author brand

Using SlideShare For Marketing Fiction And Non-Fiction Books

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This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn blog on 5/16/14.

I know you don’t want to think about any other sites for marketing!

But in this post, I outline why I think you should consider Slideshare and how I’m using it for both my brands, J.F.Penn thriller author, and Joanna Penn, professional speaker and non-fiction author.

 

Why care about Slideshare?

Slideshare is basically a presentation sharing network.

It’s a form of content marketing, but more visual, and if done well, it can be much more effective than writing a blog post on a topic, especially if you are unknown and your site has no ranking. Visual marketing is very much the big thing now. In an age of text overload, people are clicking more on visual content – whether that’s Instagram, pics on Twitter or Facebook, infographics or SlideShares.

It’s easily shareable and viewable on any social platform as well as on mobile devices. On the right, you can see a tweet that actually embeds the whole SlideShare so it can be read within Twitter. Awesome for twitterholics like me!

Slideshare is one of 120 most visited websites in the world, with 60 million monthly visitors. It ranks highly in Google for keywords, and you can use embedded hyperlinks to direct traffic to your site.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Creative Penn.

 

You’re Not Gonna Spend a Lot Marketing This Book

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This post by Saundra Mitchell originally appeared on her Making Stuff Up For A Living blog on 1/13/14.

So, I’m reading this absurd article on all the things you need to spend money on to market your own book. Oh noz, you have to pay a zillion dollars for a website, for a mailing list, for copy and editing for your website, wtf? I’m not even going to link to article because, seriously, WTF?

Here’s the deal. If you’re willing to put the time in yourself, you can do almost all of your book marketing for free. It may be worth it to you to pay for someone else to do everything- and if you’re in a position to do that, awesome! Go for it! But if you’re not, or if you’d prefer to have strict control over everything, here’s a brief guide to doing it yourself.

 

Blog/Website: More and more people are using Blog software to host their entire websites. WordPress is fantastically flexible, free and your URL can be an easily memorable yourname.wordpress.com. WordPress has about a zillion free themes so you can customize like whoa, and because it’s an integrated service, it shares your links on other blogs like yours to drive traffic. FOR FREE.

Blogger is another free host and software package that’s easy to use and customize for your needs. And you know what drives even more traffic to websites? Twitter. ALSO FREE.

 

Graphics: Graphics for your website, your bookmarks, your postcards whatnot- you can create them yourself for free, from the bottom up. Download a copy of GIMP image manipulation software, and play with it.

 

Click here to read the full article on Making Stuff Up For A Living.

 

The Art and Business of Reader Engagement and Author Platform

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This post by Jane Friedman originally appeared on her site on 12/13/13.

In the nonprofit world, you’ll frequently hear about “audience development,” which concerns itself with outreach to people interested in what you do, and customizing that outreach based on a person’s level of interest.

Audience development is difficult to strictly define because it involves not just pure marketing, but one-on-one relationships. It’s not about selling (although the result is often sales); it’s about creating an experience or community that engages with you over the long term. And that requires that you communicate with your readers meaningfully and consistently.

One of the best summaries of audience development I’ve read is from Shoshana Fanizza, who has spent more than a decade in arts development:

Audience Development, in a nutshell, is all about relationship building to achieve the “power of people” to support your art form. Consider it as building positive energy, people energy, to attract more support for you. Audience development does take time to see results. It is a building process. … You want to get to know your audience and connect with them. If they feel connected and cared for, they will want to become more involved. It will take effort and persistence, but you will see the relationships you build start to form a positive community around your art. This community is the key to succeeding!

So, audience development is a fancy business word for directly communicating with your readership, and engaging with them in a way that’s mutually beneficial and respectful. What follows is a starting framework and strategy for doing just that, and much of it overlaps with developing your platform. (If you don’t know what platform is, read my definition here.)

 

Why is this important?

 

Click here to read the full article on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

3 Myths About Social Media For Authors

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This post by Tim Grahl originally appeared on Out:think on 12/13/13.

More advice about social media is swirling around out there than ever before. I read the posts. I watch the videos. I’m constantly looking for that secret that I’m missing and each time I’m reminded of the same thing.

