author platform – Page 5

How To Diversify Your Income Beyond Your Book

January 3, 2016September 24, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Kristen Eckstein originally appeared on The Future of Ink on 9/5/14.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a children’s book author, fiction writer, non-fiction how-to author, business person, or even a fine artist. The fact is, in this modern age of book publishing, you’re in business…

Period.

You’re in sales, you’re in the business of selling books, and hopefully you’re in the business of using your books as a gateway to make even more money with external products and services.

Any seasoned author will tell you that you won’t quickly get rich off book sales profits and royalties alone. The average traditionally-published non-fiction book royalty is a whopping 6% after print cost and the distributor’s discount.

That’s about 9 cents on a book that retails for $10. To make back the average advance of $500 for this type of book, you’d have to sell 5,556 copies. That’s over 5,500 copies before you’d see another penny from the publisher!

On the same indie-published book (that is, you own the distribution rights and publish under your own name, not through a self-publishing services company or vanity publisher), you’d make about $1.50 per copy.

To make $500 in book sales alone, you’d still need to sell over 300 copies.

Click here to read the full post on The Future of Ink.

How I Made Record Sales in August

January 3, 2016September 24, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Elizabeth Barone originally appeared on her blog on 9/20/14.

I’ve been meaning to do this sort of write-up for a while, but I’m always hesitant because I don’t want it to seem like I’m bragging or whining. Here’s the thing, though: writing is my full-time job. Just like any other business, it’s important to track what is and isn’t working. I also strongly believe in sharing information; I don’t see other authors as competition. Being that I’ve been sort of coaching a couple of authors new to indie publishing, I think it’s even more important for me to share what I’m learning.

I’m going to share my actual sales numbers and income. I’m a little nervous about this, because I am far from making a full-time living off of my books. But I would like to track what I’ve been doing and swap some ideas with you.

Let’s get started.

August Releases
Becoming Natalie (Book #3, Becoming Natalie Series)

Becoming Natalie: The Complete Collection (Books #1-3 in the Becoming Natalie Series)

August Marketing
Uploaded Becoming Natalie to Kindle, iBooks, and Kobo for pre-order and added links to series sales page on my website.

Serialized Raising Dad on my blog, posting a new chapter every day.

Gave away the first five ESX books via my email newsletter.

Offered a signed limited edition ESX postcard to email subscribers.

Posted a gallery of photos from the real life setting of the Becoming Natalie series.

Posted a cover reveal for Becoming Natalie.

Made an effort to update my blog at least once a week with relevant pop culture or social topics.

Click here to read the full post, which includes MANY more marketing bullet items, actual sales results and further analysis, on Elizabeth Barone’s blog.

Catering To Your True Fans

January 3, 2016September 23, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Ksenia Anske originally appeared on her blog on 9/15/14.

Hey, indie writers? This is what marketing your self-published books is about. It’s about catering to your true fans, even if that might upset some people. As you’re aware, I’m doing a cleaning spree on Twitter, unfollowing most accounts, so I’m left only with about 2K of those that I really want to follow and read. After being on Twitter for almost 5 years, it’s not easy. In fact, it’s ruffling some feathers, as you might have seen in the comments to this post about dealing with online trolls.

Why am I doing it?

I’m doing it to cater to my true fans. I used to be afraid to say this word, “fans.” It felt odd. Weird. Exhilarating, and yet still weird. Me, having fans? How could I? I’m a nobody. It felt somehow self-serving and egoistic by saying it. Slowly, I’ve gotten used to the idea that I do have fans. And they are true fans, fans who send me money when they themselves are struggling financially. Fans who support me in my darkest moments, dragging me out of my gloomy murderous moods and spanking my ass to get me back to writing. Fans who are patiently waiting for my next book to be published, who have already read every single draft of that book and have pre-ordered it and donated me more money on top of it. Fans who have sent me messages, saying they will travel to my first book reading this Friday, even though they don’t live in Seattle.

