book promotion

The Do's And Don'ts Of Writing A Blurb For Your Novel

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This post by Milena originally appeared on blurb on 10/9/14.

When writing a novel, there are few selling tools as important as writing a solidly written blurb. Sure, the cover design creates intrigue, but, if you have caught a potential reader’s attention, the blurb is what will sell your book—and convert readers. A “blurb” can refer to both a “description blurb” that you write for the back cover of your book and a “review blurb.” For the purposes of this post, we’ll be focusing on the former, and how you, the writer, can craft the best possible blurb.

 

Dos
-Reference the genre and central theme
-Create intrigue around the main conflict
-Dive right in and introduce your protagonist
-Keep it short and punchy
-Reference your book-writing or professional status, if it relates to your book.

 

Read the full post on blurb.

 

Thinking of Rebranding Your Blog? Read This.

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This post by Stacey Roberts originally appeared on ProBlogger on 10/1/14.

Rebranding an established and successful business? Why would you do that?

For some, the risk of changing the name of something people have grown to know and love is too big. For others, the risk of being boxed into something they no longer feel much affinity for is even bigger.

No doubt it’s a scary leap to rebrand a blog – would people still read? Would a slight shift in direction upset the established audience? Would the to-do list of technical issues be too overwhelming? Would you lose all that Google love you’ve built up over the years?

At some point, if you’ve felt the rumbling undercurrent of wanting to make a change, you’ll decide those reasons are no longer enough to hold you back. And so you research new domain names, you design new logos, you test the waters. And you make the switch – your blog (and your online identity) is something new. Something more you.

Jodi Wilson did that on New Year’s Eve 2013. She took a blog she had lovingly nurtured for six years from online journal to a much larger online place of community and inspiration, and gave it a complete overhaul. Once a place to share the milestones and sleepless nights as a new parent, the blog had evolved into a new space of a woman finding joy in a simple, humble life. And Jodi felt it required a new look and name to reflect that.

“One of the biggest factors in the name change was the fact that my blog was originally named after my son and his teddy – Che & Fidel,” she says.

 

Click here to read the full post on ProBlogger.

 

How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website: 30+ Tips for Discouraged Writers

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This post by Kimberley Grabas originally appeared on Your Writer Platform on 10/8/14.

Sure is quiet out there.

I mean seriously, with a gabillion people online these days, wouldn’t a few even accidentally stumble across your website?

Isn’t it statistically impossible (or at least, improbable) that you should have so little traffic to this darn blog that you’ve spent hours coaxing into existence, one precious post at a time?

What? Offline rejection isn’t enough, now writers have to be rebuffed online, too?

;)

Don’t be discouraged, dear writer, help is on the way!

Building traffic can take time. It’s not always easy to find the people who are interested in your topic and receptive to your point of view, your voice and your style.

Plus, you also need to consider the “share-potential” of your audience. Do your readers have large followings on social networks like Twitter and Facebook? Or better, do they have their own blogs or websites?

Or does your audience (or potential audience) have small networks of the usual suspects: friends, family and a few peers?

Be careful when comparing your growth with the internet gurus. If your target audience isn’t bloggers, businesses or online entrepreneurs, the share-potential of your readers will be much lower – and your growth, therefore, may be much slower.

Consider changing your goal from quickly growing your traffic, to focusing on ensuring that the traffic you are attracting is right for your author blog. You want the traffic you funnel to your site to be targeted, invested and closely aligned with your way of thinking.

And the results you seek – increased book sales, a supportive community, authority and influence in your genre or niche – are not *necessarily* linked to high traffic numbers.

To achieve those results, you must remember that it’s not traffic or “the numbers” that are most important, but building relationships with people that value what you have to say and how you say it. (Although highly targeted traffic + big numbers = the holy grail :) )

The more targeted the traffic you draw to your site, the better your chances of turning visitors into fans.

 

I Know You Want it, But Are You Ready for a Surge in Traffic?

Attracting the right people to your author website is important, but a key ingredient in exponential traffic growth is retaining as many of those readers as possible.

If you don’t stop the leaks, you end up spending a lot more time and resources than you need to.

Therefore there are two components to “getting more traffic”: ready your website and social media outposts to receive visitors AND draw the “right” people to your site. (Tweet this idea!)

You’ll need to focus on both to begin seeing an increase in traffic and to start growing your fan base.

 

Click here to read the full post, which is very lengthy and includes MANY specific tips and strategies, on Your Author Platform.

 

Distinguishing Between Straight-Up Advice and Paradigm Shift

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This post by Jane Friedman originally appeared on her site on 5/11/12.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a column for Writer Unboxed, “Should You Focus on Your Writing or Platform?” In short, I said it’s a balancing act, but there are times when you should probably emphasize one over the other.

It generated more than 100 responses, many insightful and valuable, from working writers, established authors, editors, and agents. My colleague Christina Katz was one of the last to comment. Here’s part of what she said.

This post really makes me chuckle … I wonder how much time folks spent reading and chewing on and commenting on and spreading the word about a post ABOUT platform rather than actually spending any amount of time actually cultivating and working on their own platform?

