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

Establishing An Author Presence on Social Networking Sites

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Editor’s Note: This week, we’re happy to promote new member Tony Eldridge’s blog post about social networking for authors to the front page.

If you’ve been online long, you’ve heard a chorus of experts say how important it is to create an online presence. When you start, you’ll see that it’s easy to set up many individual sites, but it takes a little more work to tie these sites together into a single unit that works as one. If you don’t do this, then you will create an online presence that is hard to manage.

Some authors choose to have a social networking site as their "hub". This, however, is not my preferred method. I’d recommend that your social networking sites be the spokes that feed into your main blog or website. For more on this concept, read a post that I wrote for BookBuzzr called, Creating A Marketing Hub.

Social networking sites ebb and flow with popularity, so what we discuss now may not be the same thing we might discuss tomorrow. That said, let’s look at a few sites that authors should consider joining as well as some general principles to keep in mind as we interact with others on these sites.

Tony’s List Of Top Social Networking Sites For Authors (And Why)

Twitter and Facebook round out my top two recommendations by far. This is where people are right now and if you learn to use these two sites effectively, you can find a lot of readers for your book.

GoodReads and Shelfari are two sites devoted to books. They are reader driven sites that give authors a great platform to interact with readers.

Author Central is Amazon’s site where authors can build out more information for people who are browsing for books. Why wouldn’t you carve out your spot on the biggest book-buying place on the planet?

Author’s Den is an author driven site where you can network with other authors as well as find readers for your book. 

I’ll admit that there are other great sites for authors to join. Many of these are niche sites that will be perfect for the book you wrote. For example, if you wrote a gardening book, then it makes sense for you to look for social networking sites devoted to gardening.

Once you decide to create a social networking presence, here are some things to remember:

  • These sites are created to build relationships, not to advertise on. Don’t spam your readers or you will be shunned. 
  • These sites can help you build a reputation as an expert in your field. Find ways to enter the conversations on them.
  • Keep it professional. While sharing some personal news can help you connect with your followers, too much will turn people off.
  • Give more value than you ask for and people will listen to what you have to say.
  • Don’t get ugly. While some people love to watch a fight, most are turned off by rude bickering. A "troll" is someone who gets his or her kicks from publicly fighting. Don’t fall into their trap by taking their bait.
  • For more great ideas on this topic, read: 
  • Dana Lynn Smith’s post on my blog called, The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Networking
  • Joanna Penn’s post called, Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites for Writers and Authors
  • John Kremer’s list of Social Networking Websites.

I also recommend that you choose one or two social networking sites to start off with. A mistake many authors make is by trying to do too much too quickly and getting overwhelmed. If you want more than an online billboard, then you’ll need to spend a little time developing your presence on these sites. Add more once you can handle the few you start off with. 

Here are some other posts that will help you with your social networking activities:

I hope this post helps you get started on the social networking part of your book marketing plan. There are a lot of resources out there to help. What I’ve shared barely scratches the surface. With a little planning, a little research, and taking things one step at a time, you can build an online presence with social networking sites that definitely bring value to you, your books, and to all the people you connect with. 

This is a reprint from Tony Eldridge‘s Marketing Tips For Authors.

 

Establishing An Author Presence on Social Networking Sites

by

If you’ve been online long, you’ve heard a chorus of experts say how important it is to create an online presence. When you start, you’ll see that it’s easy to set up many individual sites, but it takes a little more work to tie these sites together into a single unit that works as one. If you don’t do this, then you will create an online presence that is hard to manage.

Some authors choose to have a social networking site as their "hub". This, however, is not my preferred method. I’d recommend that your social networking sites be the spokes that feed into your main blog or website. For more on this concept, read a post that I wrote for BookBuzzr called, Creating A Marketing Hub.

Social networking sites ebb and flow with popularity, so what we discuss now may not be the same thing we might discuss tomorrow. That said, let’s look at a few sites that authors should consider joining as well as some general principles to keep in mind as we interact with others on these sites.

Tony’s List Of Top Social Networking Sites For Authors (And Why)

Twitter and Facebook round out my top two recommendations by far. This is where people are right now and if you learn to use these two sites effectively, you can find a lot of readers for your book.

GoodReads and Shelfari are two sites devoted to books. They are reader driven sites that give authors a great platform to interact with readers.

Author Central is Amazon’s site where authors can build out more information for people who are browsing for books. Why wouldn’t you carve out your spot on the biggest book-buying place on the planet?

Author’s Den is an author driven site where you can network with other authors as well as find readers for your book. 

I’ll admit that there are other great sites for authors to join. Many of these are niche sites that will be perfect for the book you wrote. For example, if you wrote a gardening book, then it makes sense for you to look for social networking sites devoted to gardening.

Once you decide to create a social networking presence, here are some things to remember:

  • These sites are created to build relationships, not to advertise on. Don’t spam your readers or you will be shunned. 
  • These sites can help you build a reputation as an expert in your field. Find ways to enter the conversations on them.
  • Keep it professional. While sharing some personal news can help you connect with your followers, too much will turn people off.
  • Give more value than you ask for and people will listen to what you have to say.
  • Don’t get ugly. While some people love to watch a fight, most are turned off by rude bickering. A "troll" is someone who gets his or her kicks from publicly fighting. Don’t fall into their trap by taking their bait.
  • For more great ideas on this topic, read: 
  • Dana Lynn Smith’s post on my blog called, The 7 Deadly Sins of Online Networking
  • Joanna Penn’s post called, Social Networking and Web 2.0 sites for Writers and Authors
  • John Kremer’s list of Social Networking Websites.

I also recommend that you choose one or two social networking sites to start off with. A mistake many authors make is by trying to do too much too quickly and getting overwhelmed. If you want more than an online billboard, then you’ll need to spend a little time developing your presence on these sites. Add more once you can handle the few you start off with. 

