Sell

Articles about book / author promotion and marketing, and author platform.

How Twitter is Blanding Branding

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

Readers to Books/Books to Readers––Part One: How to find Books in the Kindle Store

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This post, by M. Louisa Locke, originally appeared on her site on 11/5/13.

I have spent an enormous amount of time on this blog giving advice to authors on how they can get their books discovered by readers. But the other day, as I read a post by Mike Shatzkin entitled Finding your next book, or the discovery problem and fumed over his statement that looking for books online is more difficult than it is in a bookstore, I had an epiphany. If this man, who spends his life giving publishers advice on how to sell their books, doesn’t know some of the fundamentals of how readers can find books in an online bookstore, why am I assuming that the average reader has any better understanding of how to discover books in the Amazon Kindle Store? Maybe I have been preaching to the wrong group. Maybe, I should be directing my advice to readers, not just writers.

Even though research suggests that nearly half of all books (print, ebook, audiobooks) are bought online, the process of browsing in an online store is still new for most of us and it can be confusing. Except for the very young, most people who buy books are familiar with how to find them in physical bookstores. So I will begin by describing the experience of browsing in a brick and mortar bookstore—say my local Barnes and Noble––and then I will compare that to the experience of shopping online in the Kindle store.

In the process I will demonstrate that all the methods of finding books to read in a physical bookstore (staff recommendations, display tables, and shelves of books organized by broad categories) exist in the online Kindle store. However, in the Kindle store there are a variety of additional methods of finding a new book to read that don’t exist in physical stores, providing the potential for a shopping experience that can be much faster and more productive.

Not surprisingly, for the authors of books, understanding the different methods of discovering books in the Kindle store is the first step to figuring out how best to make sure their books will be discovered by these methods––which is what I will address in Readers to Books/Books to Readers––Part Two.

I will be focusing on browsing (rather than on looking for a specific title or author in either kind of store since this is an entirely different matter and much easier to do.)

 

Finding books in a physical bookstore:

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on M. Louisa Locke’s site, and also see the second installment: Readers to Books/Books to Reader–Part Two: How to Sell Books in the Kindle Store with the Search Bar.

 

No, Mike Shatzkin did NOT say that publishing is spiraling down the drain

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This post, by Mike Shatzkin, originally appeared on his The Shatzkin Files blog on 11/21/13.

As part of the promotion of the Digital Book World conference, I do some interviewing with the very capable Jeremy Greenfield, the editor of their blog. And Jeremy takes our conversations and chops them up into short pieces around the themes of our show. Since the focus of Digital Book World is “how digital is changing publishing”, Amazon is a topic of great interest and one we try to address in an original and enlightening way.

In my interview with Jeremy, for which he published very brief but entirely accurate excerpts, I did say that publishers would face a real selling job with authors when Amazon’s share grows by another 25% from its current base or if Barnes & Noble closed. Neither of those things is likely to happen in the next few years. If and when the day comes that one of those things does happen, not all publishers would be entirely defenseless even with today’s arsenal of capabilities. And Jeremy’s piece closes with my suggestion that publishers can help themselves by doing “digital marketing at scale, which is audience-centric in its thinking.”

Despite how this is interpreted in some circles, it does not add up to publishing “spiraling down the drain”.

Amazon is already truly disruptive and it isn’t clear to anybody but those on the inside of Amazon exactly how disruptive. I’ve written earlier that we know nothing about the used book marketplace they host and foster, which we must assume cuts into sales, particularly of bestselling books which have many copies in circulation. A recent discussion on a mailing list I’m on revolved around what we don’t know about how many ebooks are being published. Why? Because Bowker, which issues ISBN numbers and therefore helps us count the titles going into the marketplace, doesn’t necessarily get to touch (and count) titles that stay entirely inside of Amazon and therefore only use the Amazon “ASIN” substitute for the ISBN. Other ebook retailers will handle titles without ISBN numbers, but only Amazon has a large enough market by itself to make a substantial number of self-publishers work with them alone.

And now we have the anomaly of sales reporting from the AAP, once again working without totally internal Amazon IP, that suggests ebook sales are going down. Are they going down? Or are self-published titles exclusively inside Amazon taking share away from the part of the business we can see and count for ourselves and masking the ebook sales growth that is actually taking place? I have no evidence, but that strikes me as a more likely reality than that ebook sales have actually fallen year-to-year recently.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Shatzkin Files.

 

Quitter, Quitter

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This post, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing on 10/13/13.

I was on Kindleboards reading about the reaction to my last blog post where I shared my numbers.