Click here to read the full post on Ksenia Anske’s blog.

Book Marketing 101: Don’t Sell a Book; Build a Brand

January 3, 2016September 21, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Derek Murphy originally appeared on CreativIndie.

For a lot of authors, “book marketing” still means something like advertising or publicity.

In other words, you put something in front of people that tells them about the book, and that they should go buy it.

Here’s why that doesn’t work:

– People need repetition before they notice, then take action. So they’ll need to see whatever it is you’re doing many times (usually 7 or more) before it even registers. That’s why something like a one time radio appearance or newspaper review isn’t likely to sell many books.

– People buy based on trust. They’re much more likely to buy the book if a friend recommends it, or somebody else online that they’re following that they already know, like and trust.

– People hate advertisement and promotion these days. That’s why the biggest, million-dollar companies avoid it in favor of content marketing, which means, you they make other really cool and interesting content that their target buyers will enjoy and appreciate. There is no hard sale or call to action, except indirectly.

Coke has been doing this for years. When was the last time you saw a Coke ad that said “On sale for only 99cents right now!” Coke doesn’t need to sell it’s product. They don’t need to offer discounts. Pricing is irrelevant. Coke sells a lifestyle. Everything cool that they do makes people like them more, which, in turn will actually sell soda.

So here’s what you need to do to sell more books:

Click here to read the full post on CreativIndie.

How Not To Respond To A Bad Review

January 3, 2016September 10, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by John Dugdale originally appeared on The Guardian on 9/5/14.

Stephan J Harper’s litany of angry comments about a critic is a textbook demonstration of the reasons why wounded writers should keep shtum

If it’s not the craziest response ever by a novelist to a negative review, it’s almost certainly the longest, most obsessive and most ridiculous. When Michael E Cohen reviewed an interactive ebook called Venice Under Glass on the Apple-related site TidBITS.com, he can’t have expected that underneath it would eventually appear more than 50 responses from a single commenter: the book’s author, Stephan J Harper.

Seemingly unembarrassed by the incongruity of mounting a vehement defence of a detective story in which all the characters are teddy bears, Harper initially penned a series of comments (many of them over a single night between 1am and 4am) in which he quoted passages from the book, hoping to persuade Cohen that his criticisms of its “workmanlike” prose or “juvenile” plot were unjustified.

Click here to read the full post on The Guardian.

Authors Teaching Authors and the Idea of “Slow PR”

January 3, 2016August 31, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Michael Blanding originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 8/29/14.

When Maria Mutch needed advice on how to handle PR of her debut memoir, she found guidance and solace through Grub Street Writer’s Launch Lab in Boston.

Maria Mutch has two words to describe how she felt about her publication of her memoir Know the Night this year: “Utter terror!” She laughs. “Okay, not quite—but not so far off. Obviously I was happy that my book was coming out, but publishing and book promotion seemed to be filled with so many unknowns.”

Mutch knows what it is like to struggle with fear of the unknown. Her book is anything but the typical memoir, chronicling the two years she spent awake virtually every night with her son Gabriel, who is autistic and also has Down Syndrome, and rarely slept through the night. Alternatingly lonely, funny, and exhilarating, it also weaves in the story of Admiral Richard Byrd, the Antarctic explorer who battled his own form of solitude and loneliness, and in whose story Mutch found unexpected solace and inspiration.

Pursuing Publicity

When it came time to embark on publicity for her new book, she knew she didn’t want to go it alone. Reaching out for others going through the same process, she found it in Launch Lab, Grub Street Writer’s intensive boot camp for new authors, in Boston. “It seemed like a great way to demystify the whole process,” she says. “It also seemed like a great way to get some comrades, and I couldn’t have been more right.”

Click here to read the full post on Publishing Perspectives.

The Three Reasons I Have Fallen In Love With Writing Short Stories

January 3, 2016August 26, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by M. Louisa Locke originally appeared on her blog on 6/12/14.