Here are some other posts that will help you with your social networking activities:

I hope this post helps you get started on the social networking part of your book marketing plan. There are a lot of resources out there to help. What I’ve shared barely scratches the surface. With a little planning, a little research, and taking things one step at a time, you can build an online presence with social networking sites that definitely bring value to you, your books, and to all the people you connect with. 

This is a reprint from Tony Eldridge‘s Marketing Tips For Authors.

On Leaving Traditional Publishing For EBook Sales Success With LJ Sellers

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It’s exciting to hear about independent authors making a living from their books and today’s interview with L.J. Sellers will inspire you! L.J. actually left her traditional publisher to go the indie route and she explains why in the interview.

 

Podcast: Download (Duration: 34:46 — 20.7MB)

 


In the intro, I talk about how Pentecost went back up the Kindle charts again when I reduced the price to 99 cents for Read an Ebook Week. It seems that a lower price does boost sales and since my aim right now is to get more readers, the 99c price might be the way forward. I explain why the podcast is moving to every two weeks instead of weekly and talk about some of your feedback from my survey. I also talk about my Ebook Publishing mini-course which just launched. It’s a multimedia course behind the scenes on publishing ebooks on the Kindle, iPad, Nook and more.

L.J. Sellers is an award-winning journalist, editor, and mystery/suspense novelist. She has four books in the Detective Jackson series including The Sex Club and two standalone thrillers, all available on Kindle and other online bookstores.

You can watch my video review of The Sex Club here

  • How L.J. started in journalism and editing and then started writing fiction, even though she didn’t think she was creative enough initially. After writing The Sex Club and inventing the character of Detective Jackson, she found a series that readers enjoyed. The latest in the series is Dying for Justice which blends two series characters together.
  • Why L.J. left her publisher and went indie. It was a time of change as she had been laid off. It was either giving up fiction writing or making a commitment to trying to make money with fiction. L.J. had been reading Joe Konrath’s blog and was inspired to do it too. Her publisher owned the Detective Jackson series as well as two books that wouldn’t be published for a while. L.J. asked for the rights back after deciding it was worth it to be independent, despite the stigma of self-publishing in the market. She turned down freelance work for two weeks and hired herself as her own publicist – great idea! Did 10 hours a day, 7 days a week for book promotion which created a spurt in sales for all the books. Within a few months, all 4 books were Top 20 in police procedural Kindle store. By the end of the year, L.J. was a full-time novelist, earning a living with fiction.
  • L.J. invested in her small business, getting cover designs, using editors. Readers liked the stories – it was just about getting the books out there and realizing the profit.
  • Top tips for publishing successfully on the Kindle. Write a great book that will compete well against everything else. It needs to grab attention. The authors with the most success also have quite a few books out there so that is important. It lends credibility that you’re not just a one-time author. A series helps too as people are invested in the characters.
  • Make a commitment to promotion. It needs to be done every day. It’s forum posting, guest posting, commenting, dialog on twitter. Your tagline will contain your book links. It’s indirect but effective as people get to know you. You can pull back on the marketing after you have some books out there. But L.J. believes both marketing and writing are important. We discuss advertising effectiveness for saving time but it costs some money. Kindle Nation is measurable as you can see the sales rise but it’s hard to tell what’s effective.
  • On ebook pricing. It’s a balance and it’s worth following Joe Konrath’s blog as he shares all the math and experiments on pricing. You can play around with the prices. People who are successful have different price points. It’s also about value for the reader and volume does make a difference.
  • On the changing stigma of self-publishing. It’s certainly still around as self-published authors can’t join professional organizations or be on panels at conventions. There are still stratifications. It will be hard for these organizations as same author, same books, same quality of writing but now independent means the author can’t be promoted by these organizations. That will become more complicated as more authors go the indie route. At the end of the day, readers don’t care.
     
  • For new authors coming into the publishing industry, L.J. tries not to advise as some people have a dream of being traditionally published. But for herself, going independent is the best choice.
     
  • On Kindle, the market will decide – either you’re not marketing enough, or the book’s not good enough.

 

You can connect with LJ at her website LJSellers.com as well as on twitter @ljsellers

The Sex Club and other books are available on Amazon and other online booksellers.

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

 

 

 

Information For Innovation

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In this Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) podcast and transcript, the CCC’s Chris Kenneally interviews Martha Anderson about the U.S. Library of Congress’s efforts to collect and classify digital media. The podcast and transcript are provided here in their entirety with the permission of the CCC.

A discussion with Martha Anderson, director of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program for the Library of Congress, recording while attending the annual NFAIS Conference in Philadelphia. Anderson tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally about her efforts to collect all manner of digital content, from Twitter tweets to amateur videos.

“I think the real value of this for the nation ongoing – for each of us as citizens; for each of us as students or researchers; or just people who are interested in life – is the ability to see things come together from different viewpoints, from different kinds of disciplines,” says Anderson of the powerful potential in combining this data in new and unexpected ways. “It will help drive the kind of innovation that we want. We want new thought. We need new ideas about how to solve our problems and that’s where this data comes in.”

 Information For Innovation [14:33m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download
 
You can view or download the complete transcript here.

 

A Writer Muses On Marketing And Sales, Part II

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There’s no right answer to whether you should view writing as a business or not. It’s a personal choice dependent on myriad factors. Knowing the answer, however, allows you to effectively navigate choices you’ll face in marketing and/or selling your work. While you should always control your costs, there’s a big difference between the expense of a print-on-demand book intended for friends and family and the effort you may need to embrace in order to take a work to the competitive retail market.

Inextricably Bound
In the previous post I said that marketing and sales were two ends of the same spectrum. The desire to resolve uncertainties about potential consumer interest is the glue by which marketing and sales are inextricably bound.