During the discussion, someone brought up all the writers who have given up. It reminded me of a blog I wrote back in 2005, called Quitting. It’s worth reading. Go do it. You might also want to check out the comments, because I drop a lot of my philosophy about what it takes to succeed. Keep in mind, when I wrote this, I was netting about $25k a year writing.

I realize some may consider that successful, but it wasn’t enough to satisfy me. And it’s a big part of the reason I kept working my butt off.

I can now earn $25k in two weeks, or sometimes in a single week.

So, has my attitude changed since 2005? Do I think differently now?

I’ve said for years now that ebooks are forever, and forever is a long time to find your audience. It took me twenty years, from writing that first novel to making good (not great) money.

Are you willing to work for twenty years without pay? Without success (whatever your definition of success is)? Are you willing to keep at it, keep trying, keep learning, keep experimenting, when you may not have anyone to encourage you but your dog?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

 

Book Marketing: Generosity, Social Karma And Co-opetition

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This post, by Joanna Penn, originally appeared on her The Creative Penn blog on 11/10/13.

One of the reasons we write for publication is for other people.

We either want to help them through information or inspiration, or we want to entertain people and perhaps make them think.

Considering marketing in the same way can help you, because it focuses on the other person, the customer, not on you. That serves several purposes:

◾ It makes you think about what they really want

◾ It takes the focus off you and stops you feeling self-conscious

◾ It will give you ideas as to what to share

◾ It will help you to connect with a community

 

Generosity and social karma

The word karma implies that you get back what you give, and I believe this is true in the social environment. If you give, you will receive.

Being useful, helpful and generous is satisfying to you personally, but also builds up a bank of goodwill. When you later mention that you have a book out, or people are attracted to you because of your generosity, and see you have books/products available, they are more likely to buy.

This isn’t woo-woo. It’s based on the science of influence. Read Robert Cialdini’s book ‘Influence’ and you’ll understand that the principle of reciprocity is one of the keys to influencing people’s behavior. I believe that we can utilize such principles, but we don’t have to do it in a scammy or unethical manner.

Co-opetition

Co-opetition is all about the idea of cooperating with your perceived competition so that both parties benefit. When there is a congruence of interests, cooperating together can create greater value than acting alone.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Creative Penn.

 

5 Steps for Restarting Your Book Marketing Efforts After a Break

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This post, by Toni Tesori, originally appeared on the Duolit website on 8/28/13.

Life loves to throw curveballs.

As soon as you’re feeling good about how things are moving — WHAM! — something comes along to knock you back.

If you’re part of our mailing list, you’ve read about the personal curveballs Shannon and I were thrown this summer, but I’m sure you’ve experienced similar situations, too.

A change in seasons (“Summer’s here — I’m going outside!”), big life events (“I’m having a baby!”) and just the simple ebb and flow of life all affect our priorities, habits and schedules.

At some point in your writing career, building your fanbase will be the farthest thing from your mind.

When you first waver off track, it might just be for a few days. But then, a week goes by…then a month, and before you know it, it feels harder and harder to get back into marketing your work and easier and easier to extend the break.

Eventually, you realize that you need to get back to promoting your work.

 

But where do you start?

Falling behind is terrifying. You’re afraid that you’ve done irreparable damage to your writing career by taking a break.

I mean, what if you have to start from — gulp — scratch?!

 

How to Get Back on Track After Taking a Fanbase-Building Break

First off, simply take a deep breath.

Even if you’ve been out of the game for a few months (or longer!) you won’t have to start promoting your work from scratch, unless you want a clean slate. Regardless of how dire it feels, the fans you’ve gained and the progress you’ve made won’t be negated by the time off.

I don’t want to mislead you — it takes effort to get the ball rolling again, but it won’t be as much as you think.

Are you ready to get started? Put on some relaxing music and let’s work through the five steps for getting back on the book marketing bandwagon!

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Duolit.

 

Amazon's Ebook Returns Policy Is A GOOD Thing. Here's Why.

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This post, by Publetariat site founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 4/22/13 and is reprinted here in full with her permission.

Recently some indie author friends have become so outraged by ebook returns that they’re trying to organize and bring pressure to bear against Amazon to eliminate its 7-day return policy on Kindle books. There are other vendors who allow returns as well, and I’m sure this same group will be targeting those vendors in due time.

The main reason why this group of authors is so upset is that they’re watching their online, real-time royalty reports very closely, and making financial decisions for themselves and their households based on the “sales” they see reported there.

However, as any mainstream-published author already knows all too well, until net royalties for book sales are actually paid they are subject to change, and a large quantity of returns can easily bring your royalty statement for a given 6-month period into the red. The same is true of returnable self-published books, but these authors don’t seem to get that, or if they do get it, seem to think it’s unfair.