When it comes to selling books, spending a huge amount of time building a social media following is a waste of time.

In this post, I’m going to debunk many of the myths about social media and how it can be used to sell books and then I’m going to share a couple of things you can do to actually take advantage of these platforms.
2 Ideas About Social Media

Tools and Tool Boxes
All of the things we use to build our online platform – blogs, email lists, social media, podcasts, guest posts, etc – are all just tools in a tool box. The focus should never be on the tool. The focus is on what we are trying to build – in this case an author platform.

However, with tools like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn and others, we often lose site of that. We decide we need to use them to sell books then run around trying to figure out the best way to do it. This is the same thing as picking up a hammer from your toolbox and then running around trying to figure out what to build with it.

You should never start with the tools. You start with a plan, then reach in your toolbox and pull out the right tool for the job.

 

Click here to read the full post on Out:think.

 

The Writer’s Dread – Marketing #RomFantasy

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This post by Denyse Bridger originally appeared on her Fantasy Pages blog on 5/5/14.

I know, I can feel the cringe already among those who have to devote way too much time to this chore, and have to leave the art of writing to wait when it’s all we really want to be doing. At any rate, I thought I’d make a few observations, and this is my official disclaimer that all comments are my own thoughts and opinions in the event anyone gets ruffled or takes offense.

A lot of new authors don’t seem to understand the basics of marketing and branding yourself and your product. I see so much pushing of the same excerpt, or just endless postings of the same excerpt over and over. I know it’s very important to all of us to get our books out there before readers, but when entire Yahoo digests come from one author or your promo company, neither of you is doing your efforts any positive impact.

Promotion and marketing means more than getting your newest book in front of people, don’t kid yourself. HOW you present your material makes a huge impact on whether readers support you or avoid you. There’s also the fact that if you don’t focus at least some of your attention on creating a recognizable brand for yourself, you’ll never find that audience you want so badly.

 

Click here to read the full post on Fantasy Pages.

 

Social Media, Book Signings & Why Neither Directly Impact Overall Sales

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 4/14/14.

One of my AWESOME on-line pals posted something troublesome on my Facebook page. Apparently there is a recent article in a major writing magazine that declares social media does not sell books and, in a nutshell, isn’t worth the effort. I’ll warn you guys ahead of time that I went hunting for the article—at the last remaining Barnes & Noble within a 25 mile radius of my home—and couldn’t find said article (and have asked Kim to get me the specific issue). But, since this type of commentary is prevalent enough in the blogosphere, I feel I can address the overall thesis accurately enough.

Social Media Was NEVER About Selling Books Directly—Who KNEW?

I’ve been saying this for about ten years, because the idea of using social circles for sales is NOT new. About ten years ago, I recognized that social media would soon be a vital tool for writers to be able to create a brand and a platform before the book was even finished. This would shift the power away from sole control of Big Publishing and give writers more freedom. But, I knew social media could not be used for direct sales successfully.

How?

When I was in college, every multi-level-marketing company in the known world tried to recruit me. I delivered papers and worked nights most of my college career. Needless to say, I was always on the lookout for a more flexible job that didn’t require lugging fifty pounds of paper up and down three flights of apartment stairs at four in the morning.

I’d answer Want Ads in the paper thinking I was being interviewed for a good-paying job where I could make my own hours. Inevitably it would be some MLM company selling water filters, diet pills, vitamins, prepaid legal services, or soap.

And if I sat through the presentation, they fed me. This meant I sat through most of them.

What always creeped me out was how these types of companies did business. First, “target” family and friends to buy said product (and hopefully either sign them up to sell with you or at least “spread the word” and give business referrals). Hmmmm. Sound familiar?

 

Click here to read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

Writers You Want to Punch in the Face(book)

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This post by Rebecca Makkai originally appeared on Ploughshares on 3/7/14.

This is the story of Todd Manly-Krauss, the world’s most irritating writer. He’s a good enough guy in real life (holds his liquor, fun at parties, writes a hell of a short story)—but give the guy a social media account, and the most mild-mannered of his writer friends will turn to blood lust.

