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Quick Links – How to use Pinterest for Branding and Marketing

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Do you Pinterest? While not quite as popular as Facebook, Pinterest can be a great platform to add to your social media marketing plan, plus it is great fun! Over at Bad Redhead Media  where Melissa Flickinger has all the info on Pinterest and some great tips on how to really make it work for you. Do you have any great tips for managing social media?

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How to use Pinterest for Branding and Marketing by @melissaflicks

By Melissa Flickinger

Recently on #BookMarketingChat, we had the pleasure of discussing Pinterest with the brilliant Kate Tilton. Pinterest is an easy option for authors looking to extend their platform, build their brand, and connect with readers. Here are a few tips we chatted about to help you get started:

What type of boards and pins should I include? (I hear this question A LOT!)

  • The first thing I suggest is getting your list of keywords that you created for your author brand. Create boards based on those and add relatable pins.
  • Create a board for your blog posts, guest posts, featured articles and add pins that link back to your website.

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Quick Links: The 5 Most Common Mistakes Writers Make When Seeking Book Reviews

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Reviews are very important for all authors, but especially for indie authors. Good reviews help legitimize your writing and encourage other readers to check out your book. But getting reviews are very difficult.  At Live Write Thrive, Gisela Hausmann gives out tips to avoid stepping on your own toes when trying to get reviews.

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The 5 Most Common Mistakes Writers Make When Seeking Book Reviews

Today’s guest post is by top Amazon reviewer Gisela Hausmann. This content originally ran on the Huffington Post, and it is reprinted here with her permission.

The day before yesterday, I received an email asking me to review an indie author’s book. Somewhat ironically, this request email stated, “As you liked (title of book), you might also love my newest book, (title), because it’s in the same category as the book you already reviewed . . .”

I remembered the book I supposedly “liked.” I didn’t like it at all; I had awarded it with a negative review.

Obviously, this indie author made a mistake; most likely, because he rushed trying to find as many top reviewers as possible to whom he could offer his book “in return for an objective and unbiased review.”

Desperately Seeking Reviews

Seeking reviews from Amazon top reviewers is a common practice among indie authors. Since only about one percent of readers review the books they read, indie authors, who don’t have a huge marketing budget, try to build up the number of reviews their books receive by asking top reviewers like me to read and review their books.

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Quick Link: Selling Books on Social Media: 4 Steps to Less Wasted Time

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Want some help getting your social media responsibilities under control? (This is coming from someone who just spent way to much time on Pinterest.) Chris Syme has some great tips on how to make the most of your social media marketing over at Anne R. Allen’s Blog.. With Ruth Harris.

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Selling Books on Social Media: 4 Steps to Less Wasted Time

by Chris Syme

A mind-boggling 78 percent of Americans have a social media profile. And a little over half of them are on more than one channel. It is a given that authors can develop loyal audiences and sell more books with the help of social media. But how many social media channels are enough?

Even though it may be true that you have potential readers on every social media channel, it is a waste of your time and resources to try to connect with people everywhere. As the emphasis in social media marketing switches from number of fans (reach) to connecting and building loyal fans (engagement), it’s time to build a social media strategy around developing a troop of engaged followers that will help carry your valuable content to their friends.

It’s time to learn how to get more engagement with less social media.

Four Steps to Less Wasted Social Media Time

There are four key steps to building this new less is more strategy with social media marketing: find your audience, designate your primary channel, build your outpost channels, and upgrade your content quality. Before we dig into the four steps, let me define the terms primary channel and outpost channel.

What is a Primary Channel?

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Quick Links: How to Write (and Not to Write) an Author Bio

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At Fiction University, guest poster Gail Carriger writes on how to give your author bio a little pizazz and make it part of your marketing tools instead of something to just check off your to-do list. On a personal note, I am a big fan of Gail’s Parasol Protectorate series. If you like humor, steampunk, and a little romance check them out!

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How to Write (and Not to Write) an Author Bio

By Gail Carriger, @gailcarriger 

Part of the How They Do It Series

I still have readers who tell me they purchased my first book because they liked the bio. Sure, the cover got them to pick it up, and the description got them intrigued, but they bought it because of the bio. I think this is uncommon. I took a risk with my bio and it worked.