I am the last author you would think would be writing short stories. As a writer who tends to be prolix, the short form wouldn’t seem a good match for me. I don’t write anything short––not emails, not blog posts, not books. Twitter, forget it––the most I can do is retweet those of you who are good at being succinct. I don’t even read many short stories, (except by 19^th century writers like Alcott, Wharton, and James).

Yet, this spring I took time off from doing the research for Deadly Proof, the next book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery series, to write my third and fourth short stories, which are now part of a collection, Victorian San Francisco Stories, that I just published on Kindle, and I have every intention of putting out more short stories in the coming year.

So what happened?

Dandy Detects, my first short story happened. Three months after the publication of my first book in my series, Maids of Misfortune, I started to write a short story about the Boston terrier I had introduced in the book. I had read that publishing an inexpensive short story was a good way of introducing potential readers to your work, so my reason was completely pragmatic. Maids of Misfortune was selling less than one ebook a day, and I wanted to feel like I was doing something to help gain it some visibility. I was only producing about two blog posts a month (remember my tendency to be long-winded), and writing a short story and putting it up on Kindle seemed like manageable activity.

Dandy Detects ended up doing more than I could have thought possible to boost sales. Stephen Windwalker picked it as one of his earliest Kindle Shorts on Kindle Nation Daily (probably the first site to effectively promote ebooks) over the weekend of July 4, 2010. This prompted so many people to buy the full-length book that Maids of Misfortune raced to the top of the historical mystery category, where it stayed for over two years.

But even more significantly—writing this story turned out to be great fun, and the readers enjoyed it. Dandy Detect also was less than 8000 words—a triumph for me since I swear I have blog posts longer than that!

While I didn’t write the next story for another two years (in this case after the publication of my second novel), during that time I started keeping track of short story plots I wanted to write. By the time I had written my third story, I had concluded that writing short stories is about more than providing a loss leader to sell other books. In fact, I believe that, particularly for authors of series, short stories can be one of the most effective methods of building and maintaining both the readers’ and the author’s enthusiasm for a series.

Reason #1: Short stories permit me to expand on events, places, and, most importantly, characters from my longer novels.

Click here to read the full post on M. Louisa Locke’s blog.

A Guide to Pinterest for Fiction & Nonfiction Writers: 15 Best Practices

January 3, 2016August 24, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Frances Caballo originally appeared on Writer.ly on 8/8/14.

Pinterest and SEO

It can be tempting to get lost in the floral images, funny quotes, and pictures of dreamy kitchens on Pinterest, and that’s okay. However, there’s more to Pinterest than collecting DIY, wedding, and craft images while you sip a cup of tea or glass of wine at the end of the day. Pinterest is also a powerful network that can improve the SEO of your blog and website. Here are some tips:

Always categorize your pinboards. Pinterest has gone to great lengths to assist search engines that crawl the Web looking for new content. By using the platform’s own categories, you will alert search engines to the content of your boards.

A common pinboard title is Favorite Books. Search engines crawling the Web will notice the word Books and tie some of your entries to the more general category of books. For example, if your book cover is on your Favorite Books pinboard, search engines may link your book to the category of Books and in turn index your book, improving your SEO.

You can drive traffic to your blog with Pinterest. Use the Pin It Button in your browser to add images from your blog to your pinboards. When another user clicks on the image, they will immediately be directed to your blog.

Best Practices

Click here to read the full post, which includes 15 specific best practices tips, on Writer.ly.

More Thoughts on Wattpad

January 3, 2016August 18, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Elizabeth Spann Craig originally appeared on her blog on 8/15/14.

I blogged in May that I was giving the publishing platform Wattpad a go. I was somewhat worried about this decision at the time, wondering if my octogenarian protagonist and I would fit in among the youthful readers on the site.

From May to August, I went from several reads to steadily increasing reads. Nothing I’d call spectacular. But each day or couple of days I’d get a notification that I had someone else following (I think of them more as subscribers of) my story. The number of reads (not readers, reads of each chapter) grew and with them grew more visibility. That’s how it works at Wattpad.

