This post, by Jane Lebak, originally appeared on the Querytracker blog.

If your New Year’s resolution will be to join a writing group, you’ll want to learn from my horrible (and sometimes hilarious) experiences. I’ve belonged to writing groups since age twelve, but I didn’t start classifying their subspecies until I became the only member of a once-thriving group.

If you’re thinking of joining or starting a writing group, it’s best to have your focus in mind right from the beginning. The basic commonality is that writing groups in general consist of writers.

(Don’t you already feel enlightened? Well read on!)

Because that’s pretty much where the commonality ends. Let’s check out three distinct species of writing groups.

The first species is what I’d consider a support group. The focus is social: the writers gather to gripe about writing. They will perhaps come up with an organized topic of the day, but for the most part this group is about the snacks, the sharing, the complaining, and some exchange of advice. Its function is primarily to meet other writers and to get out of the house.

Some of the topics you’ll see covered here are how much rejection sucks, how hard it is to get things published, why is that particular crap in the bookstore when yours isn’t, what you think of the recent election, and whether there’s really a problem with that genetically-altered corn. You may also hear about places to search for markets.

If this group is online, then expect to read dozens of posts about everything under the sun, and whenever someone complains that the group is too cluttered, someone is sure to respond, “But we’re writers — this is what we do!” My first online group was of this variety, and I loved it. I learned a metric crapton about everything you can imagine, including some tidbits about writing.

My once-thriving group was also a social/support group type. Sixty local writers would gather, always with coffee and muffins, and sometimes they’d share a paragraph or two, maybe a poem or a letter to the editor, and everyone would tell them how lovely it was and suggest changing a comma in the second line. Someone might give a brief talk, at about the depth of an article in a writing magazine. There was a break in the middle so we could chat.

Read the rest of the post on the Querytracker blog.

Publetariat Editor’s Note: be sure to click through on the link at the bottom of this post (after the jump) and read the comments section, where readers have shared some additional helpful tips for marketing children’s books.

The first step in promoting any type of book is to understand your target audiences and develop a written book marketing plan. For tips, download my free report, Create a Book Marketing Plan That Sells Books. 

Books for younger children are usually purchased by adults, including parents, grandparents, other relatives and friends, teachers, and librarians. Teens often choose their own reading material, but keep in mind that a large percentage of the readers for young adult books are adults, many of them parents.

When promoting books for young children, interaction with kids and parents can be very effective. Look into school visits, library reading programs, book fairs and other events where families congregate. Also check out the Mom’s Choice awards program.

For more information and ideas, see my children’s book marketing resource page.

Authors, what are your favorite ways to promote children’s books? Please share in the comments area [on the original post]. 

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 11/21/12.

Chris Baty, ladies and gentlemen: the founder of NaNoWriMo is here just in time to save you and your novel. I met Chris as the Crossroads Conference down in Macon, GA, this year, where the both of us were guest speakers of the con (and what a kick-ass con it is), and damn if he isn’t the nicest and most inspiring dude. Which tells me he’s probably a serial killer, but that’s okay. Who isn’t? Chris harnessed the power of his niceness and inspiration and focused them on an interview here at terribleminds. Find his site at chrisbaty.com, and you will find him on the Twitters @chrisbaty.

This is a blog about writing and storytelling. So, tell us a story. As short or as long as you care to make it. As true or false as you see it.

Almost a decade ago, one of the most active members of the NaNoWriMo message boards died in a car accident. I’ll call her Mary. Mary lived in a small town in Michigan, and on New Year’s Eve, she was driving alone on an icy road when a deer jumped in front of her car. She swerved and skidded, slamming into a tree. We learned about the accident when the executor of her will posted a note about her death on the NaNoWriMo forums.

Everyone was stunned. Mary had been a vital, hilarious presence in the NaNoWriMo message boards. She’d always gone out of her way to be encouraging to everyone, and had been particularly generous with younger participants. Mary had a lot of virtual admirers spread out all over the country, and none of us really knew how to deal with her sudden absence.

A week later, the first bit of weirdness appeared. A fan of Mary’s had posted in the message boards, saying she’d contacted the mortuaries in Mary’s town because she’d wanted to send flowers to the funeral. And none of them were hosting a funeral for Mary.

Thinking “Mary” might have been a pen name (or that Mary was being buried elsewhere), this person called Mary’s local newspaper to get the details of the woman killed in the New Year’s Eve crash. Which is how she learned there had been no New Year’s Eve crash.

