A few minutes with Jean Oram, author of The Wedding Plan

One of the many wonderful writers I have met at AgentQuery Connect is Jean Oram, who is described as the “super moderator” of that writers’ community. In the fiction realm, she tends to write romance, and in the nonfiction area, she focuses on child’s play, with sites like It’s All Kid’s Play.

Jean’s latest new release, The Wedding Plan, is about a secret marriage between ex-lovers. But with their past and being stuck in a cabin out in the small, nosy little town of Blueberry Springs you can be sure their secrets will be difficult to keep! The Wedding Plan is from her new Veils and Vows series and can be found on all major online bookstores.

She also has been an important supporter of Elephant’s Bookshelf Press since its beginning and served as copy editor of our best-selling anthology, The Fall. For this interview, we talked about marketing and her approach to building her audience.

Do you have a mailing list and newsletter?

I sure do!

How often do you send anything to your mailing list?

It depends on a lot of different things, but typically I try to reach out to my subscribers every 4-6 weeks so they don’t forget who I am. ;) It has to be meaningful though—I never want to annoy my subscribers.

Do you have a blog?

Yes.

How often do you post on your blog?

That, like my newsletter, depends on what’s going on. My blog is a place for my readers to find updated news, items of interest, giveaway entry forms, and the like. Sometimes there will be four posts in a week, sometimes nothing for 6-8 weeks.

What else do you do to market yourself as an author?

I try everything and an answer to this question could fill an entire book.

Basically, you never know what’s going to work for you, so you’ve got to experiment. Some things that haven’t worked for others work for me. Some things that work for others don’t work for me. Things that worked two years ago no longer have the same effect now. For example, doing a basic signed paperback giveaway used to create avid fans—like a 90 percent conversion rate. Now it’s more like 25 percent which makes it less financially feasible to use those kinds of giveaways in that manner. So, now I use few signed paperback giveaways and use them for different purposes. Why has it changed? Who knows, but if you’re going to keep selling your books, you have to stay hungry, stay smart ,and keep rolling with the punches.

Do you offer services like editing, query review, etc.?

I do not.

What do you consider success for your marketing efforts?

It really depends on what the purpose/goal on a particular marketing effort was. Recently, I wanted to increase the number of people in my reader group (on Facebook), and so I gave it a push from several different angles and met my numerical goal for new members. My next goal is to get them active, make friends with those members. After that will be to find rewarding ways for them to help me share the word about my books—that’s going to be a more difficult thing to measure. Because what are my goals? Visibility? Then having a few members share a post can help. If it’s getting sales directly from posts being shared…well, that’s more difficult to measure directly.

Thanks, Jean!

Jean Oram is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author who loves making opposites attract in tear-jerking, laugh-out-loud romances set in small towns. She grew up in a town of 100 (cats and dogs not included) and owns one pair of high heels, which she has worn approximately three times in the past twenty years. 

Her life contains an ongoing school theme, having grown up in an old school house, then becoming a ski instructor in the Canadian Rockies, then going on to marry a teacher and becoming a high school librarian. She now runs a fundraising committee for her daughter's school.

Jean lives in Canada with her husband and two kids. She can often be found outdoors hiking up mountains, playing with kids on the soccer field, racing her dog on her bicycle--sometimes the dog lets her win--or inside writing her next novel. 

Subscribe to Jean's newsletter and get a taste of her small-town comedies that will have you laughing while falling in love. Get your FREE ebook by signing up here: www.JeanOram.com/FREEBOOK.

She Writes Like a Woman

There was an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times recently. Written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, the viewpoint was not merely about "politeness and authority" that the title references. Rather, it speaks to attitudes that are apparently held by women in Minnesota -- and probably in much of the United States. Specifically, the author suggests that women writers –- at least those Ms. Klinkenborg has taught -– tend to practice "self negation … a self-deprecatory way of talking that is meant … to help create a sense of shared space."

In other words, many women authors don’t write with confidence; their narrative voice is timid. While I’m sure there are many men who emasculate themselves in their writing, I can’t think of any off the top of my head. That’s probably because I think of writers –- male or female –- who impress me with their voice; I don't usually think about the ones whose voices are soft and uninspired.

I had a conversation with one of my sisters-in-law recently. She's a voracious and strong reader who can discern quickly whether she'll like something or not. She's also not a snob; I learned about Christopher Moore's delightful B-film novels from her. And she can explain why she likes something beyond the typical "I love the characters he creates" answer. Anyway, she described a conversation she'd had where she told a woman "I generally don't read women authors." She gave her reasoning, which I won't display here, except to say that Klinkenborg would have understood it.

Personally, I'm not bothered by women writers in general, though as I look at what I've been reading the past couple years since I started working in New York again, I've found that most of what I've read have been by men. Notable exceptions N.M. Kelby's Whale Season, which is kind of like Chris Moore only without vampires or demons, and Book Doctor by Esther Cohen, which I enjoyed (Ironically, it feels like it needs a book doctor; the ending was rushed and included a deus ex machina character to hasten things along. However, there were also a couple works that I started recently and didn't finish because they were treacly crap.

I found Klinkenborg's comments interesting coming as they did soon after Doris Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Without having read a drop of her work, I can tell she's got a unique voice just by reading the interview she gave from her doorstep. The woman has confidence and pride, opinions and perspective. I hope more writers -- regardless of gender -- recognize the value of developing such an honest voice. Readers and other writers appreciate it.