Choice Overload – Work through the fear to make good choices

Avoid choice overload by focusing on your unique needs.

By Janet Lane

I subscribe to Ted Talks and viewed an interesting presentation by Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School and author of The Art of Choosing.  Her talk was about choice overload.

Writers can benefit from her insight. She cited an experiment in which grocery store shoppers were given a choice of 6 different kinds of jams.  On the same day shoppers were given a choice of 24 different kinds of jam. Their findings: more people stopped at the 24-jam table, but only 1 in 24 actually bought a jar, while at the 6-choice table, 30% bought a jar. Bottom line: people were 6 times more likely to buy if they encountered 6 instead of 24 varieties of jam.

What does jam have to do with you?  When faced with a bewildering array of choices, we are more likely to avoid choices, more likely to make a bad decision, and more likely to derive less satisfaction from the choice.

Writers are faced with a massive number of choices that can paralyze us, make us likely to make any decision, in a time when a good decision may help you in our  careers.  Here are just some of them.

Publishing options.  Traditional New York Publishers. Small publishers.  Vanity publishers.  Kindle Publishing. B&N Nook Publishing. Smashwords Publishing. Innovative on-line publishers.

Author support services.  Web site design. Book cover design. Editing services.  Advertising opportunities – Google and other pop-up banners.

Buying paid advertising in return for a book review. Bookmarks, pens, calendars, etc.  A mind-boggling number of blogs and Yahoo groups that offer help with any aspect of writing you could ever imagine.

Educational services.  Dreamy retreats in gorgeous locations, with hands-on instruction on plotting, revising, polishing.  A multitude of on-line writer’s courses for craft and marketing.  Software instructional tapes so you can create your own website, book covers, etc.

 “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can doIs the right thing.

The worst thing you can do is nothing.”  –Theodore Roosevelt

 Here are some succinct ways to reduce your choice overload problem.

1.  Cut.  Reduce your options.  Why agonize over how to design a book cover if you still haven’t decided you’ll e-pub?  Don’t ponder over selecting a $750/book editor if you don’t have the funds for it. Selecting the big choices first will help you eliminate more than half of the choices.  Write in your consumer journal:  “I need to decide X first.  Then Y.  The rest can wait for another time.  I will focus on this first.”

2. Concretization.  Make it real. Gather as much information as you can, so you can really “see” what that choice is. Ask the journalistic 5 W’s: who, what, when, where, why. Ask successful authors what worked best for them. Learn the costs, royalties, expenses and demands involved in each option.  If you don’t qualify for X and Y, eliminate them as options.  Simplify.

3. Categorization. If you’re swimming in genres, pick one and focus on that for this time in your life. You can always do a separate study later on something else, but give A, B or C genre your full focus for now, not all three.

4. Start easy.  Make choices in the areas that have the least number of choices – like Iyengar’s jam tasting table, go to the table with 6 selections first.  Find a way to minimize choices, perhaps by ease of entry, affordability, or some factor that will give you more simplicity and ease of choice.

“A real decision is measured by the fact that

you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action,

you haven’t truly decided.” — Tony Robbins 

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 Wishing you many opportunities … and good choices!  –Janet

Resources for marketing your books

Social Media Marketing - are you making full use of this new communications network?

Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers recently presented a timely panel about marketing in the age of social media.  The panel members, published authors and good writer friends, included mystery authors Beth Groundwater, Patricia Stoltey and fantasy writer/Internet guru Ron Heimbecher.

Drop by Patricia Stoltey’s blog to see a list of excellent resources for social media marketing.  I’ll add another reference book here:

Secrets of Social Media Marketing, How to Ue Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-charge your business by Paul Gillin, Quill Driver Books.

What is the single most effective promotional activity you’ve done to promote your novels?

Synopsis: a perfect fit

Synopsis: a perfect fit

Not me, but the dress was this tight

by Janet Lane

I should never have touched the dress, but the tailoring was exquisite, the design flattering. Heart skipping with anticipation, I entered the changing room. I searched for a zipper but found none. Odd, I thought, given the small-waisted style. Doubts cooled my hopes. I have wide shoulders and a woman’s hips, and it wasn’t looking good.

I lifted my arms and slipped the dress over my head. It stuck on my shoulders, so I squirmed and wiggled until the dress was half on.

Breathing heavier, images of mutating hornworms came to mind, but I remembered the lovely draping effect of the skirt and found renewed resolve. I pulled the hemline down and a seam ripped. What kind of pretzel did the fashion manufacturer think I was? I pulled harder.

Another rip.

I conceded to the dress. It would ruin whatever hair style I had, any way. I reversed my efforts but the fabric, wedged so tightly on my body, wouldn’t budge.

I was stuck, trapped in a prison of tight, unyielding black fabric. The lining was as strong as any straight jacket. I couldn’t see. Sweat broke out in my armpits, not perspiration, ladies.

A knock at the door. The dressing room attendant. I swallowed and found my voice. “Yes?”

“Having problems in there? Can I help?”

Like most women, I’d rather submit to a blood withdrawal before admitting I needed help in a dressing room. “No, thanks. Just … checking different angles, that’s all.” Oh, sweet worry, I thought, if only to have access to some scissors. $189 (before the sale) or not, it would have made an interesting scarf. Recalling my Lamaze classes, I took some hoo-hee breaths and continued extricating myself.

Yes. I escaped. And bought it. I’d ripped my way into a purchase, after all. I sew, so I added a zipper, something the designer should have done if he weren’t an evil woman-hater. It has since become one of my favorite dresses.

What, you may say, does any of this have to do with writing?

I’m reminded of this experience when I try to write a synopsis. I enter them with the highest of hopes and optimism, believing that this time the words will flow, that I will be more able this time to condense a 400-page story into two pages. I’m afraid, but lured by the prospect of owning a strong marketing tool for the novel I have labored so hard to write. It never fits without pain, suffering, and a dose or two of terror, along with embarrassment when the critiques arrive. It always costs more, in terms of time and brain damage, than I ever anticipate, and in the end it doesn’t fit exactly right. It always takes another adjustment and more hard thinking.

And if I stay with it, it becomes, like the dress, an asset worth the effort.

Just think. Isn’t it wonderful that the synopsis generally runs one to eight pages, and the novel runs three to four hundred? Such a better ratio than the other way around!

It’s spring, time for an attitude adjustment. A synopsis is a wonderful thing. Here are two reasons why:

1. A clearly written synopsis is an excellent selling tool. We can write the most memorable story in the world, but if we can’t communicate what the book is about, we can’t sell it. Unless we’re prepared to visit New York and pitch it to all the editors and agents, live, the synopsis is our representative. We want that representative to be knowledgeable and dressed to impress.

2. A clearly written synopsis is an excellent writing tool. A synopsis is so hated because it points out, with a glaring spotlight, those areas of our book that are unclear, undeveloped, missing, inconsistent and/or just plain wrong.

A dear friend compared writing a synopsis to sticking your freshly washed face into one of those well-lit magnified makeup mirrors that reveal all the pores, wrinkles and zits.

Using this analogy, this is a unique chance to re-make ourselves, to correct the imperfections before going out into the publishing world.

Synopsis. It’s confining, seemingly impossible, terrifying, challenging, embarrassing and time-consuming. But I challenge you: complete one on your current project and you’ll see for yourself the magic it can work for your novel.