But first, here’s what most authors do…

Your Fill-In-The-Blank Author Bio

[Name] lives in [City] where she pretends to be a [pithy comment on boring day job] when she would rather be writing. She spends her free time [standard hobby] and [less standard hobby]. She also likes to [quirky and slightly off base skill – like fencing or black belt in some combat thingy ]. She lives with a [tolerant, saintly, long-suffering] spouse/partner and two [witty descriptor] [cats/children] and a [dog/garden].

So, that’s your formula.

Why would readers pick up a book written by someone who doesn’t have the imagination to come up with a unique bio?

My recommendation? Break from tradition.

How?

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Quick Links: Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

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Ever wonder what the breakdown of e-book purchases looked like?  While not a comprehensive sample, at Good EReader ran a poll to find out where people got their eBooks from, and the results are still interesting.

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Where Do Consumers Get Their e-Books From?

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buy nowThere are many places where readers can find and download e-books. There are a number of online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo that sell them directly.  Your local library likely has a robust digital collection or sometimes piracy is just a click away. Good e-Reader has been running a poll for the past three weeks where we asked the question “where do you get your e-books from?” Over 827 people responded and we now have some fairly comprehensive data.

Unsurprisingly Amazon was the most popular digital ecosystem that people get their e-books from. Over 258 people, which represented 29% of the vote regularly purchased all of their e-books from Amazon.

Amazon releases new e-readers and Fire tablets every year, so their hardware has a high rate of adoption. Not everyone upgrades their device to the latest and greatest, some continue to use older devices, while others use the Kindle app on their smartphone or tablet.

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Quick Links: Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

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So you have finished your book, and even gotten it published. Don’t think you are done yet, you need to have a reader retention plan. Jami Gold has great suggestions for keeping your readers around for the next book at Fiction University.

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Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

WisdomIn this Indie Publishing Paths series, we first focused on how to decide which path will work best for us. Once we know our goals and priorities and are ready to put our book up for sale, we need to decide on:

The second phase of our indie publishing journey is to figure out how best to increase our chances for success along our chosen path. Whatever our goal, we’ll have a better chance of success if we can hold onto our readers from book to book.

So far, in the second part of this series, we’ve covered our options for…:

One of the options we discussed in Part One of this Reader Retention Plan phase was enticing our readers to stick around by offering extra content on our website. Let’s take a closer look at what information should be included on our author website and what information we could include as bonuses.

Read the full post on Fiction University

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Quick Links: How Goodreads Can Help Writers Grow Their Readership

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Every author knows that social media is important in the hunt to find readers. But how much time have you been spending on Goodreads? If you are like me, you pop in occasionally when you remember or need to do something. Frances Caballo at Live, Write, Thrive presents her case on why you should spend more of your social media time on Goodreads and the benefits thereof.

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How Goodreads Can Help Writers Grow Their Readership

July 1, 2016

goodreadsToday’s post is by social media expert Frances Caballo:

Goodreads has become the most important networking site on the Internet.
—Forbes

Goodreads has a storied beginning. This is how founder and CEO Otis Chandler describes his epiphany to start what has become a powerful online reader resource and social media network:

One afternoon while I was scanning a friend’s bookshelf for ideas, it struck me: when I want to know what books to read, I’d rather turn to a friend than any random person or bestseller list.

So I decided to build a website—a place where I could see my friends’ bookshelves and learn about what they thought of all their books.

And thus in January of 2007, Goodreads began.

The Goodreads of Today

As of January 2016, Goodreads had 40 million members and featured 1.3 billion books and 47 million reviews.

What I find interesting is that many Goodreads users attended college, and even more of them attended graduate school. Goodreads members are educated, love to read, and love to talk about books. Women read more and review more books than men and dominate this online venue. While men aren’t as active on this site as women, they still participate and are a growing force here.

Authors and Goodreads

Many authors join Goodreads and quickly set up their author dashboards. Then perhaps they want to set up a giveaway. What do they do next? Well, a lot of authors I know then start to neglect Goodreads when the giveaway ends.

