author platform

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.

 

Focus on Writing A Great Book

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This post by Rachelle Gardner originally appeared on her blog on 1/12/14.

It seems in the last few years, dialogue about all-things-publishing has been focused on platform, marketing, increasing output, distribution platforms, technology, and self-publishing. (This blog is no exception.) But as I noted in this post at Author Media , I think it’s important to call our attention back to the work. 

It may be easier to get published these days because of self-pub and the proliferation of indie publishing options. But it’s not any easier to write a good book. 

In fact, it may be even harder to write a good book than it was in days past, because both you and your reader have more distractions. You’re tempted by the Internet, your ability to concentrate for long periods of time has been compromised, and deep focus is more challenging. Meanwhile, your reader has infinite sources of information and entertainment. So a book has to be darn good to to keep both your attention and your reader’s. Now is the time to make sure we’re not minimizing the importance of mastering the craft.

 

Click here to read the full post on Rachelle Gardner’s blog.

 

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.

 

Why We’re Removing Comments on Copyblogger

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This post by Sonia Simone originally appeared on Copyblogger on 3/24/14. As longtime readers know, Publetariat had to take this same action when the site was brought back following a hacker attack last year.

“Would you ever consider taking comments off Copyblogger?”

When the question was posed during our editorial meeting, my immediate reaction was, “Absolutely not.”

I wasn’t even interested in considering it, because I like conversations. I enjoy seeing what people think of different posts. I like the quick view of what people react to (positively or otherwise), and what seems to need more explanation.

While the comments on the big CRaP websites are mostly pretty awful, I’ve always enjoyed managed comments on real content blogs. Conversations, after all, are typically more interesting than monologues.

But the team and I got together and talked about it. And as we talked, I started to see it differently.

Here’s the distillation of that conversation — the one that led me to say, Okay, let’s do this.

 

First, the conversation doesn’t end

If you’ve been running your own blog for awhile, you probably noticed that comments started to become less frequent when Facebook and Twitter really started to come into their own. (And that’s only picked up speed with the incredible growth of the other social platforms like Google+ and LinkedIn.)

Why? Because the conversation moved to a wider public platform.

 

Click here to read the full post on Copyblogger.

 

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.

 

Becoming a USA Today and New York Times Bestselling Author

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This post by Carolyn Arnold originally appeared on her blog on 3/18/14.

It’s every author’s dream to reach the bestseller lists. I have been fortunate to reach bestselling status on Amazon and Barnes & Noble with my Madison Knight Series, and Brandon Fisher series. For this, I am deeply grateful.

But what I want to discuss today is taking things to that next giant step. I’m talking about becoming a New York Times or USA Today Bestseller. I believe that’s the goal of most authors.

Speaking for myself, I would love to attain this for more than the fame or money that comes with it—it’s the ability to reach even more people, to entertain, to bring relaxation into people’s lives. The fact that as an author, I have my books as a legacy to share with others touches me on a spiritual level. You also never know the full effect your books have on other people. How privileged we are as authors. I am grateful for this every day of my life. You may feel the same way and wonder, how do I go from here to there?

You may have noticed how things are changing in the publishing industry. It’s not just traditionally published authors hitting these lists—it’s the self-published author as well. Typically, we’re used to seeing fiction works standing on their own, but these days even book sets or collections are making best-selling status, giving the contributing authors bragging rights.

Taking from a recent telephone seminar with Jack Canfield and Steve Harrison, I am going to share what they taught.

 

Click here to read the full post on Carolyn Arnold’s blog.

 

Ride the Tide of Group Promos!

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This post by Jodie Renner originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 3/16/14.

Savvy indie authors are quickly discovering the power of increasing book sales and visibility by collaborating with other authors in various ways. Here are four different avenues to explore that all work surprisingly well.

1. Create or join a Facebook group “event.”

Not long ago, a complete stranger contacted me to ask if I’d like to add my writing guide Fire up Your Fiction (which, until recently, was titled Style That Sizzles & Pacing for Power) to a group promo he had planned to put 15 books, all related to writing, publishing, and promoting books, on sale for 99 cents each for one day.

I was flattered, and after checking out the organizer and the other books on the list, was eager to jump in, especially since I’d just changed the title of the book and it has won several honors recently.

Bryan Cohen turned out to be not only a nice person, but a creative, skilled and enthusiastic organizer, with lots of great promo ideas that really worked well. He created a Facebook page for the event as well as a page on his website, and enlisted us all to help promote it on our blogs and on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. He asked us for possible giveaways and offered attendees/participants a chance to win prizes for sharing the event on Facebook and Twitter.

As a result of this great promo on February 28, which Bryan named “March to a Bestseller,” all 15 participants had a significant increase in book sales, ratings on Amazon, and visibility. For a few hours of responding to readers on the event page on Facebook (my “shift”) and promoting the event on my blog and in social media, my sales for Fire up Your Fiction increased that day by about 20 times the normal daily average.

 

Click here to read the full post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

 

Clean Up Your Blog – A to Z Preparation

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This post by Donna B. McNicol originally appeared on her Writing My Life site on 2/17/14.

Updated repeat from a 2012 blog post:

I’m fine tuning my blog in preparation for the, hopefully, gazillion visitors I’ll have during the month of April. Okay, so maybe not a gazillion, but a lot more than normal. I just read and implemented some of the tips on Sommer Leigh’s blog post, Sommer’s Top Ten Tips for A-to-Zing it in April.