And so they’ve taken to social media to try and raise the visibility of this issue, to nudge their fellow authors into taking action intended to eliminate legitimate, vendor-sanctioned ebook returns. In my opinion, what they’re doing is a big mistake and if they succeed in getting vendors to eliminate ebook returns, it will be bad for all authors who have ebooks on the market.

Amazon’s 7-day return policy seems to be the biggest target here, so I’ll address my remarks to that specific vendor. But I think the points I’m about to make here are equally applicable to any ebook return policy.

I am *in favor* of Amazon’s 7-day return policy on Kindle books. Here’s why:

 

1. Hard copy books can generally be returned up to 30 days after purchase—longer, if you bought them someplace like Target. Therefore, as a consumer and reader, I don’t see why ebooks shouldn’t be returnable as well. Why aren’t all of these same authors up in arms about return policies on hard copy books? I’m all for removing barriers to ebook adoption, and one major barrier is consumers’ perception of value, that an ebook is somehow inherently inferior to, and less valuable than, a hard copy book. Elimination of ebook return policies makes ebooks economically inferior to hard copy books, from the consumer perspective.

 

2. Returnability removes the risk for buyers who might not otherwise take a chance on a new author.

 

3. People who want to game the system will always find a way, and it doesn’t make sense to take these first two benefits away from readers (and authors) for the sake of trying to do battle with the scammers. Take returns away, and the scammers who are abusing the returns system will just go back to outright piracy. Meanwhile, you’ve given paying customers some good reasons not to take a chance on your ebook.

 

4. I don’t believe most people DO read a book within 7 days of purchase, nor do I think most readers WANT to be put under that kind of time pressure. Those who are willing to read EVERY Kindle book they buy within 7 days are already paying a significantly higher cost than the price of the book in terms of their time and convenience.

Classic case of penny-wise, pound-foolish. True, the dishonest buyers’ inconvenience does not put money into authors’ pockets. But this just underscores my point about people who are looking to game the system. People who are willing to put themselves out like that to save three bucks or less are not a desirable target demo. I don’t want them to be my fans because they’re not truly invested in my work in any sense of the term, and never will be.

 

5. Regarding the “missing” or “stolen” royalties issue, I know this will sound harsh, but authors shouldn’t be counting their chickens before they hatch, anyway. Until I actually get a royalty transfer into my bank account, I know those figures I see in the KDP reports are fluid and subject to change. KDP authors still have it better than mainstream-pubbed authors, who must wait a year or longer for the first royalty check and only get them every six months thereafter.

My Indie Author Guide STILL hasn’t ‘earned out’ (the collapse of Borders meant thousands of returns), and it was published in November of 2010.

 

6. Contrary to what these agitating authors seem to think, those ebook returns do NOT represent lost sales. The people who are motivated to steal books or anything else never intended to pay for those things, and never would have paid for them. This argument from the authors is like a bank manager thinking that if only the bank robbers could’ve been talked out of their heist, they would’ve opened accounts at the bank and become customers.

Pirates and thieves are pirates and thieves, period. It’s just a question of how they get the books for free: illegal download, or return policy abuse.

 

7. Some of the authors who are speaking out about this are suspicious that there are actual, organized groups promoting the practice of return abuse as a means to get free ebooks. But even if there ARE groups of people who’ve organized to promote theft, well…so are pretty much all piracy groups. There’s no way to stop all piracy, and if people are abusing Amazon’s returns policy, it’s just another form of piracy.

 

8. Again, I know I’m about to sound really harsh, but the realities of business ARE sometimes harsh and that doesn’t make them any less real: Ignorance is not a defense here. Anyone who’s self-publishing for profit has a duty to read, and ensure they not only understand but agree with, any contracts they’re signing, and that includes KDP terms of use and Amazon’s ebook listing and sales policies.

If you don’t like Amazon’s ebook returns policy, you shouldn’t publish there or list your ebooks for sale there.

– – – –

Personally, I share Neil Gaiman’s view on piracy: I don’t care how people initially discover me, because once they’re fans and are able to pay, they will. And in the meantime, they’ll be spreading the word about me and my books. You may disagree with this stance, or even feel it’s naïve. But the bottom line is the same, regardless of anyone’s opinion about it: thieves will ALWAYS find a way. Hassling your paying customers and fans in an effort to discourage thieves will NEVER stop the thieves, but it is LIKELY to annoy customers and fans, resulting in TRUE losses in sales and new fans.

Has consumer hatred of DRM taught us nothing?

 

How to Build an Awesome and Relevant Twitter Following in 6 Minutes a Day

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This post, by Joel Friedlander, originally appeared on his The Book Designer site on 11/4/13.