Too many writers don’t understand the benefits of maintaining a presence, reviewing books, adding favorite quotes, or joining groups.

Some writers neglect Goodreads to their detriment.

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Quick Links: How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

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Who doesn’t want more reviews! The awesome Shelly Hitz has a great way to add a direct link to the Amazon review section of your book, making it oh so easy for readers to review your title.

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How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

abstract_110006583-1013int-011314intAll authors love to get new reviews on their books in Amazon, right? Reviews give more credibility and social proof to your book.

Therefore, in this post I decided to share with you how to create a direct link on Amazon for book reviewers to post their reviews.

How to Create the Link

Today I have a question from Paula Moldenhouer. She recently saw me share my Amazon presentation at a conference and loved the ninja tip I shared for creating a custom review link. However, she needed a little more help setting it up and so sent me this question through my “Ask Shelley” page.

“I love your idea of putting the link for reviewing your book in newsletters, blogs, etc., but as I’m on Amazon I’m not sure which link that is. I’m assuming you don’t want all the extra letters that would connect stuff to my account, but at the same time, when I take them away I only get a blurb of how to write a review, it doesn’t seem to be connected to my product.”

First of all, I would like to thank Paula for asking that question. I’m sure a lot of you will benefit from it.

So here is the step by step process of how you can create a link for your book reviewers.

Before we go any further, I would like to recommend that you optimize your book on Amazon for selling more books.

There are actually two ways that you can do it.

In the “Write a Customer Review” Block

The first technique is to go to your Amazon book page and click the “Write a Customer Review” block.

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Quick Links: Finding Your Audience Part Two – Think Long Term & Build Relationships

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This is the second article in Angela Quarles’ series on finding an audience, hosted at Fiction University. She has some great points about being genuine and building a connection instead of bombarding people.

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Finding Your Audience Part Two – Think Long Term & Build Relationships

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Thursday, June 30

People sitting in an audiencePart of the Indie Author Series

In last month’s post, I talked about the pre-release steps you can take to find your audience. Today, I’m tackling finding your audience after your book’s launch.

Lessons to learn from non-fiction writers

As you’ve probably already noticed, it’s easier to find articles on this topic for non-fiction writers because their book’s subject helps direct them on where to find their audience. Plus, there are clear strategies one can take to build a platform. The challenge is slightly different for us, but I think it’ll be helpful to understand a little why it’s easier (not easy, but relatively easier) for them so that we can find the right approach.

Why is it easier for them? Non-fiction writers can go to where their audience is, since humans are great at organizing around shared interests and goals. If their non-fiction book is about grooming long-haired dogs, they can search out forums and blogs and podcasts on the subject. They can also set themselves up as subject matter experts by creating their own platform through the internet and through speaking engagements.

Think beyond sales

I think most writers worry about finding their audience because they’re staring at the barely moving needle on their sales dashboard. So most will go about it by thinking the solution is to blast their book anywhere and everywhere on social media. That will make people buy it, right? Or they think that’s the only way, and they hate even the thought of it, so they bypass looking at it in any other angle. Instead, they hope that if they put their best book out there, the writing will speak for itself and the audience will eventually come.

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Quick Links: Turning Losing into Winning: The Kindle Scout Experience

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Have you heard of Amazon’s Kindle Scout program? I love it! Authors submit their titles to the program in hopes of winning a publishing contract through Amazon. Users vote on the different titles and if a book that they nominated is selected, they get a free copy.

But even if you are not selected for a publishing contract, authors can still win. The people that voted for you are notified when the book goes on sale at Amazon. I have purchased titles this way because I didn’t want to miss out on the story.  Melissa Bowersock at Indies Unlimited has all the details.

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Turning Losing into Winning: The Kindle Scout Experience

Melissa Bowersock

Posted on

kscoutWhen I finished my latest book, Finding Travis, a time travel story, I sent it out to beta readers and prepared to self-publish as I always do. But then a friend began broadcasting the news that she had entered her latest book in the Kindle Scout program and was looking for nominations. I remembered that another friend had entered his book in the program months ago, and had won the coveted publishing contract with Amazon. Because I really, really liked this new book of mine, and because I had built up quite a decent fan base, I decided to try Kindle Scout for myself.

