rotary About Publishing

            Wednesday afternoon I gave a talk to the Rotary Club of Watsonville about “Self-Publishing in the Digital Age.” If you’re wondering how I got such a gig with my meager qualifications, I should mention that I serve on the club’s program committee and can call my own number at any time.

            With only a half hour, and wanting to leave time for questions, I could only skim the surface. I began by bringing up the memory of one our late club members, Sherrell Watson, who had self-published a book on steam locomotives in 1995, and tried to draw a contrast between that era and 17 years later, when I published my mystery, The McHenry Inheritance. The primary focus was the rise of Amazon and social media, which can give a hustling self-published author a modest shot at success.

            I do a lot of public speaking and (braggadocio alert!) like to believe I’m pretty good at it, which includes reading the audience reaction. This group was clearly interested, and when I finished the prepared talk and asked for questions, a half-dozen hands shot up instantaneously. That’s a sure sign they’re listening.

Interested in the Marketing

            As might have been expected from a business-oriented group, the questions were mostly geared to the business and marketing aspects of book publishing, as opposed to the work of writing a book. In fact, the closest thing to a writing question was whether I’m planning a sequel. The answer is yes, but not a continuation of the story, rather a new adventure featuring Quill Gordon (my main character) in a different setting with different characters and a fresh story.

            Beyond that, I tried to answer the questions in a complex and sophisticated fashion. A few examples:

            Q: Fifty Shades of Gray was self-published and became a huge best-seller. Do you think your book can do that?

            A: Probably not. I forgot to include any bondage or S&M scenes.

            Q: How do you make any money selling an e-book for $2.99?

            A: No problem. You just sell a million of ‘em.

            Q: How many people would you guess bought your book because they thought it was written by Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes?

            A: Not nearly enough.

            Yeah, we had some fun.

Surprised by the Response

            There were some good questions about tracking sales and about marketing the book as a straight mystery or emphasizing the fly-fishing angle. (Gordon is on a fishing trip in the High Sierra when he gets caught up in the murder and intrigue.) All in all, I was quite pleased with how it went.

            One pleasant surprise came out at the end. I had mentioned in my talk that I had probably maxed out on selling the book to my friends and had to be getting it into the hands of strangers now. I really believed that, figuring that if anyone who knows me hadn’t bought it after five months on the market, they weren’t going to buy it at all.

            Not so, as it turned out. In the course of the talk I mentioned that I had brought some books for sale (I’d recently ordered a dozen from Create Space, Amazon’s print-on-demand program) and that I would give $3 from each sale to the club’s community service fund. When the meeting adjourned, there was a crush around the head table, and when it finally dispersed, I had sold ten books to an audience of approximately 60 people. Nice work if you can get it, and not a bad day’s work at that.