Exploring market uncertainties may involve advertising or promotional events or other common marketing and sales strategies. The results of those tests will be measured in pageviews, conversions, purchases or other metrics. As a writer, I think you should constantly remind yourself that marketing and sales are most useful when they are used to answer questions relevant to your personal objectives. Treating marketing and sales as gauges rather than goads means you will be less likely to sink cash into marketing and sales ‘solutions’ that are, at best, speculative, or be led astray by people who will gladly take your money in exchange for promises they can’t possibly keep. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Mr. SEO Evangelist.)  

The Ends of the Spectrum
Imagine you’ve created something purely, unapologetically artistic. You’ve allowed no thought into your mind other than what the final form and expression of your creation should be. You don’t care what anybody else thinks of it and you don’t care if anybody else wants it.

Now imagine putting a sign on your creation that says “For Sale” or “Free”, then tossing it out a window. You don’t look to see where it lands, you don’t look to see if the sign is visible, or if anyone has taken notice of your creation’s arrival in the world.

That’s sales in its purest form. The product has been made available and the intent has been communicated, but only in the most minimal way. If someone does not literally stumble across the item there will be no chance of a transaction taking place.

Now rewind that scenario past even the act of creation. Imagine that you want to create something — anything — that will be readily, eagerly received. Maybe it’s something you want to sell, maybe it’s something you intend to give away, but the one thing you know even before you decide what to make is that you want it to be desired by as many people as possible.

That’s marketing in its purest form. In order to accomplish your goal, at least in theory, note that you will need to have perfect knowledge of what people want, as well as the means to notify every person on the face of the earth. This is the exact opposite of the pure sales example described above. In the sales example you gave no thought to what people wanted and you did nothing to communicate the product’s availability to anyone. In the marketing example all you’re thinking about is what people want and how you can make sure everybody knows it exists.

Admittedly these are the absurd theoretical ends of the marketing-sales continuum. It should also be obvious from these extreme examples that marketing and selling any product involves both intentions in some measure. Starting at the sales end, any effort to meet the needs of the customer involves marketing. Starting at the marketing end, any aspect of a product that will not shaped by consumer interests is something that must be sold.

How authors, and in particular storytellers, can find the right balance between the need to market and the desire to sell will be the focus of the remainder of the posts in this series.

 

This is a reprint from Mark Barrett’s Ditchwalk.

How To Exhibit At Book Industry Trade Shows

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One of the best ways to promote a book to bookstore buyers and librarians is for them to see the book in person at a major industry tradeshow. Read on for information about the most important shows and tips on how to participate on a budget.

There are several large shows in the U.S. geared toward booksellers and librarians, including:

•  Book Expo America (BEA – geared to booksellers)

•  Christian Retail Show (CBA)

•  American Library Association Annual Conference (ALA)

•  American Library Association Midwinter Conference (ALA)

•  Public Libraries Association (PLA – in even-numbered years)

•  Association of College and Research Librarians (ACRL – in odd-numbered years)

•  American Association of School Librarians (AASL)

•  Texas Library Association (TLA – the largest of the state shows)

•  Other state and regional library shows

The major international book shows, such as the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair, focus largely on international book sales and the sale of foreign and translation rights to books. For the national and international shows, nonfiction books probably have a higher chance of success.
 

How to Exhibit at Book Shows

The expense of exhibiting in person at the major shows is usually prohibitive for independent publishers, however it may be beneficial to participate in your state library association show, especially if it’s held nearby and you are able to share a booth with one or two other publishers. Be sure to find out if show management permits booth sharing, and don’t be shy about asking if your book would be a good fit for their audience. For example, I have found that there are a lot of children’s and young adult librarians in attendance at the Texas Library Show.

The most economical way to participate in the major shows is through a co-op booth, where books from a number of different small and independent publishers are displayed together. You pay a fee (typically around $50 to $100) and ship your book to the booth sponsor. They take care of shipping the books to the show, displaying them in the booth, staffing the booth, and providing literature to the visitors. These organizations provide co-op display services at a number of national, international and regional shows:

•  Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

•  Combined Book Exhibit 

•  Jenkins – Global Book Shows  

•  Association Book Exhibit

In addition to library shows, Association Book Exhibit participates in some other professional association conferences. If you’re a nonfiction publisher, check out their list of conferences to see if any match up to your book’s topic.

If a book industry tradeshow is being held near where you live, it’s a great learning experience to attend the show. Contact show management to find out if authors or publishers are allowed to attend.

For tips on how to sell more books at book fairs and tradeshows, see these articles:

The 12 Commandments of Selling Books at Book Fairs, Conventions and Festivals by Terry Cordingley

12 Secrets to Selling More Books at Events by Penny S Sansevieri
 

 

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

Marketing Monday: Platform Building The Tortoise Way

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If you’re a highly sensitive person like me, then you’ll understand how stressful marketing yourself, your product or your business can be. If you aren’t an HSP, then today’s marketing landscape with its hurry, scurry push in social media probably doesn’t bother you. You may, in fact, thrive on the pressure, the excitement. The downside to that is that mistakes can be made at a faster rate and be more challenging to correct.

It’s also true that HSPs will suffer more stress and anxiety if we jump into all of the things we’re told we should be doing before we take the time to fully plan where we want to end up or if we don’t pace ourselves the way we need to — at a slower rate than the rest of the world. Regardless of whether you’re thinking about blogging or using Twitter or Facebook or any other social media, as an HSP it is imperative to think it through and take your time.

I’m currently working my way through Kristen Lamb’s WE ARE NOT ALONE: The Writer’s Guide to Social Media, which I highly recommend, but I have to continuously remind myself that I am not in a race. As Kristen has pointed out in previous blog posts, writing is more of a marathon than a sprint. Building an author platform goes right along with that. I may not be able to fit in 15 minutes each for Facebook, Twitter and MySpace (or whatever other social media outlet I’ve chosen) everyday, but I can certainly spend that much time on one per day, blog at least once per week and still have time left to work on my “masterpiece”.