The Kindle Scout campaign is a two-pronged deal. Amazon evaluates the book on its own merit, but they also look at the number of nominations a book receives from potential readers. Because Amazon doesn’t ever tell us how it writes its algorithms or how it decides what’s a winning book and what isn’t, it’s hard to know exactly how to go after the win. The only things that were in my control were (1) writing a good book; and (2) getting as many people as possible to nominate the book. So that’s what I did.

Some people might balk at the idea of nominating a book they haven’t read. I totally understand. However, Kindle Scout creates a landing page for each book and includes the cover, a short blurb, and the first chapter as a sample for voters to read. Readers can then decide for themselves if they feel the book is a winner, or they might simply go on the author’s past performance.

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Quick Link: I Lost $6,500 on My Last Book Launch: Details, final tally, lessons learned

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Poor Linda Formichelli! She had a horrible experience launching her last book, but was gracious enough to share her experiences at Renegade Writer Press. Be careful out there!

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I Lost $6,500 on My Last Book Launch: Details, final tally, lessons learned

Linda Formichelli

Be careful out there!
Be careful out there!

Hello, Renegades! You may remember that I started a series of posts on the work and expenses that have gone into writing and publishing my new book, How to Do It All: The Revolutionary Plan to Create a Full, Meaningful Life — While Only Occasionally Wanting to Poke Your Eyes Out With a Sharpie.

I promised to follow up with a final accounting and to let you know if all the work and expense was worth it. That’s what you’re reading now.

In short, I’ll tell you that the book cover designer, interior layout designer, and proofreader were all 100% worth the cost. They all delivered on what they promised in their contracts.

The launch team that constituted the bulk of my expenses ($6,500 of the $10,000 spent)? That’s another story. I learned a lot of hard lessons from this, and hope you will, too, as I’m passionate about helping writers and want to make sure no other self-publisher has to go through what I experienced.

Some key information to remember as you read this: How to Do It All is a nonfiction self-help title aimed at a female audience between the ages of 20-60.

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Quick Links: Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool

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We have talked about how important having a good cover is, after all it is what your story is first judged by. But did you know that just having your cover redesigned professionally can do wonders for sales? Jane Friedman explains.

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Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Alexander von Ness

Getting professional help is always a good option
Getting professional help is always a good option

Today’s guest post is from graphic designer Alexander von Ness (@AlexandervonNes), founder of Nessgraphica and Bookcoverpedia.
Authors may spend a fortune on book editing, but leave very little for the cover design—thus forgetting that the cover is the reader’s first impression of the book.

If you are a well-known author, your books may sell themselves because readers trust the story or the content, but if you are new, then you need to make a statement with the first thing a reader sees: the book cover design. And if your existing book cover design isn’t currently making a good impression, you may want to consider a professional redesign.

Last year, I had almost the same amount of work with redesigns of already-published books as with new books. Even a simple redesign of a book cover can create miracles marketing-wise. Some authors have even requested redesigns of over ten books after seeing how much a book cover redesign can increase sales. A professional book cover design isn’t just a sign of good content but appreciation of your own hard work.

In the next few examples of real book cover redesigns, I offer a short explanation of the challenges and goals I had in redesigning each cover.

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Quick Links: When Less Is More on Social Media

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I don’t know about you, but I am totally overwhelmed with dealing with social media. It takes time to really connect and do justice to the people who are wonderful enough to engage with you. So when I read Jane Friedman‘s post on managing social media, I knew I wasn’t the only one. It has some great tips!

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When Less Is More on Social Media

Too much social media can be overwhelming
Too much social media can be overwhelming

June 22, 2016 by Chris Syme

Today’s guest post is from social media expert Chris Syme (@cksyme). Learn about her June master class.

Social media boasts some pretty staggering numbers: nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media. And 70 percent of those users ages thirteen and up are on Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

Authors feel the steady pressure to be on social media channels promoting themselves, promoting their books, and searching for those ever-elusive readers. Some marketers tout it like it’s a magic pill, encouraging authors to be in every possible corner of the social media universe. After all, you don’t want to miss anybody, right?