Okay, so he’s not a real writer. Except that he is. At times I fear he’s me.

Because I do struggle for balance with social media. I’m supposed to use it to promote my work (it’s not just a Twitter account, it’s a platform, dammit), and if many of the highlights of my life are writing-related, I naturally want to share those. But then I think of how I might come off to someone who’s struggled for years to publish that first story. Or how I must seem when I’m the only writer (the only self-promoter, even) on someone’s feed. And I wonder if I’m someone’s own personal Todd Manly-Krauss.

 

Click here to read the full post on Ploughshares.

 

Facebook Fan Page Reach: No, It's Not All Over For Free Promo On Facebook

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This post by Publetariat Founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 4/3/14.

If you’ve been promoting your brand and books on Facebook via a Fan Page*, then stories like The Free-Marketing Gravy Train Is Over on Facebook (from Time Magazine’s site) may have you in a tizzy. Don’t be.

Those articles are either intimating, or stating outright, that this is some kind of plot on Facebook’s part to force Fan Page owners to either pay to “boost” their posts or pay for ads in order to maintain the same level of exposure, or “Reach”, as they’ve enjoyed in the past. I don’t doubt Facebook is very much interested in selling “boosts” and ads, but the truth is that you don’t have to invest in either of those things to increase your Fan page posts’ Facebook Reach.

*Note that this post only applies to Fan pages, not individual Facebook Profiles (aka “Timelines”). This is because there are no tools for measuring engagement or boosting posts on Profile/Timeline pages: those pages are supposed to be for private individuals to engage socially with their private networks, they’re not intended to be used for marketing purposes. So if you want to deal in Reach on Facebook, you need a Fan page.


How Do I Know This?

I manage a few FB fan pages for my day job and I’ve been observing the ‘Reach’ trends on both ‘boosted’ (promoted for a fee) posts and non-boosted posts. The ones with the greatest Reach are ALWAYS the ones with the most “engagement”: Likes, clicks, Shares, comments. This is regardless of whether or not a given post has been ‘boosted’, and in fact I frequently see non-boosted posts far exceed the reach of boosted posts.

It’s kind of a chicken-or-the-egg loop once the post is out there, because you have to get initial Likes, clicks, Shares and comments to improve the post’s visibility in your Fans’ newsfeeds. Higher visibility leads to more Likes, clicks, Shares and comments, and so on and so on.

FB is keeping the details of their Reach algorithm secret, but based on what I’ve observed it goes kind of like this:

You post something to your fan page. Facebook says, “Okay, we’ll show this post in the newsfeed of a very small test group of your Fans, and see if it gets any engagement. If it does, we’ll show it a larger group. If it gets more engagement from that new group, we’ll show it to an even larger group.” And so on, and so on. So Facebook isn’t just blowing smoke when their reps say the new algorithm is intended to ensure that only the most ‘engaging’ stuff gets pushed to users’ newsfeeds.


Context, and Specifics: How Many People Get To See A Post Immediately, and Ultimately?


Click here to read the full post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

Finding Your Author Voice

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This post by Susan Spann originally appeared on her blog on 4/2/14.

Today’s #PubLaw examines a mission-critical, but often overlooked, facet of author “marketing.”

I use quotes with “marketing” here because, for authors, many aspects of marketing have more to do with who you are than what you do. This makes knowing yourself, and your voice, critically important.

Authors are not products, or “brands,” though marketing your books involves aspects of each. Authors are people (like Soylent Green!) and being a person–instead of just a “brand”–is an advantage. It can also be an enormous pitfall, if you handle yourself improperly.

Knowing who you are – your author voice – can help you decide which marketing avenues are best for you and your books.

As an author, you need to find unique and effective ways to communicate, beyond the written page. The days when authors could “just write books” and expect someone else to do all of the publishing, marketing, distribution, & sales are over. The good news, however, is that marketing doesn’t have to be miserable – done properly, a lot of it can even be fun.