If you’re like lots of other authors, you might feel a bit conflicted about Twitter. On one hand, you know that Twitter has become something more than just another social media network. It has started to function as the information network of choice for millions of people around the world.

These days, you even see Twitter feeds on television, and journalists, politicians, and celebrities make use of Twitter’s ability to communicate quite a lot in just 140 characters.

You know it’s a great place to interact with readers and colleagues. And with more and more people joining Twitter every day, you also know it’s a great place to promote your book, your blog and your other activities.

Right now, as Twitter gets ready to “go public” we know that they report over 218 million active monthly users, and that Twitter grew almost 48% in the year between March 2012 and March 2013. This trend shows no signs of slowing down.

On the other hand, Twitter can seem both cryptic and confusing when you first get started.

For one thing, there are lots of people just like you who already seem to have hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of followers. How will you ever catch up?

 

The Party’s Just Getting Started

Don’t worry about being late to the Twitter party; this service will be growing for years to come. And if you’ve been holding back from getting into Twitter because you think it will suck up too much of your time, relax.

To make it easier to grow your own community, I’ve got a simple, effective method you can use to build an engaged following of Twitter fans in just a few minutes a day.

Of course, you can “buy” Twitter followers if all you want is a big number after your name, but what’s the point of that? What you want is people who are likely to be interested in what you have to say.

This method is built around knowing both your own readers and the people who have already become successful in your niche, and who are also active on Twitter.

Let’s look at how to get ready to use this method, so we know we’re starting off on the right foot. Before getting started, you should:

1. Know something about your readers. For this method, you may only need to know what kind of books they like to read, but in general, you can never know too much about the people who make up the market for your books.

2. Know some writers who represent where you’d like to be when you become successful writing the kind of books you want to write.

3. Find some of those writers who are active on Twitter. Some of these people will have blogs, some will have e-mail lists, and all of these things may become important to you further down the road.

That’s all the prep you’ll need. Next, let’s see how these elements come together into a simple strategy to explode your own Twitter following in just a few minutes a day.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Book Designer.

 

How Fiction Authors Can Steal Marketing Ideas from Their Non-Fiction Friends

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I abhor playing team sports. I presume I’m not alone in this dislike, but I do feel the need to share my reasoning. You see, it’s not that a bad teammate or anything like that. It all goes back to middle school: in 6th grade, I went from being the tallest person in my class to one of the shortest. The sudden height catch-up from my peers had an inverse relationship to my prowess in PE class.

Basketball was the particular bane of my existence. When you’re towering two or three inches above your peers, man, basketball is a BLAST. You come to think you have some sort of actual skillz (with a ‘z’) when all you really have is a distinct height advantage.

You may call me a sore loser if you wish (I freely admit that I’m WAY competitive), but when I stopped winning games, I started becoming a bit sour on the whole team sports thing. All of those height-blessed peeps had a total unfair advantage…how could I ever hope to catch up?

I see many fiction authors complaining about a similar unfair advantage, and I completely understand their point of view.

Tell me if you’ve ever felt this way: you look at a fellow indie author, very similar to you in every way except one key one: her book is non-fiction.

You can’t help but think, ”wow, it’s so much easier to market a non-fiction book. You have a built-in jumping off point for marketing, a specific, niche target audience and oodles of angles to approach someone with other than ‘hey, I wrote a book.’”

I totally understand your frustration.

Because, in many ways, marketing non-fiction is much easier than marketing fiction. (Please don’t throw stones at me, non-fiction peeps. I know it’s not necessarily easier for everyone!)

Non-fiction authors have built-in topics to blog about. They have a much easier time pinpointing readers who are interested in their book’s topic. When they find them, there’s an automatic open to engage potential readers in conversation. They’re never short on newsletter content. They can put out a free report or fancy manifesto to draw in fans.

In short: non-fiction authors have it all, right?

Here’s a secret: you, dear fiction author, can have it all, too. Wanna know how?

I’ll show you; it’s a method I’ve enjoyed using with fiction authors for awhile, but it wasn’t until the fabulous Laura Pepper Wu gave it a name that the concept really gelled in my mind.

Fiction authors can gain the advantage of non-fiction authors by finding non-fiction angles for their work.

A What Now?

Think of it this way: how can your fiction work relate to what’s going on here in the boring ol’ real world?

  • Maybe it’s a fabulous location the characters in your novel visit.
  • Perhaps it’s a time period you became particularly well-versed in.
  • Or, maybe it’s a common life topic like parenting, death or disease.

Here’s a quick example: Even if your book isn’t 101 Ways to Cook a Steak, if your main character is a chef, you can still tap into the same fan-finding angles as your non-fiction author friend.