The trouble with this advice is that it is antithetical to the present marketing culture. Marketing in this day and age is not about casting a wide net to get all the fish. It’s about knowing who your audience is, understanding where the best spots to find them are, and going narrow with the best channels for optimum results. If you want maximum results from your social media channels, less is more.

Fewer Channels Means More Engagement
I have long been an advocate of being on fewer social media channels to maximize engagement. There are several reasons for that, but I’ll give you the main three:

  • Finding where your audience members spend the most time makes it easier to target them.
  • Spending time on channels that grab less than 25 percent of the users online is a waste unless it is a niche channel specific to your audience.
  • Every channel is not conducive to selling. Choose channels where you can engage and sell.

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Quick Links: How to Use BookBub to Boost Sales of Self-Published Books

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Bookbub is one of the bigger options out there for book marketing.  at Self Publishing Advice Center shares her tips on how to utilize Bookbub and the advantages and disadvantages that they offer.  For an alternative approach you can also try BookGorilla and Kindle Nation Daily. Full disclosure, I do work for both of those sites but have no reservations recommending them. 

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How to Use BookBub to Boost Sales of Self-Published Books

MarketingBy Jane Davis on June 11, 2016

Award-winning English author Jane Davis shares her successful case study of using book promotion service BookBub to market her literary novels.

Why BookBub?
Jane Davis used BookBub to boost the sales of her novel with the fewest recent sales
There’s little doubt about it, BookBub is the Holy Grail of ebook advertising. I have heard them talk about their huge successes in promoting romantic fiction and sci-fi, but I write literary fiction. Would it work for me?

With BookBub, you don’t simply hand over your cash. You apply for an advertising slot and wait to hear (a) whether your application is accepted and (b) when it will run. They had turned me down twice in the past, but I hadn’t been prepared to give my work away before. My sales figures had never been so low at the beginning of 2016. I knew I had to break the pattern.

Given the date 13 March, I chose to promote A Funeral for an Owl. With only four purchases in the quarter leading up to February 2016, it was my worst performing book. At the same time, I hold great affection for its characters and the story – despite the fact that it lost me a publishing deal!

What does a BookBub ad cost?
Two factors influence the price of a coveted BookBub slot. One is genre. The other is price (either 99p/99c or free). My BookBub ad for UK, US and Canada cost £215 (Literary, free). BookBub also offer advertising in India, but Amazon declined to price-match for that region.

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Quick Links: How Authors Can Get More Fans and Book Sales with Less Social Media

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You know you need social media as part of your overall marketing strategy, but there are so many different types of platforms. There just isn’t enough time in the day to really utilize them all.  At Digital Book World, helps you to use your social media time wisely.

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How Authors Can Get More Fans and Book Sales with Less Social Media

By: Chris Syme

June 20, 2016

My brain on social media
Social Media is NOT Pokemon. You don’t need to catch them all!

Expert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

A mind-boggling 78 percent of Americans have a social media profile. According to Statista, 2.72 billion people will be social media users worldwide by 2019.

It is a given that authors can develop loyal audiences and sell more books with the help of social media. But as numbers of users rise, the pressure to “be on every channel” also rises, as authors succumb to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Even though it may be true that you have potential readers on every social media channel, it may be a waste of your time and resources to try to connect with people everywhere.

It’s Not About Numbers Anymore. It’s About Engagement

Internet users have an average of five social media accounts (Global Web Index), but they do not engage on them equally or use them for the same purpose. Numbers do give us information about social media, but numbers can be deceiving, as their meaning can shift with time. For example:

• In the pre-algorithm world of 2011, the race was on to build up as many fans on social media as possible. The more followers you had, the more people would see your content, as Facebook was yet to become the first social media channel to institute an engagement-choking algorithm.
• In 2016, numbers are a function of baseline reach as they have always been. But today, three of the major five platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) have engagement algorithms that restrict reach. Because of the sheer volume of online information, users have cried out for a better way to see the information that’s important to them. The result: constricting engagement algorithms. Today, your fan and follower numbers are only a baseline. The effectiveness of your content to get fans to like, share, comment and click will determine how many people actually see your content.

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