Effective “marketing” involves a multi-faceted approach–but authors, like diamonds, sparkle more when the facets are properly cut. Knowing your author voice will help you realize which marketing efforts to focus on, and which ones to avoid.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Susan Spann’s blog.

 

Conferences and Conventions – What's A Writer To Do?

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This post by Gayle Carline originally appeared on her blog on 3/14/14.

I’m going to Left Coast Crime next week. Their website defines it as “an annual mystery convention sponsored by mystery fans for mystery fans. It is held during the first quarter of the calendar year in Western North America, as defined by the Mountain Time Zone and all time zones westward to Hawaii.”

Notice anything missing in the title or definition? Writers. Authors. This is not a convention for writers. And yet, it is. It is a place for authors and their readers to meet and mingle.

Writers conferences are for writers, period. They are for anyone who is even thinking they might want to write. You-The-Writer are there to learn something about writing, selling your writing, or marketing your writing. You will most likely meet people who talk and think a lot like you. They will be your tribe members and you will be able to discuss your writing with them because they get it. They get you.

At a convention, You-The-Writer are there to meet readers. There aren’t a lot of writing workshops. There are few, if any, panels discussing the business aspects of being an author. It’s all geared toward giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at your novels. You will meet mystery lovers who want to read more mysteries, like yours. With any luck, they will become your fans and you will be able to share your stories with them because they enjoy mysteries.

 

Click here to read the full post on Gayle Carline’s site.

 

Anne Rice Owns the Bullies

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This post originally appeared on STGRB on 1/26/14.

We’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. Sorry we are so late in doing it.
In our last post on Anne Rice, we showed you how she has been lighting up the Amazon fora with her wisdom and advice for authors. We also mentioned her unfortunate encounter with the bullies:

Note her Warning to Authors at the bottom. Unfortunately, like everyone else who has braved the discussion threads of Amazon, Anne too has noticed the hostility and general contempt that the AFT (Amazon Fora Trolls) have for authors. In fact, we published some of her comments on this topic in our post, Words of Wisdom From Anne Rice.

So… do you think she got attacked for her warning? You bet.

Has she stopped posting and offering her advice to authors? Nope.

In fact, she has responded to the trolls with such sophistication and eloquence, it seems they don’t really know how to respond to her. She’s too smart and trolls tend to be … well … not so smart.

In our post today we’ll show just how smart she is. She was immediately able to see right through the Amazon bullies and make intelligent observations that get right to the heart of the matter and reveal these nasty people for who and what they are: internet trolls. What’s more, she managed to isolate all of the most well-known trolls who stalk authors and their books simply because they have nothing better to do with their time.

First we’ll show you her general view of the Amazon bullies:

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes many screenshots of exchanges between Amazon reviewers and Anne Rice, on STGRB.

A Tale Of Two Author Brands

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This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn blog on 2/3/14.

Here’s an outline of my two brands and how they contribute to my business, as well as my recommendations if you’re thinking about these issues. I get a lot of questions about this topic so I thought I would address it head on 🙂

 

What is a brand anyway?

Whether you like it or not, you have a brand as soon as you publish a book, or you start tweeting, or blogging or anything.

It’s how people perceive you.

It’s the words and images that are associated with you and your books.

It’s the emotions and feelings you trigger in the person who notices you or something you put into the world.

Therefore, it’s important to control the perception of your brand.

You can do that by making sure everything you put out there in the world represents what you want people to see.

 

TheCreativePenn.com – and me as Joanna Penn

The site is aimed at writers, publishing industry folks, authors and people wanting to write and be creative entrepreneurs. I am always upbeat and I want to be a positive force for good 🙂 so I will only share what resonates with that. Of course, I have down days like everyone else, but I don’t share them here.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Creative Penn blog.

 

Brave New Bullying: Goodreads Gangs, Amazon Attacks—What Are Writers to Do?