Jumping into anything before you’re truly ready, or even mostly ready, gives a higher possibility of failure. It also means a greater possibility of losing your passion to write altogether. Still, it’s very difficult to reign in our enthusiasm, especially if we’re newer to the process. As Jody Hedlund says in her post The Pressure To Jump In Too Soon, “It’s hard enough to have patience. Therefore, when we get involved in the cyber writing world, eventually, we might begin to feel left behind or the pressure to keep up with what others are doing—even if we’re right where we need to be.”

Jody suggests 5 things newer writers can do to keep those feelings of pressure to a minimum, which I think really speak to HSPs:

  1. Concentrate on your writing because that is what will sell.
  2. You can put aside the book you’ve written without editing it. Consider it a project to revisit later when you’ve had more experience.
  3. If your story isn’t working or you’ve lost the passion for a project, it’s okay to put it away unfinished.
  4. Take the time to try out other genres. You may find your best writing isn’t in the genre you thought it was.
  5. Most importantly, spend less time thinking about what everyone else is doing and more time being you. As an HSP you know you’re unique. Capitalize on it.

It’s not the popular choice to take the slow lane when trying to forge ahead in a writing career, but for highly sensitive people it can be the best way. What other ways have you discovered to keep your career moving ahead while maintaining the balance you need as an HSP?

 

 

This is a reprint from Virginia Ripple‘s The Road to Writing.

Do Pre-Publication Promotion And Sanity Go Together ?

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So someone writes a book and wants other people to buy it.

The day that book comes out, there will be at least 2,000 other books seeing the light of day.

Hence, all the talk about pre-publication promotion, author platforms, and a writer’s audience.

If you try to do everything that everyone says to promote a book you’ll evaporate in a cloud of angst.

My book will be published in late May and I began pre-publication promotion about a year and a half ago–long before I began writing the book. I took the idea and themes of the book and shared them as widely as I could. It gave me some valuable information on the small percentage of people who would be interested in the book I would write 🙂

There are not as many people interested in a book that tells the story of going from seemingly interminable war to an enduring and noble peace as there are folks who would rather escape reality with a good vampire story.

I’ve got nothing against anyone’s reading appetite but I do need to be clear about my book being potentially hard to sell.

So, for months now (since the book was being written and through the editing processes), I’ve been trying various recommended ways to promote it.

I learned early-on to steer clear of people and sites that were trying to sell me some amazing method they claimed would guarantee  sales of my book when it’s released. I guess I’m just an Eskimo and those folks are trying to sell me snow…

The key approach I’ve learned is called, by some, Relationship Marketing:

Let people get to know you, share your goals and philosophy, give them support in what they’re doing; then, maybe they’ll be interested in your book…

And, even if they don’t want your book, they may know someone who does.

Before I learned some of the finer points of relationship marketing, I was introduced to Seth Godin’s book, Unleashing The Idea Virus (buy it here or download it free here).

Very basically, he talks about finding “hives” (or tribes) of people and unleashing your idea, thereby “infecting” people with it. The best thing that can happen is for the tribe to have a lot of “sneezers”–people who naturally share anything they like as widely as they can.

Relationship marketing contains elements of Godin’s ideas plus social networking.

I tried, as hard as I could, to utilize Facebook and Twitter but I’ve pulled my involvement in both way back; the signal to noise ratio is just too heavily weighted toward “noise” for a book like mine to make much impact.

During the months I was trying to use those tools, I slowly became quite temporarily insane 🙂

Luckily, I also started this blog and worked to build friendships with other writers with blogs…

I’ve also been using the virtual world, Second Life, to build a network of friends who might like my book. You can read more about that here and here.

Now, here I am, a little over two months from book launch, brain-frazzled, but willing to forge ahead and work my way back to sane coherency in my promotion efforts.

I’m also going to try to squeeze in more time on the forums at BestsellerBound 🙂

My methods and mistakes are certainly not a guide for any other writer. Each of us has to evaluate the potential pools of readers and how best to approach them; each must select their own set of tools.

One bit of advice I think could apply across the board is to incorporate relationship-building into your promotion efforts. I think you’ll find the results will last a lot longer 🙂
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Follow the “co-author” of Notes from An Alien, Sena Quaren:
On Facebook
On Twitter
AND, Get A Free Copy of Our Book

Book Launch: Breakdown Of The Pentecost Launch Process

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OK, the dust has settled and it’s time to report back on how the launch of Pentecost went. Many of you have been asking so here it is. I also did a podcast about book launches with the marvelous Zoe Winters if you’d like to listen as well.

I’m baring my soul here, so please do leave a comment with your thoughts on how you think it went! The more we help each other, the more we can rise together.

The Results

Amazon change their rankings every hour and I did sleep during launch week but Pentecost by Joanna Penn made the Amazon bestseller lists – these were the best rankings.

# Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #370 Paid in Kindle Store
* #4 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Fiction
* #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Religious Fiction
#62 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction
#1 in Movers & Shakers on 12 Feb
#93 on Amazon.co.uk in Kindle > Kindle ebooks > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Thrillers.

Total sales were 683 books between 7 -28 February. 133 print and the rest ebooks. It’s not blockbuster sales but it’s my first novel in the religious thriller/action-adventure genre and as my back-list grows, so will the numbers. Most authors start off by selling low numbers and then they grow over time, so I am content with this as the starting position.

The following are the aspects that went into the launch. I hope it helps you with planning your own.

 

Base Author Platform: The Creative Penn Blog.