16 Non-Fiction Angle Ideas for Fiction Authors

Luckily, there are a variety of categories you can “mine” for non-fiction angles. Keep reading for overall non-fiction topics as well as specific examples for how you can turn those angles into viable marketing ideas!

Angle Category #1: A Location or Time Period

  • My book takes place in St. Augustine, Florida. Reach out to the St. Augustine Record newspaper and share a bit about your book. Also consider offering up a review copy!
  • My book is set in Paris, France, where I visited last summer. Contact travel blogs and pitch a guest post about your journey and how it influenced the writing of your book.
  • My book is centered around a cruise to Fiji. Partner with a local travel agency to host an event where they can share how to take a trip to Fiji and you can share details about your book.
  • My main character’s parents are from Italy. Host a theme night with a local restaurant featuring Italian food and a reading of your book.
  • My book is a Victorian Romance. Contact a blog interested in Victorian history, culture or fashion and write a guest post or give away a copy of your work.
  • My book takes place during the Civil War. Reach out to reenactment groups, bloggers and historical societies interested in that war and time period.

Angle Category #2: A Character’s Generation, Job, Hobby or Interest

  • My main character is a 75-year-old retiree. Reach out to senior centers in your area and offer to do a reading or signing.
  • My main character is celebrating her Sweet Sixteen. Reach out to high schools and youth-oriented programs.
  • My villain is obsessed with sports. Contact sports bloggers or local sports teams in your area.
  • My sassy sidekick loves gardening. Reach out to local garden clubs as well as bloggers who focus on gardening.
  • My main character is a ghost hunter. There are niche blogs about everything! Contact paranormal bloggers and share a bit about your work and why their fans would enjoy it.
  • A character in my novel is a fashionista. Get in touch with fashion bloggers or the local fashion column in your local paper.

Angle Category #3: A Major Theme or Topic

  • My novel deals with adoption. Contact parenting and adoption bloggers to share your work. Also consider partnering with a local adoption support or awareness group.
  • The main character in my novel is a widow. Contact grief support groups and offer to discuss your book. It can be helpful for those going through something similar.
  • Divorce is a theme in my novel. Contact marriage and relationship bloggers to share your work or ask for a guest post. Share what you’ve learned and experienced on the topic.
  • A character in my novel has a rare form of cancer. Contact foundations and support groups to share your book — many will be appreciative of the research you’ve done and interested to hear of an author discussing the illness.

Now, Start Brainstorming!

  1. Physically or mentally run through your novel, making a list of every non-fiction angle you can think of. Come up with at LEAST 5-10!
  2. Brainstorm a way you can use each angle to reach out to potential readers.
  3. Choose the three best ideas and work on implementing them for the next few months.

The Big Idea

Using non-fiction angles immediately forces you to think outside of the box and connect your fiction story to real-life readers.

While those readers aren’t necessarily crazy fans of [insert your genre here], their interest might just be piqued by a particular angle your book offers them.

The best part of this non-fiction angles gig is that, any time you need to think up new marketing ideas, you can complete the exercise again. I guarantee you will find a new idea each and every time!

As for me…well, I still haven’t quite figured out how to steal basketball strategies from the folks towering over me. Ah, well; I’ve learned to love my short stature anyway!

Talk Back

What non-fiction angles did you find for your book? What brilliant marketing ideas did they spark? Share them with me (and your fellow authors) in the comments [section of the original post]!
This is a reprint from duolit.

7 Publishing Tips I Learned at Writer’s Digest Conference East 2013

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This post, by James H. Duncan, originally appeared on his site on 4/7/13.

I recently attended Writer’s Digest Conference East in New York City — my first writing conference in almost seven years — and aside from the standard (though invaluable) advice on craft, career, and publishing options for writers, I picked up these seven tidbits of info that I found especially fascinating. You might too, so enjoy!

1. Bookmarks: Every reader needs them. Heck, I have about thirty around my apartment lying in wait and I still take more when I can. So think about creating some with your name and book title on them. They’re easy to make, inexpensive to print, and they can help spread the word about your book, name, website, or twitter handle long after someone has finished your book. It’s a great tip I picked up from Eric DelaBarre (former writer for Law & Order and author of the hit children’s novel Saltwater Taffy).

2. Author Pages: I’ve used CreateSpace/Amazon to publish a collection of poetry, and I plan to use them to publish my upcoming collection of short stories, but I had no idea that they allow any author—no matter who has published the book—to create and modify an author page at Amazon.com. You can even link blogs and twitter accounts to the page. It’s like having a second website for free. Might have been common knowledge before, but it was cool news to me, and I thank Jon Fine, the director of Author and Publisher Relations for Amazon, for that great tip.