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In this post, Kristen Lamb shares her own experiences with bullies, from childhood days right up to the present, as well as her tips for dealing with online bullies who may be stressing you out, wasting your time, or even negatively impacting your sales. From the post:

Brave New Bullying
Now we live in a Digital Age and bullies abound. The Internet gives them access to torment us 24-7 no matter where we go. I was so thrilled the day I was asked to blog for Huffington, yet unlike here, I have no control over the tone of the comments. There are people who are simply made of spite and hate and they will take it out from the safety of a computer behind the anonymity afforded by monikers. Now when I post, I simply scan and, if anything is hateful in tone? I won’t even read it.

Sad to say, this is why I don’t read reviews before buying any book. There are too many sock puppets and trolls. Goodreads and Amazon are RIFE with bullying. I’ve had friends bullied on blogs and even once had someone start a hate blog directed toward me, “Kristen Lamb The Face of Misandry” which is “Man-hating”, btw. I had to look it up.

It’s sad to say, but when researching for this topic, it seemed most of the information was for kids, schools and teens. But bullies never go away. They often can’t be stopped, but maybe we can make it tougher for them to spread their cruelty.

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes concrete steps you can take to discourage online bullying of yourself and other authors, on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Your Writing Name

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This post, by David Farland, originally appeared on his site on 12/18/13.

I was asked recently to write an article about selecting a writing name. Many authors would never consider using a pseudonym. Their identity is intimately tied to their name, and they long to see it in print, even if it’s a name as silly as Ernest Lee Funklemeyer.

For me, a name is a brand. Choosing an author’s name is more like choosing the brand name for your new line of automobiles. Sorry, I don’t really get a thrill about seeing my name in print. Maybe I did twenty-five years ago, but it really wasn’t that important to me.

I use David Farland for my writing name, but I was raised as Dave Wolverton, and wrote my first dozen novels under that name. Why did I switch? There were a couple of reasons: When I wrote my third novel, I got a glowing review which advised people to “make sure to look on the bottom shelf at your bookstore, where Dave Wolverton’s novels are likely to be found. . .” My heart sank.

You see I had read an article a few years earlier, in which marketers for Campbell’s soup had found that 92% of all people would not bend over to pick up their favorite flavor of soup from the bottom shelf at a supermarket. People prefer to buy their goods at eye level. Which meant, of course, that no writer wants to be on the bottom shelf. By using the name Wolverton, I was losing a huge number of potential sales!

Immediately, I began investigating how hard it would be to change my writing name. I was already a bestseller in science fiction, hitting high on the science fiction bestseller lists, so I wasn’t sure that I wanted to change my name back in 1991.

When I began to write fantasy (which was my first love as a reader), I recognized that I had a second problem. Fantasy tends to sell better than science fiction, so I figured that sales would be more robust in the fantasy genre.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on David Farland’s site.

 

How Twitter is Blanding Branding

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This post, by Kian Kaul, originally appeared as a guest post on Byzantine Roads on 5/3/13.

These days every writer is their own brand, we’re constantly told in advice columns on mid-ranking marketing blogs and rushed non-fic titles (many of which are only available in the Kindle or Nook store), but what does it mean to be a brand?

A brand is a name or title which represents a product, through an experience, communicated by a primary feeling. And that experience can change, sometimes drastically, depending on the needs of the market.

Coke is positivity, excitement and energy — but not too much energy, otherwise it would be Rockstar. Pepsi is all those things but in a blue can and with celebrity stunt casting. It’s also diabetes and tooth decay in excess, but that wasn’t included on the creative brief. Ralph Lauren was originally clothing intended for upper-middle class white people until “urban” black influencers assimilated the preppy style into their own cultural positioning. But these are the major brands, the celebrity brands.

When you’re a celebrity brand people just want to feel like they know you. When you’re not a celebrity brand you have to offer something. Anything. Don’t have anything? How about an intellectually unchallenging motivational message that may or may not have anything to do with the thing you’re selling?

If you’re a writer reading this, you’re likely not a celebrity or a major brand. You’re the fifteenth bottle of detergent from the left and you’re actively tweeting how “fresh” and “clean” your formula will make one’s clothes, but then again, so are all the rest. So, how do you stand out? Do you refine your message? Do you clearly define yourself and your approach so maybe your brand actually means something and carries some sort of significance?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Byzantine Roads.