There was one tip that REALLY caught my attention since I recently vented about it: Blogger and Word Verification [rant] If you want people to comment, you really need to make it easy for them to do so. Check your blog to be sure, and while there check to be sure you allow anonymous commenters as well (as mentioned by Sommer).

One missing tip that helps keep your blog looking professional as well as identification once loaded. It’s time to add a favicon to your blog. For years professionals have used favicons to identify their websites. For those with blogs hosted on their own domains, it’s an easy enough process to create the .ico file and upload it to the home directory. I use the freeware program IrfanView to create .ico files from images. You can easily crop, resize and ‘Save As’ with this program (and much more).

But for those of us using Blogger, we were left out in the cold. Not any more! If you look at your browser tab, you will see the icon with my face (from my blog header). I use that for my blog as well as my website, DonnaMcNicol.com.

 

Click here to read the full article on Donna B. McNicol’s Writing My Life.

 

Identity and the Writer

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This post by J.A. Konrath originally appeared on his blog on 3/10/14.

Who am I?

What do others think of me?

Identity is a very important, and terribly difficult, concept to grasp. What makes us who we are is fodder for philosophers, and perhaps biologists, not for this blog.

This blog is about publishing, and it is written for writers. But I’m going to take a stab at discussing identity anyway.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of stuff on the internet that falls under the umbrella of what I call “identity issues.” There are a lot of writers, and a lot of people in the publishing industry, who believe they have clearly defined identities, and who believe they have the ability to understand the identities of others. Identities that may be embraced and accepted, or dismissed and derided.

Let’s take a look at some of the things I’m referring to.

Years ago, Barry Eisler used the word legacy to describe traditional publishers. This word is apt because publishing fits the definition of a legacy system. Since Barry began using this, it has fallen into the common vernacular, but only in the shadow industry of self-publishing, used by self-published authors. Legacy publishers don’t like to be thought of as “previous” or “outdated”, even though they indeed are by any definition, so they reject the term because it conflicts with their personal identities. They believe they are relevant, forward-thinking, guardians of culture. They are wrong, but their identities are so entangled in these labels it may prevent them from doing things that could improve their bottom line, like treating authors better, innovating, and using new technology to reach more readers.

 

Click here to read the full post on J.A. Konrath’s blog.

 

How To Love Book Marketing

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This post by Bryan Cohen originally appeared as a guest post on Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn site on 3/9/14.

Opening note from Joanna Penn:
I teach a lot of authors about book marketing and many start the workshops with dread, knowing they have to learn this stuff, but not really wanting to do it.

My aim is always to change their mindset to one of happily incorporating marketing into their daily lifestyle, and generally, by the end of the day, most authors are much happier! In today’s article, Bryan Cohen talks about his own marketing change of heart.

 

If you had fun marketing would you be looking for advice on a book marketing blog?

Probably not. I imagine most people search these blog posts for a magic bullet. A marketing solution that takes less time and energy. A tactic that leads to increased sales and more time for writing.

I’m not sure this post fits the bill, but I will tell you what I’ve done to make space in my life for publicizing my books.

 

Stranger Sales

The summer after I graduated from college, my favorite acting professor invited me to New York City to run the marketing for her show that was part of the New York Fringe Festival. I’d had some success promoting student plays, once packing a 250-seat house to the brim by promoting an unknown but lewd play as an age 18 and up affair. My professor hoped I’d fill the seats in New York, but despite my best efforts, I failed to get the word out.

I understood what worked for marketing on a college campus to my friends and peers. Using flyers, Facebook events and cheap/free tickets, I was able to pack the house. The same tricks didn’t work in the Big Apple, especially given the 50+ other shows going on at the same time. I’d failed to learn an important marketing truth:

What works for your friends and peers won’t always work for strangers. And without strangers on board, your sales will be severely limited.

 

From Chore to Reward

 

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

 

13 Great Tools to Analyze and Measure Your Social Media Results

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This post by Frances Caballo originally appeared on The Book Designer on 3/5/14.

Many writers make the mistake of thinking that by being on Facebook and Twitter and other social media channels they’ve already accomplished the goal of using social media to market their books. They haven’t.

Furthermore, just being on social media and occasionally posting information isn’t a genuine outcome of your marketing efforts.

First, you need to define the purpose of your online activity, become clear on your purpose, and determine whether the outcomes you achieve will enable you to reach your overall goal of selling books, becoming better known as a writer, and receiving the recognition that you and your books deserve.

 

How to Find Your Online Groove

Let’s assume that you’ve been curating great content to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and perhaps even Google+. We’ll also assume that you’re scheduling your posts throughout the day and allocating time in the late afternoon to be social. In other words, you are perusing your news feeds, liking and possibly sharing some posts, leaving comments, and thanking your Twitter followers for retweeting your tweets.

There’s something else you need to start doing: analyzing your metrics. It’s important to spend few minutes every week analyzing your efforts to make sure that you are on your way to achieving your established goals.

 

Why Are Social Media Analytics Important?

Here are some examples of why you need to pay attention to analyses of your social media activity.

◾ What if you started to use an application that helped you discover that your Facebook posts were appealing to more women than men? Would that information prompt you to adjust your messaging?

◾ What if you discovered that your tweets were most often retweeted at five a.m. Eastern Standard Time? Would that information cause you to start scheduling your posts when East Coast residents are more likely to be online and using social media?

◾ What if you were to discover that a significant number of your Facebook fans were from Great Britain? Wouldn’t you want to schedule some of your status updates to the United Kingdom’s time zone?

The obvious answer to the above questions is yes.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Book Designer.