3. Blog to Website: Despite their wide use by industry professionals and writers, many blogs and websites that have the tags .blogspot and .wordpress retain a slight stigma as being “less professional” than a website. So the $10 a year (or so) that these sites charge to turn it into a strictly .com operation is well worth the money to dispel any doubt that you are taking this seriously. It’s on my 2013 To Do list for sure.

 

Read the rest of the post on James H. Duncan’s site.

Elements Of A Successful Fiction Platform

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This post, by Christina Katz, originally appeared on the Writer’s Digest site on 4/5/13.

For most fiction writers, the true definition of that buzzword “platform” has always seemed a bit fuzzy. While writers of nonfiction can draw upon their subject matter in seeking opportunities for their work, theories on how aspiring novelists should promote themselves abound. Many fiction writers have a vague understanding of the need to network online, but are unsure of the specific and tangible benefits of doing so. Can time invested in platform development up front really help sell more novels later? Does offering craft tips or glimpses of your personal life succeed in leading people to your fiction?

Without having a clear idea of which methods of promoting yourself and your work are really worth the investment of time and money, you might be tempted to avoid the subject entirely. After all, you’ve got a novel to write! But in today’s publishing world, neglecting your platform—even before you have a book deal—can be a big mistake. Simply put, writers need readers. It’s an undisputable fact that many of today’s most successful fiction writers are those who’ve developed ways of creating lasting fans—and of reaching out to new ones every day. And aspiring writers who’ve developed budding fan bases have an advantage when it comes time to appeal to publishers and agents.

So as much as you might want to, you can’t afford to wait to create an online identity. The kinds of connections that translate into devoted readers of your work take time to build. “First and foremost, I try to remember the brand is me, not my latest book,” romance novelist Gwyn Cready says. “My efforts go into building a connection between the reader and Gwyn Cready, the writer.”

The key is to get your name known early on and then work at continually increasing your visibility as your career progresses. But knowing you need a platform and knowing the best way to go about building one are two entirely different matters. The good news is that when developing a strategy for beginning—or strengthening—your own presence and outreach, you don’t have to spend valuable hours starting from scratch with your own trial and error. Many notable novelists have succeeded in building large networks of fans over time—and are willing to share what they’ve learned along the way.

What does a successful platform really look like for a fiction writer? Read on to find out.

Your Website & Blog

 

Read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest.

Decrying the Evil Empire of Publishing While Piloting One of Its Battle Cruisers?

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This post, by Bob Mayer, originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 4/2/13.

Amazon, it appears, is the Death Star, the evil empire, that is devouring the publishing universe. At least according to a lot of people who are publicly proclaiming it. That makes Jeff Bezos the Emperor and, hmm, let’s pick Jon Fine, as Darth Vader, because he’s always out there at writers’ events representing Amazon. Behind that long hair and charming smile, lies his true, twisted face. We won’t even get into where he hides his light saber.

The recent Amazon purchase of Goodreads has rattled all these ‘rebels’ out of the encampments and have them polishing up their swords and powering up their own light sabers to . . .

Uh wait. Actually, when you check, you find that most, if not all, of these people, whether they be authors or work for publishers, have books on Amazon for sale. Huh? Are they then not part of Amazon? I mean, Amazon has to sell something. Right? And if these same people are supplying that product and making money off it, aren’t they either Imperial Storm Troopers (the little ones, you know, let’s say a midlist author at a trad publisher who generates probably 60-80% of her eBook royalties and 35% of her print royalties via Amazon) or piloting an Imperial Battle Cruiser (let’s say a Big 6 Publisher that sells a considerable number of books through Amazon, both digital and print, and oh yeah, audio).

How can both be true? How can Scott Turow use his bully pulpit as president of the Authors Guild to decry Amazon over and over again, yet still sell his books on Amazon? I think there’s a word for that.

Hypocritical?

I understand that its Scott’s publisher who sends the book metadata to be sold on Amazon and not Scott himself, but if Amazon is truly the Death Star, why is everyone feeding it?

I’m all for everyone having an opinion. I remember Barnes & Noble when it was the Evil Empire destroying indie bookstores. I also remember B&N when it was one store on 18th in New York City that I visited on Sundays growing up in da’ Bronx. I remember in 1994 when there wasn’t an Amazon. I remember the early part of the last decade as the music business imploded because of digital and NY blithely stuck to business as usual. Now it’s imploding and people are crying FOUL! Not preparing for the future isn’t your competition being unfair, it’s running your business poorly.

 

Read the rest of the post on Write on the River.

Ether for Authors: Goodreads. Badreactions.

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This post, by Porter Anderson, originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 4/1/13. It gives an excellent overview of the facts about Amazon’s intended acquisition of Goodreads, a roundup of reactions, and some analysis from cooler heads.