Without this baseline, I wouldn’t have been able to do most of the following so I consider my blog to be the most important asset I have to market myself and my books. I’ve been blogging here for over two years now, posting an article, video or podcast every two days consistently.

In terms of basic stats, The Creative Penn has just over 5000 subscribers from RSS and email lists and 21,000 uniques per month according to Google Analytics. The Alexa ranking for the US is currently 31,266. The Creative Penn podcast is getting around 2000 downloads per month mostly from the US, China and UK, around 40% of that on iTunes.

I’ve blogged the whole journey of Pentecost – click here for all the posts. You guys have helped me choose the book cover as well as refine the back blurb and have witnessed my growth as a fiction writer. I’ve shared it all and I think that helped sales because some of you like the religious thriller genre and were ready to buy the book when it launched, even just to support me. Thanks so much for your support!

I also sent out review copies to people who were willing to write reviews (no, I didn’t influence what they wrote!). Check them out on Amazon.com. These really help sales so I appreciate every one. Authors really value reviews so that is always a great thing to do if you love a book.

Cost: Blogging takes a whole lot of time but very little setup cost. I also love it and blog as a hobby anyway :) Totally worth every moment I spend on growing this site! (Click here to read about my Blogging for Authors and Writers short course)

Social Networking: Twitter and Facebook

Twitter is my main social network and I love it! I’m very active on it @thecreativepenn and have set out my principles here before. The aim is always to be useful and so I have spent the last two years tweeting links about writing, publishing and book marketing as well as networking. This meant that I had a good audience of around 17,000 followers for launch week. I used that network to tweet links to my guest posts as well as rankings and buy now links. The response was excellent during the week with followers telling me rankings overnight in America and being very encouraging. It’s hard to measure tangible results from Twitter but there was definitely a buzz during launch week!

The Creative Penn Facebook page is a growing place where I can interact more freely with people and there are around 1200 fans so far. We have some more in depth conversations and I post almost every day there. (Come and join us!) Again I shared the journey and links to videos, posts and other things but I think this audience overlaps with Twitter and the blog, so it is more of a gathering place than somewhere specific for the launch.

I did setup a Pentecost novel Facebook page which I used more heavily for the launch and also post specifically to re guest posts, interviews and things. It has free chapters and buy now links and currently has 165 fans. I’ll keep this going because I intend to continue marketing the book and search on Facebook is increasing.

Cost: $0 but a lot of time! Again, I find so many benefits from twitter especially, I think it is absolutely worth the time investment.

Book Trailer

I personally think book trailers are awesome. They give an overview of the book in one minute and you know whether you’re interested. I have bought books based on trailers and I think they will only get more popular in 2011 and onwards as video search grows. Also, if you get into video now, you’re still ahead of the pack. Google “thriller novel” and check the videos. Pentecost and other videos by me on thrillers rank on the first page. Awesome. You can’t do that with text posts anymore!

Cost: This was one of the most expensive items at around AU$200 which was for the high quality video and images. Click here to find out how I made it. Worth it? Some may not think so but I am a believer in the power of video and this is an evergreen business card for the book so yes, I think the cost was worth it.

Blog Tour/ Guest Posting/ Interviews

In launch week, I appeared on 32 other blogs doing text articles, video and audio interviews as well as people posting reviews or Q&A with me. It was a significant amount of work to prepare all this in advance and to write that many good articles as well as continue my own blog, the day job, life etc – you know the score! I wrote for large blogs like Problogger and WriteToDone as well as niche blogs for authors. Click here and scroll down for the full list.

Guest posting is worth it for the incoming links to your blog which boosts Google page rank PLUS/ the personal branding boost that goes with having your name on the bigger blogs.

I was able to appear on most of them because of relationships I’ve built up over the last two years and also because I know how to write a decent blog article (after much studying!) . None of these sites would have accepted a bad post even with an online friendship. If you’re considering guest posting for blogs, you need to know how blog articles work. Definitely subscribe to Copyblogger for tips on this. You can find my guest posting guidelines here.

Cost: Again, $0 but a lot of time and my brain is dead from so many guest posts as well as my own launch material.

It was worth it for the exposure and general personal branding benefits but I don’t think it impacted the launch sales figures significantly. It was more about growing awareness of The Creative Penn and something I will continue to do more of but not for the launch date specifically, more for building profile and presence before a launch. Perhaps the longer blog tour works better. I shall do this differently next time.

Launch Day competition

The point of a competition is to incentivize people to buy the book on a particular day in order to impact the Amazon rankings. I offered a Kindle or access to my Author 2.0 program and personal coaching as well as Amazon vouchers. Clearly my own courses don’t cost me out of pocket but they offer a lot of value.

As it happened, the winners of prize 1 & 2 both took the Author 2.0 program (sells for US$297) over the Kindle and winner 3 took $50 Amazon voucher. To enter the competition, people had to email me the receipt of Pentecost to show they had bought it on 7 Feb and there were 98 entries.

Cost: $50 as the other prizes were intangible. Worth it because of the number of sales in one day which pushed me up the charts although not everyone who bought was in the competition.

Kindle Nation Sponsorship

This is something anyone can do and should absolutely go on your list. Kindle Nation Daily goes out to thousands of mad keen Kindle book buyers and they definitely buy based on recommendations. There are various levels of sponsorship and I went for the Silver package. This mail-out shot me back up the charts to a higher position than the first launch day.

I sold 300 ebooks on that one day so this is definitely the most worthwhile cash investment I could have made. I will be interviewing Steve Windwalker from Kindle Nation in a few months time for the podcast so you will hear more about this. I have also re-booked for Pentecost Sunday when I will do another mini-relaunch. Recommended tactics are to make sure the price is low and you have reviews on Amazon already so people feel confident in purchasing.

Cost: $169.99 DEFINITELY worth it!

What I did well

Champagne to celebrate the launch!