This weirded everyone out. I sent Mary an awkward email asking, in essence, if she really was dead. She didn’t respond. Shortly after that, a longtime member of the NaNoWriMo community decided to take matters into her own hands. She found Mary’s phone number online and called it. To her surprise, a woman answered.

“Mary?” the caller asked.

“Yes?” the woman said.

The caller hung up and immediately posted details of the interaction on the NaNoWriMo site. Mary’s sister, who had never posted on the site before, responded quickly, saying that she had been packing up Mary’s house and had answered the  phone. The name thing had been a misunderstanding.

This was fishy enough that, by the time someone found Mary alive and well and posting on another other message board one week later, most of us had already accepted the fact that she’d faked her death, creating the executor and sister to sell the lie.

Read the rest of the post on terribleminds.

Many authors consider book marketing a necessary evil – they would rather be writing! But of course it’s essential to promote your book if you want to actually sell it.

Here are five common roadblocks to successful book sales: 

• Starting too late – Ideally, your marketing journey should begin the minute you decide to write a book. You want to consider whether there’s a viable market for the book and also tailor the book to meet the needs of a specific audience. But wherever you are in your publishing journey, NOW is the time to get serious about marketing your book.

• Inertia – You can overcome inertia by setting goals and taking positive action each day to meet those goals.

• Lack of direction – Many authors just aren’t sure how to promote a book or how to prioritize the numerous tasks involved in book promotion. Lots of authors feel overwhelmed or jump from one activity to another without any clear plan. A good book marketing plan gives you a blueprint for promoting your book.

• Lack of knowledge – Marketing requires a different still set from writing a book. Many authors have no background in marketing and they need to learn new skills. There are numerous books, blogs, podcasts, teleseminars and other resources available to authors. Many resources are free, but it’s a good idea to invest in training in the areas you most need to learn about. 

• Lack of time – Many authors are surprised at the amount of time and effort required to promote their books. This can be especially challenging for those who have full time jobs and family responsibilities on top of their writing and publishing venture. Having a good book marketing plan helps you to budget your time most effectively.

Book Marketing Plan = Success

As you can see, a book marketing plan will help you overcome the most common roadblocks to book promotion. But your plan must be: 

• Well thought-out and in writing
   
• Customized for your book and your audience
   
• Reflect your own skills, budget and time constraints

Book marketing can seem daunting, but I guarantee that having a plan will make it less daunting! 

Your book marketing plan will help to keep you from feeling overwhelmed or paralyzed. Just put one foot in front of the other – take at least one action every day, no matter how small, and you will make progress.
 

To learn what goes into a good book marketing plan, download my free report, Create a Book Marketing Plan That Sells Books. For step-by-step guidance in how to develop your own customized plan, check out the Ultimate Book Marketing Plan Workshop.  

This is a reprint from Dana Lynn Smith‘s The Savvy Book Marketer.

Back in June of last year I finished recording the audio version of Simply Prayer and wentlooking for a place to sell it. At the time Kunaki seemed the best choice. Since then my audio book journey has drawn a bit of attention between two companies: ACX.com and Open Book Audio.

Being a social creature I did some asking around and found that most of the indie authors I knew were going with ACX, so that’s where I decided to go, despite Andrew Parker of Open Book Audio’s various helpful comments.

To make a long story short, I’ve been disappointed in ACX. Some would say I’m just being impatient, but so far the results with this company has been null in trying to get Apprentice Cat narrated. Thankfully I have an author friend who put me in touch with someone outside that company who may be able to narrate the book for me. (We’re still working on details at the moment.)

I’ve been looking into how to upload narration from an outside source onto the ACX site, but I keep getting lost in the directions available. Admittedly, I have yet to contact the company about this. I had plans to contact them this week, but then an interesting comment appeared from Andrew Parker on a post on my old blog about how Open Book Audio may be a better choice.

Here it is in full:

Hi Jaime (and all who are following the conversation),

Thanks for the kind words on the podcast. To your questions, the reality is with Audible that if you decide to go the ACX route (which definitely has it’s benefits) and go non-exclusive, you can sell your audiobook elsewhere, like through Open Book Audio. The problem with that, as I see it, is that you are locked into the 7 year agreement and, here’s where it gets interesting, you lose out on the marketing push we offer. Not to mention being able to track your sales through our website. As for Audible, they distribute their library, as I think most everyone knows now, to iTunes on an exclusive. So, if you want into iTunes, you have to get into Audible first. If you don’t go the ACX route, you have to have 5 books to get in. As for iTunes/Apple, they accept no audiobook unless it comes through Audible. So, even if you were to pay the development fee of $99, it still gets your book listed as a Spoken Word album or just an app. Either way, it makes it hard for folks to find you.