To many, Amazon is an evil corporation hellbent on destroying the world. They have made these intentions clear by paying authors a shitload and fighting to lower the price of books for readers. I think we can all agree that authors and readers are scum, and this preferential treatment on the part of Amazon should be looked at with complete distrust.

Hugh Howey writes about the destruction of the world for a living. In this instance, he’s on his site, in Amazon and Goodreads.

And by Thursday afternoon, around 4:45 p.m. Eastern, he had a lot to write about. The Amazonian Apocalypse indeed was upon us. We were up to our digital derrieres in that greatest of all booky community blessings: reach out and share the hysteria.

In four sections of this edition of the Ether, I’m going to focus on this new development at length, here at Palpitating Perspectives.

The event, in and of itself, is of genuine interest, certainly. But also worthy of our attention is the fact that it’s not cause for the self-defenestration you’d think was contemplated by some of our colleagues on hearing the word.

We didn’t just get news Thursday. We also got a fever dream’s descent into alarmist indulgence.

I was reminded of a typo in the Sunday bulletin at one of my father’s churches many years ago. We were posted at the time to the Methodist church in Denny Terrace, a suburb of Columbia, South Carolina. The listing was for a parish picnic that afternoon: 4 p.m. today: Church-Wide Panic. Please be prompt. Well, here was Goodreads being acquired by Amazon. The panic surely started promptly. And now was the fimbulwinter of our discontent made glorious slapstick by such loud reactions.

Never mind Goodreads founder Otis Chandler’s statement on his site’s blog, Exciting News About Goodreads: We’re Joining the Amazon Family!

It’s important to be clear that Goodreads and the awesome team behind it are not going away. Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community that we all cherish. We plan to continue offering you everything that you love about the site.

The angry faithful blew off those niceties with the ease of Amazon Certified Frustration-Free Packaging. It didn’t seem to matter what Chandler said. This man who 30 minutes earlier was thought a hero by his lit-legions now was pictured with his wife, both of them holding Kindles with Goodreads stickers on them.

Read the rest of this very lengthy and in-depth post on Publishing Perspectives.

Indie Author Branding: How to Figure Out How to Brand Yourself

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This post, by Elizabeth Barone, originally appeared on her site on 3/24/13.

It took me about a year to figure out how to brand myself as an author. This was after I decided to be a professional novelist. Before I figured it out, I worried about it almost all the time. After all, I used to work with non-profits and small businesses to create their web presence—a form of branding.

I couldn’t figure out how to translate those principles to my own company. It just didn’t work. For example, a company has a mission statement and a logo. While I have a few reasons for writing and morals when it comes to being a writer selling a product, I couldn’t convince myself to put an official mission statement on my website. That just seemed silly! In the same vein, it seemed weird to develop a logo for myself.

Meanwhile, I read articles about choosing a genre and establishing yourself as an author of a niche. “How can I pick one genre when they’re all so fun?” I would wonder, staring at the screen. Picking one seemed more committal than a manwhore getting married. What if I wanted to write romance down the road? What if I decided horror was really my thing? I couldn’t very well keep changing genres.

The only thing I had going for me was a website: elizabethbarone.net. While I really would have preferred the .com, I made this place my home base for my books, news, and blog not long after deciding to work toward being a full-time author. I did very little to brand it, other than experiment with WordPress themes, and play with headers in Photoshop.

Then I stumbled upon an interview Joanna Penn did with CJ Lyons, who calls her books “thrillers with heart.” I liked the term immediately because it not only perfectly described her books, but gave her room to write in all genres. If she wanted to, she could even write horror under that term, as long as there was some heart in it. That got my wheels turning and then branding made sense to me. I didn’t have to pick a genre. I could write “drama with grit”:

stories powered by strong, intricate characters who are plagued by realistic problems and situations.

 

Read the rest of the post on Elizabeth Barone’s site.

How to Set Up Google Authorship (and Why You Really Should)

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If you write any online content, Google Authorship is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Authorship is Google’s program for verifying the identity of online writers. Once you have claimed Authorship, any time one of your articles or blog posts appears in someone’s Google search results, they will see your picture and a link to your Google Plus profile.

You can see an example linking to one of my blog posts below.

This has obvious advantages in terms of giving your posts added visibility and increasing the likelihood they will be clicked on.

In addition, though, using Google Authorship will boost your credibility and expert status with Google in topic areas you write about regularly. It will also help your original articles rank higher than sites that have (legitimately or otherwise) copied your content.

A further advantage is that if a user returns to their results list after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the link they originally clicked. How cool is that?!