The launch was successful because I’ve spent the last two years learning all about writing, publishing and book marketing and growing an author platform. It’s not Amanda Hocking style numbers but she started off selling hundreds of books per month which soon went up as she added more books to her backlist and got book bloggers involved. So I feel like this is a good start to my fiction career.

I’m also reminded of Seth Godin’s recent brilliant post about the “siren song” of launch day and how it’s more important to have longevity in book sales than a high peak at launch.

In terms of things done well, I’m really glad I used a professional cover and book designer (Joel from TheBookDesigner.com) and also pro editors and pro ebook file converters. I’m proud of the book so that is definitely worth paying for.

Compare this to three years ago when I put “How To Enjoy Your Job” up for sale and sold 10 books to my family in 6 months because no one knew who I was. That disappointment led directly to the creation of this blog and onwards to my first novel. I’m still selling that book and the sales of “From Idea to Book” have also gone up this month with the Pentecost launch.

Maybe you think I should have reached #1 in the Kindle store – it would have been nice, but let’s face it, I haven’t paid my dues to fiction writing yet. Most authors make it somewhere after they have written 3, 4, 5 or more books. So watch this space :)

What I could have done better

Clearly I could have written a vampire romance and that would have sold better than a religious thriller! But that just isn’t me :)

You can watch this video to find out why I wrote Pentecost, or listen to this Thrillercast episode where I’m interviewed by authors David Wood & Alan Baxter.

I absolutely should have launched on the same day as the Kindle Nation sponsorship because the two rankings separately shot me up the charts, but together perhaps I would have made #1 on religious thriller. Having the launch over a week spread the sales out more and meant the rankings didn’t go so high, but Zoe Winters did point out that Amazon thinks you’re gaming them if you peak too high all on one day. Hmm, Amazon algorithms are top secret so we will never know!

As also pointed out above, I would have spread my guest posts over a month or so prior and not saved them all for launch day. This would have meant more readers on the blog in general which may have led to more sales. Hard to tell though!

I have also recently launched MysteryThriller.tv to have a more genre specific place to interact with readers, but it wasn’t in time for the launch. Come and join me if you like mystery/thrillers/action-adventure novels and would like to see some reviews.

I am also becoming more active on Goodreads and Shelfari if you want to friend me there. I realize the importance of interacting with readers which I didn’t focus on prior to launch. I have learned that lesson!

If you’re a book blogger and would like a review copy of Pentecost, please let me know. I didn’t reach out enough to that market before the launch but will be correcting that mistake over the next year.

Next Steps

Clearly marketing a book is an ongoing thing! But it goes on the backburner now as I relaunch some of my Author 2.0 products and start the next novel in the Morgan Sierra/ARKANE series, Prophecy. I have started a signup page for Prophecy here which is already getting sign-ups which means the next launch should be easier!

What do you think about the launch process? Let me know what you agree with and what could have been done better or how you have fared with your book launches.

 

This is a reprint from Joanna Penn‘s The Creative Penn.

Solution for Ugly Photo Ribbon on Facebook Fan Pages

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This article, by Joan Stewart, originally appeared on her The Publicity Hound’s Blog on 3/9/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with her permission.

If you haven’t converted your Facebook Fan Page to the new platform, it will look very different when you log on tomorrow, Thursday, March 10.

The tabs at the top will disappear.  In their place, you’ll see an incredibly ugly photo ribbon that includes the five most recent photos you’ve posted to your wall. Here’s an example I found on someone else’s page:

  


I voluntarily converted to the new platform a few weeks ago and almost dropped dead when I saw the horrible photos that appeared at the top of my own Fan Page. They were as bad as the ones you see above.

Ugh!

One photo showed me standing next to another woman at a networking event.  The photo was so small, you you couldn’t even tell it was me.  Another photo showed a guy with the bottom of his head cut off.
     
    
How I Solved the Problem

I figured out that I could buy attractive, inexpensive stock photos for just a few bucks each, upload them to my Fan Page and then “assign” them to that photo ribbon and actually use them to promote my business without being obnoxious. Here’s my new photo ribbon:
  

 

 

 

 

No more ugly photos!  And another marking tool! (You can download that photo of the cute Twitter “Follow Me” bird and an entire package of similar photos, for free, at ProductiveDreams.)

But I want you to see what it looks like on my Fan Page and how it works:

1.  Go to my Page (the link is below, read these instructions first) and click on the Like button at the top of the page.

Faebook Like button

2.   Click on each photo in that ribbon–directly from the ribbon, not from the arrow that appears on the right side of the first photo after it opens.

3.  Look at the copy I’ve written at the bottom of each photo and click on the links to see where they take you.

Go here now, Like the page, and click on the first photo in the ribbon.

Isn’t that clever?

That’s only one of the new changes, and I just want to warn you not to freak when you see what your page looks like tomorrow.
     
    
More Facebook Help is On the Way

I’ve fielded dozens of questions from Publicity Hounds about what’s new on Facebook.  And I’ve quickly scheduled a webinar for 4 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 15, featuring Facebook extraordinaire Christine Buffaloe and me.

We’ll walk you through the changes and explain how to take advantage of them to actually promote your expertise, collect more fans and do more business.

It’s called “12 More Ways to Avoid Missed Opportunities on the New & Improved Facebook.” If you attended a similar webinar we hosted on this three years ago, DO NOT follow the advice we shared then.

Facebook has undergone so many changes and has so many new features that some of the tips we shared, which were good then, can actually waste your time now.

Take a look at what we’ll be teaching, and register for Tuesday’s webinar.

Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound


I’m a publicity expert, speaker, trainer, consultant and former newspaper editor who will show you how to use traditional and social media to establish credibility, enhance your reputation, position yourself as an expert, sell more products and services and promote a favorite cause or issue. Email me: JStewart@PublicityHound.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Self-Publishing, A Source Of Innovative Thinking And How To Benefit From It

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This post, from Piotr Kowalczyk, originally appeared on his Password Incorrect site on 3/3/11 and is reprinted here in its entirety with his permission.