I am a person who does not distinguish between writing, selling, specializing, self-promotion, and continuing ed, and also a person who sees all of these things as essential and necessary to my writing career success. …

For me, there is no separation. Writing is the center. (If you read The Writer’s Workout, you saw the diagram.) But it’s all critical. There’s nothing to debate.

Read her entire comment here.

I’m (mostly) in the same boat as Christina. I find it impossible and irrelevant to distinguish between writing activities and platform building activities. My approach is far too holistic.

So why did I write a post splitting them up?

Because most writers don’t and CAN’T see them as one activity. They’re still asking questions that show they need some concrete ideas on how to manage what they perceive (and what can be) a very real split in one’s life.

 

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

 

How I Made Record Sales in August

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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.

 

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

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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.

 

Harnessing the Power of Goodreads

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This guest post by Penny Sansevieri originally appeared on D’vorah Lansky’s Build A Business With Your Book.

Goodreads has really become a front and center social network for authors. If you’re not on Goodreads or if you haven’t touched your account in a while you should consider this site and the benefits it offers.

There have been many success stories from Goodreads, authors who “got noticed” by having lots of activity there, mingling with other members, and getting tons of reviews. While success isn’t guaranteed on this site (or anywhere), Goodreads can really help you get a leg up on your promotion. So, how did the massive growth of this site happen?

Their CEO, Otis Chandler, cited three primary factors behind the acceleration: “a critical mass of book reviews,” “explosive” mobile growth, and international expansion.

To understand Goodreads as an author, what works and what doesn’t, you have to understand the average demographic of the site, which is adult female, many with college age kids and, surprisingly, a whopping 81% of them are Caucasian. They are avid readers, though many are less affluent than the average Internet user so low-priced books and free books do very well on this site.
 

Click here to read the full post on D’vorah Lansky’s Build A Business With Your Book.

 

Authors Teaching Authors and the Idea of “Slow PR”

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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.

 

Put Calls To Action In The Back Of Your Books To Sell More Books

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This post originally appeared on the Book Marketing Tools blog on 5/5/14.

There are two different kinds of book marketing, active marketing and passive marketing, and both are important.

Active marketing is when you go out to tell others about your book through blog tours, giveaways, free promotions, tweeting about your book, and more.

Passive marketing is setting up fan building and book selling mechanisms once, which will help you to continue to sell books passively once they are all set up.

A combination of both of these forms of book marketing will definitely help you to sell more books.

 

Use Calls To Action
Putting calls to action in the back of your book is a form of passive marketing that will help you to sell more books. Once you set up these calls to action and you publish the update to your books, you’re done, but they will continue to help you to sell books.

If a reader makes it to the end of your book, they are going to go somewhere. Direct them where you need them to go. If you can direct them in a specific direction, then you are likely to keep them as a reader. If you don’t, they may move onto the next book in their reading list, then you will have lost the opportunity to continue to sell to them.

 

Click here to read the full post on Book Marketing Tools.

 

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

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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.

 

How To Promote Yourself And Your Books On Social Media Without Feeling Like A Soul-Selling, Sleaze-Sucking Slime-Glob

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 8/10/14.

In my experience, most authors dislike self-promotion.

Some downright despise it.

And they detest it for good reason: becoming a marketing or advertising avatar for your own work feels shameless. It feels adjacent to the work — like it’s something you didn’t sign on for.

I JUST WANT TO WRITE BOOKS, you scream into the mirror around pages of your manuscript, the pages moistened with saliva and tears. I DON’T WANT TO BECOME A HUMAN SPAM-BOT, you cry as your teeth clatter into the sink, as your ear plops off, as your nose drops away. In all the gaps, a faint glimpse of whirring machinery, gears turning and conveyor belts churning, all of your mechanisms pink with the slurry of Spam…

Thing is, you’re probably gonna have to do it anyway.

Reasons?

First, publishers expect it, to some degree.

Second, if you’re an author-publisher, it becomes wholly more necessary.

 

Click here to read the full post on terribleminds.

 

What Makes People Buy Self-Published Books?

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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

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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

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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.

 

Censorship War: Website Unmasks Links Google is Blocking From Search Results

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This post originally appeared on RT.com on 7/17/14.

A subversive website has been launched to keep track of news and other webpages Google has “censored” from the search engine’s index, following the European Court of Justice’s controversial Right to be Forgotten ruling.

The tech giant has reportedly been inundated with 70,000 requests to remove sensitive information from its search results in the aftermath of the ECJ’s decision. While this data may be accurate, it is considered “irrelevant” and possibly defamatory under the EU policy shift.

In a mark of protest against online censorship, a new site ‘Hidden From Google’ has begun archiving links censored by search engines intent on complying with ECJ demands. The site was set up by US web developer and transparency advocate, Afaq Tariq.

The New Jersey developer asserts the removal of links from a search engine’s index amounts to censorship. So in an effort to preserve transparency in Europe’s online realm, he invites visitors to log data that has been removed from Google on the site.

“This list is a way of archiving the actions of censorship on the Internet,” Tariq states on the site’s about page. “It is up to the reader to decide whether our liberties are being upheld or violated by the recent rulings by the EU.”

 

Click here to read the full post on RT.com.