So far there is no evidence that articles with Google Authorship automatically achieve higher placings in search results – but as Authorship helps build your reputation, it is likely that in the longer term it will assist you in achieving higher search-engine rankings as well.

Before you can set up Google Authorship, you will need two things: a Google Account and Google Plus (also written Google+) membership.

If you use any Google services that require you to log in – Gmail being the best-known – you will have a Google Account already. Otherwise you can sign up here. It’s free and only takes a moment.

Google Plus is Google’s attempt to create its own social network to rival Facebook. Although it has failed to capture the public imagination in the way Facebook has, according to this recent article on ZDNet it now has over 343 million active users. That puts it ahead of both Twitter and YouTube (which Google also owns, incidentally).

Google Plus is already tightly integrated with other services such as Google search, which is a good reason to open an account in itself. You can check out my Google Plus page here, incidentally.

Assuming you have a Google Account, joining Google Plus is simple (and free). Just visit the Google Plus website to sign up. The Digital Unite website has detailed step-by-step instructions to joining Google Plus, if you need them.

With that done, you are almost ready to set up Authorship. There is just one more thing to do, which is to ensure that you have a good quality portrait photograph that Google can display in search results. You can upload or change this via your Google Plus profile page.

Setting Up Authorship

There are two main ways to set up Authorship. The first, and simplest, can be used if you have an email address on the same domain as the blog or website you want to claim Authorship for.

For example, if you want to claim Authorship for articles you write on www.mywebsite.com and you have an email address of writer@mywebsite.com, you could use this method.

In that case, visit the Google Authorship page and submit your email address to Google via the online form. Google will send you an email containing a link to click in order to confirm that this is indeed your account. Once you have done this, Authorship will be set up for the domain in question. The root domain will also be added to the list of items in “Contributor To” on your Google Plus profile page.

No matter how many articles or posts you publish on this domain, you should only need to do this once. For Authorship to work, however, it is essential that every article or post you write includes the word “by” (without the quotation marks) followed by your name exactly as it appears in your Google Plus account.

Note that doing this will also add your email address to the Work section of your Profile. By default this is viewable only by your Circles (people you have chosen to follow in Google Plus). You can keep your email entirely private if you wish, however, by editing the visibility settings in the Work section.

Of course, this method can’t be used where you don’t have control over the root domain, as is the case with many blogs on free hosting services such as Blogger and WordPress.com. The same may apply with blogs you have written guest posts for. In that case, you will need to use a two-step method.

First, go to your Google Plus profile page and click on “About”. Scroll down a bit and you should find a box headed Links. I’ve copied mine below…

As with all the images in this post, you can see a full-sized version by clicking on the image concerned.

Click on Edit at the foot of the box, and click on Add Custom Link in the “Contributor To” section. You will then be able to add the website concerned to the list of sites there.

That’s not enough for Authorship to work on its own, however. This is where Step 2 comes in. You will need to add a piece of code on the web page concerned that identifies you as the author. Here is the code I use:

The URL in the middle is that of your Google Plus Profile page, so you will need to navigate to this and copy it from your browser’s location bar. Obviously, the reference number of your page will be different from mine, but otherwise if you are on the correct page it should look similar.

The other crucial element to include is the ?rel=author tag directly after your Profile page URL. This tells Google that you are claiming Authorship for the post or article in question. The anchor text you use doesn’t really matter. I’ve used my name in the example code above, but you could put “Google Plus” if you prefer. In that case it will render as in the following example: Here is an Authorship link to Nick Daws’ Google Plus page. Either way, it should work without any problems.

To test that you have set up Authorship correctly, go to Google Webmaster Tools Structured Data Testing Tool. Enter the website’s URL in the box and click on Preview. A results page should then appear showing whether Authorship is working or not (and how it has been verified, using email or rel=author markup). Here are the results I got for this blog when I tried doing this just now:

As you will see, it wasn’t possible for me to use the email method for my blog, so I used the rel=author method.

Naturally, with guest posts you have written in the past, Authorship won’t work unless the necessary code is inserted. You might therefore want to write to the owners of the blogs concerned asking if they would be kind enough to add a link to your Google Plus page using the “rel=author” tag.

And that’s it, really. In this post I have tried to show you all the basics you need to know in order to claim Authorship of your blog and guest posts. If you need more help, Google Webmaster Tools has pages titled Author Information in Search Results and Link your content to a Google+ Profile using “rel=author”.

Good luck setting up Authorship. I hope that in this article I have convinced you that it’s worth doing, and it isn’t rocket science!

If you have any comments or questions, please post them [in the comments section on the original post, here], and of course I’ll help if I can.

This is a reprint from Nick Daws’ My Writing Blog.