The presentation you’ll see below was prepared for Ebook Lab Italia conference. I wanted to highlight a prevailing characteristic of self-publishers, not yet discovered and fully utilized by publishers and readers. It’s the innovative thinking.

In digital times, times of over-content, the front line is the attention of a reader. Technology leads to equal chances. Both big publishers and self-publishers use the same on-line tools and services to find the reader and convince him to buy the book. But obviously there is a difference: it’s the money at disposal.

Self-publishers usually don’t have money, so they use all their energy to be creative and innovative. In a presentation there are several examples of innovation in both a self-promotion run by single authors and joint actions taken by self-publishing community:
– 3D1D project (3 days, 1 dispatch) – a draft of a novel written live in under 72 hours,

– Bathrobe Guru – a short story written using Google Wave,

– Indie Call to Action – authors cross-reviewed and promoted their books using social media,

– Friday Flash – a large group of writers share their new flash-fiction stories on Twitter with a tag #FridayFlash.

Truth is that not every self-publisher is as successful as Joanna Penn. She made her debut novel, Pentecost, a bestseller within 24 hours from launch.

What can self-publishers do if royalties are just not enough? Again, they are innovative enough to find other ideas for earning money. You’ll also find the examples in a presentation.

This year self-publishing is on the rise. In January there were as much as 18 self-published books among top 50 bestsellers in Kindle Store. There are big chances that self-publishers will be noticed and get the attention they deserve.

 

Self-publishing – a source of innovative thinking and how to benefit from it on Prezi

 

If you liked this article, please click on a Facebook Like it button. Buy my geek fiction ebooks ($.99 each at Kindle Store) or get a free sample: Password Incorrect and Failure Confirmed. You can subscribe to one of RSS feeds here. Let’s also connect on Twitter.

 

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers: To An Indie Author, What Do They Mean?

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9,093; 2.99; 2,049; 99; 15,570; 440; 7135; 4,882, 10,281; 1517; 94; 54; 18; 89; 229; 28; 18; 5; 10.264; 539; 20,505; 1577…

For a writer, supposedly dominated by my right-brain, I seem to have become obsessed with a left-brained fixation on numbers. On reflection, I think this obsession with numbers may be related to the important role marketing (or selling-depending on how you define it) plays for me as an indie author. L. J. Sellers had an interesting blog post on Publetariat the other day, where she argued that one of the reasons that self-published authors seemed more motivated to get out there and sell their books than traditionally published authors is because the “…steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases.” I tend to agree. That daily Amazon count of books sold (and the fact that I saw a dip yesterday in blog hits and sales) probably has a lot to do with the fact that I am writing this blog post today!

So what are the numbers I am obsessed with and what do they mean? First, in the past fifteen months I have sold 9093 copies of my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, at a selling price of $2.99. I have sold 2049 copies of my short story, Dandy Detects, at the price of 99 cents. The combined income from the sales of my book and short story through January (don’t have February figures yet) has been $15,570. This means that I have made as much in the past year selling my writing as I was making as a semi-retired teacher. It meant that I could retire completely in January so that I could become a full-time writer, a life-long dream.

The next set of numbers deal with trends in my book sales. The first seven months my book was on sale, I sold 440 copies. The next seven months I sold 7,135. It took me those first seven months to get reviews, get my website and blog up and running, learn how to promote the book, and get it put in the right Amazon category. Those seven months taught me patience. The next seven months showed what could happen if all the work you do to promote begins to come together and demonstrated the reality of the ebook revolution. I sold 4882 books in the months of December and January alone, and ninety-six percent of them were from the Kindle store. I was clearly one of the indie authors who benefited from all those new Kindle and iPad owners.

But December and January sales were also an aberration, and in the month of February I sold far fewer books, 1517 in all. So while I averaged 94 books sold a day during January, my average for February was down to 54. Yet, this drop did not bring me back down to pre-holiday levels. The holiday bump in sales (which ebooks in general experience) increased my sales significantly from before the holidays. In November I had average only 18 books a day, so I am now selling three times the number of books than I did before the holidays, and there is no indication that this increased average is going to disappear.

The next set of numbers reveal something about my use of social media. I have 89 facebook friends, 229 twitter followers, and I have posted 28 times on my blog, The Front Parlor (over a fifteen month period). I am clearly no social media maven. But twenty of those posts have been reposted to Publetariat (giving me a much wider audience), and while I only average 18 hits a day on my blog, this is up significantly from my average of 5 hits a day in 2010. In addition, what these numbers do not reveal is the number of times I have commented on other people’s blogs, on Kindle Boards, or yahoo groups, or the number of people who have run across Maids of Misfortune on the various review sites and lists where I worked hard to get it placed.

In the end, however, I believe that the last numbers may have the greatest meaning for me. I finished teaching my last classes in December of 2010. In January, 2011, I carved out nineteen days to write and wrote 10,246 words on my next novel, Uneasy Spirits, averaging 539 words a day. In February, although I only got in 13 writing days, I wrote 20,505 words, averaging 1577 words a day. What does this mean? It means that all that left-brain number-crunching has given me the time and confidence to let my right brain loose, to fly on those wonderful flights of fancy. Those word counts are the best numbers of all.

 

This is a reprint from M. Louisa Locke‘s The Front Parlor.

The Seven Book Marketing Mistakes That Authors Make (Part 1 of 8)

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This post, by Vikram Narayan, originally appeared on the BookBuzzr blog on 1/16/10.