Now, suddenly, I have over 18,000 reads. I’ve done absolutely nothing to get these. I’ve not been actively networking, not been joining groups. I’ve been pretty darn introverted on the site except for my pleasant exchanges with readers who have commented on each chapter.

Click here to read the full post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog.

What Makes People Buy Self-Published Books?

January 3, 2016August 10, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Tara Sparling originally appeared on her site on 7/31/14.

In this post, I discussed the findings of a scientifically incontrovertible study (of myself) on the factors which influenced me when buying a self-published book.

The findings surprised me (which surprised me, because I was surveying myself). I found that I knew what made me buy a self-published book when it was in front of me, but not what put that book in front of me, unless I was browsing by genre (e.g. today I feel like reading a romance set in Ulaanbaatar: therefore I will now search specifically for such a story).

It was still hard to know what put those books in front of my eyes in order to buy them; to quote one of the commenters on that post – this is the thorny issue of “discoverability”. How will we find these books in the first place?

So I did the unthinkable, and asked some other people. I surveyed readers and writers alike, in online groups for different fiction genres of crime, fantasy and general fiction, and more than a few other people who just like to talk to other people about reading and writing. I asked them what factors influenced them most when buying books – particularly self-published books and any other books which aren’t pushed by the major houses.

Click here to read the full post on Tara Sparling’s site.

C’mon, Book Marketing Isn’t That Hard

January 3, 2016August 5, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by JW Manus originally appeared on her site on 8/2/14.

I see and hear about a lot of writers wanting to sign an agent and go for a traditional deal because, “The agent and publisher know how to market my book and I don’t. It’s too hard.”

Nuh-uh.

Here’s how it works: Agents know how to market to certain editors; Editors know how to market to their editorial heads and marketing departments; Marketing departments know how to market to retail distributors. What none of them know (or maybe they don’t bother with) is how to market to readers. That’s the writer’s job. Trad or indie, if you don’t know how to market, your books are sunk. In fact, if you don’t have a marketing base before you submit to either an agent or editor, your chances of even getting a second look are slim to none.

What’s a poor writer to do? Panic is not an option. Truly, marketing is NOT that hard. Basically, all marketing is: Being in the right place in front of the right people with the right product.

Click here to read the full post on JW Manus’ site.

How Facebook Calculates What Appears In Your News Feed

January 3, 2016July 23, 2014 by Publetariat

This post by Mari Smith originally appeared on her site on 7/18/14.

The problem with Facebook organic reach can be summed up in one single graphic: Only 6 percent of your fans are seeing your content in their news feed. The other 94 percent are not.

Some sources indicate that organic reach may drop to 1-2 percent in the near future. Others say it’s destined to hit zero; it’s only a matter of time.

These stats are a big drop from the already low 16 percent that Facebook indicated back in April 2012.

What is causing the decline in organic reach?

The simplest answer is there is a significantly greater amount of potential content flooding into our news feeds on a daily basis. This bigger firehose of content is caused by several factors, including:

– The average number of Facebook friends users have is 338 (that’s a big increase compared to 130 back in 2008).

– 15 percent of Facebook users have more than 500 friends.

– There are between 1500 and 15,000 pieces of content that Facebook could potentially show in your news feed each time you log on to the site!

– The Facebook news feed ranking algorithm (some folks call this formula ‘EdgeRank’) uses more than 100,000 weights* to determine what you’ll see.

– Ultimately, out of the 1,500 – 15,000 potential stories, Facebook passes them through the mega algorithm and displays approximately 300 stories in your feed.

*Examples of weights: how many mutual friends like the person/page/content, how often you interact with the person/page, when the post was published, when the last comment was made, what types of content you typically interact with: watch more videos and Facebook will show you more videos, like more links and Facebook will show you more links.

Click here to read the full post, which includes charts, an infographic and 12 concrete tips for expanding organic “reach”, on Mari Smith’s site.

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