Back to the marketing push. At OBA, we have a very specific formula about what books we’ll take and what books we market. The truth is that, as long as the audio quality is good and the subject matter isn’t offensive, we’ll take the book and publish it to all of our retailers. What we then do is see how the book performs over the next few months. If it performs well enough, we put a big marketing push behind the book (reviews, websites, social media, press releases, interviews, podcasts, library journals, etc.) to goose the sales of the book and drive more money. Best of all, it’s free. How can we do that? Well, it’s simple really. If the book has proven that it can sell, it’s kind of a “why wouldn’t we?” mentality. Better yet, we have a specific formula that allows us to determine the precise amount of copies sold over a given period to guarantee a successful book. It’s remarkable how accurate we can be in determining what will be a hit and what won’t, rather than doing like most publishers do and go from their gut.

All that said, any publisher, like ourselves, won’t take your book if you decide to go direct through Audible and then come to us for the rest. Financially, we can’t make it work without the Audible slice of the pie and that’s the truth. Now, our fees are the lowest in the industry (again, math allows us to do that!) but Audible is still an essential piece of the puzzle.

So, what I would tell you is that if you’re content with your book just being available and not looking to make a great deal of money on it, ACX might be the way to go. But, if you’re looking to make more money, regardless of whether or not you hit the threshold for the marketing push, OBA is a much better option. After all, with a wider net, you’ll always get more fish.

Hope that helps. If you want to talk further (if anyone wants to talk further) just email me at andrew at openbookaudio dot com.

After reading this comment, I have to say I’m seriously considering using Open Book Audioinstead of ACX. I’ll be contacting Andrew soon to find out the details and I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Has anyone else been through working with audio book companies? What did you like? What would have liked to see improved?

*** Update***

I’ve just learned that once you sign up with ACX you cannot delete your account with them without deleting your Amazon account as well. That makes me very unhappy because now it seems they’re trying to force me to use their services. While it does simplify things, just as using Createspace does, it also limits your options once you claim your book, even with non-exclusivity.

I urge everyone to make weigh all your options before signing up with any audio book producing company. 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s blog.

This post, by Renee Pawlish, originally appeared on her Master Wordsmith blog.

Did that title get your attention?  Let’s face it, indie author marketing is tough work (indie author marketing success even more so).  And so many indie authors will tell you that you need a blog for effective marketing.  Well, yes and no.  I’m actually all for having a blog, ifyou are doing this for the right reasons, and you are avoiding some key mistakes. 

Having a poorly designed blog or one with little content can do just as much damage as good for you as an author, so you must think about why you have a blog in the first place.  I’ve touched on some of these points before, and I’ve added some new things here as well…

Indie Author Marketing – Reasons To Have A Blog

The primary purpose of blogging, for indie authors, is to help you sell books (unless you’re running a blog like this one that focuses on helping indie authors with writing and marketing).  Here are some of the things a blog can do for you:

• it can connect you with potential readers
• it can build your audience
• it can showcase your writing skills
• it can generate book sales
• it can position you as an expert in your genre
• it can generate traffic to your author website
• it can give you credibility as an author (great if you want to get an agent)
• and more…

Okay, you’ve probably heard of all of those and could add to the list.  And you may be asking yourself, I do these, so why isn’t it working?

Indie Author Marketing – Reasons Your Blog Isn’t Working

As I meet more and more indie authors, I see numerous things that they do with their blogs that actually harm their blogging efforts:

• having a poorly designed blog
• spelling or grammatical errors
• blogging inconsistently (this doesn’t encourage people to come back because they see you’re inactive)
• only blogging about your books (and saying buy my books all the time)
• little or no book information
• not linking your books directly to Amazon or other selling sites
• not having a niche (you have to target your audience and write to them)
• sharing your posts with those that aren’t in your target audience (I see this on Triberr a lot)

Now that we know the good and bad about our blogs, what can we do to correct things?

Indie Author Marketing – The Big Key – Your Blog Design 

Read the rest of the post, which gives further detail on each of the above bullet items, on Renee Pawlish’s Master Wordsmith blog.