With over 400 books being published everyday, authors have a particularly big challenge when it comes to promoting a book online. As author Gayle Kelley states “The publisher’s job is to get the word out about my book…which they are doing at what I call from “35,000 feet.” That certainly is not close enough to notice the finer details of intense promotion and selling.” This problem is further compounded by the fact that the time taken to consume a book is much greater than many other forms of entertainment and leisure (see the matrix below.)

 

The BookBuzzr Cost-Consumption Quadrant
If you are sent a link to a YouTube video from a friend, you will probably click on it without thinking too much about it. But if you are sent the PDF of a book from your friend, you may not be as eager to open the book. This is because the time required to read a book is too great. Just because you get a free book does not mean that you will read it. But you may glance through a blog article or spend a few minutes on a stand-alone television show such as the Oscar Awards show. As an author of a book you are competing for the time and sustained attention of your reader with all of these other potential activities (along with other books.) Your reader can either choose to read a book or play a video game. Readers are thus forced to be judicious when it comes to choosing the books that they will read.
Given these dynamics, book marketing and book promotion is one of the most crucial activities that an author needs to master. My team and I at BookBuzzr.com, have had the opportunity to review over 3,000 books that have been uploaded on our site. Some of these books leap out at you and grab you. They tempt you to peek behind the cover. Unfortunately, many books simply fail at making a connection with a potential reader. So we spent some time researching and thinking about the biggest mistakes that authors make when it comes to marketing and promoting their books.
The top 7 mistakes that authors make are:

 

  1. No tag line (one line description that is unique to your book) for the book or author (Posted on Jan 19th, 2010).
     
  2. Being a salesperson (that’s right … the more you try to sell, the less you will sell!) (Posted on Jan 21st, 2010).
     
  3. Not promoting the person and the story behind the book (Posted on Jan 26th, 2010).
     
  4. Being stingy with information about your book (Posted on Jan 28th, 2010).
     
  5. Not creating enough repeat mentions about you or your book (Posted on February 1st, 2010).
     
  6. Not creating the perception of demand exceeding supply ( Posted on Feb 4th 2010)
     
  7. Not enough recommendations from mavens for the book ( Posted on Feb 6th 2010)

The next seven posts will elaborate on each of these mistakes.

(Next: Book Marketing Mistake Number 1 – No Tag Line for Book or Author)

(NOTE: The author wishes to thank Chetan Dhruve, Freya and other members of the BookBuzzr team for their inputs into this series of articles.)

Authors As Salespeople

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A question from my ex-publisher stimulated me think about the pay structure in traditional publishing. The question she asked was: Why couldn’t you sell all those books when you were still under contract? Many factors came into play at the same time to quickly boost my e-book sales. Pricing strategy, volume of books, and massive effort all played a part. But one of the biggest issues was motivation, aka incentive.

In the business world, salespeople work for a small base pay and most of their income is in the form of incentive pay and bonuses. The more they sell, they more money they make. To some extent, this is true in traditional publishing, except that after the initial advance, writers (aka salespeople) only get paid every six months. If other businesses functioned that way, they’d have a hard time hiring and keeping salespeople. It’s hard to stay motivated when you wait half a year for a paycheck… then realize your publisher has kept most of it.

The other factor is information. Most salespeople get constant feedback on their performance. They know at any point exactly how their sales numbers are adding up. They can use that information to tailor their techniques and improve their sales. In traditional publishing, sales information comes too late to be effective and is often hard to decipher.

When you self-publish on Amazon, through both the Digital Text Platform and Create Space, after the initial six-week wait, you get paid every month. You also have access to hourly, daily, and monthly sales data. This information is direct feedback that you can use to figure out what promotional techniques work best. It can also function as incentive. When you see the sales bump up, it’s exciting and motivating.

Together, the steady income and the sales data provide a great incentive to spend time everyday blogging, tweeting, posting comments, and writing press releases. Wouldn’t it be interesting if traditional publishing houses followed Amazon’s lead and incentivized their writers to be diligent salespeople as well?

Publishers will say: It’s not possible. It’s too much bookkeeping. We’ve always done it this way. But Amazon knows what it’s doing, and it’s kicking ass in the publishing world.

What do you think? Would you work harder if your publisher gave you more sales data and paid you more often?

L.J. Sellers is the author of the bestselling Detective Jackson mystery/suspense series: The Sex Club, Secrets to Die For, Thrilled to Death, Passions of the Dead, and Dying for Justice.

 

This is a reprint from LJ Sellers‘ blog.

Promote Your Books in the Publications Section on LinkedIn

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In a recent post, I gave instructions for promoting your books on your LinkedIn profile by using the Reading List by Amazon application to post a book cover image and a link to your book’s Amazon sales page.

Another way to get visibility for your books on LinkedIn is to use the new Publications section on the profile. The great thing about this Publications area is that you can list any type of publication, regardless of whether it is available on Amazon. You can even list free ebooks or newsletters.

Just follow these four easy steps to promote your books and other publications on LinkedIn:

1. Click on “Profile” and make sure you are on the “Edit Profile” tab.

2. Go to the “Are You Published” area and click on “Add Sections.”

LinkedIn3

Note: If you don’t see the “Are You Published” box on your profile, look for a similar box that says “Add sections to reflect achievements and experiences on your profile.”

3. On the next screen, click the “Publications” button on the left and then click the “Add to Profile” button.

LinkedIn4

4. Complete the publication description on the next screen, then click the “Add Publication” button.  Remember to include important keywords in your publication descriptions, to help people find your profile and your publications when they search by keyword.

Here is what the finished product looks like on my profile:

LinkedIn6

The book title is hyperlinked to the book sales page on my website. On my LinkedIn profile, the “Publications” section appeared below the “Experience” section, but you can move some of the sections around by dragging and dropping them.

To add additional books, go back into "Edit Profile" mode, scroll down to the "Publications" area, and click on "Add a Publication."

 

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