Sell

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

The Telling Signs of Content Flops, and 6 Ways To Fix Content Marketer’s Worst Nightmare

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This post by Olsy Sorokina originally appeared on the Hootsuite blog in 3/15.

Even the best-love brands have their haters—that’s unavoidable. So for marketers, it’s often better to focus on being memorable and stand out from the crowd. Think of all those commercial jingles that just won’t get out of your head, or anticipation of products associated with the coming of a new season (Pumpkin Spice Latte, I’m looking at you). Brands that achieve this do so by straying off the beaten path. Marketing guru Seth Godin calls this “finding your purple cow,” a term inspired by a short 19th century nonsense poem and used by Godin to describe being remarkable, and succeeding in advertising by thinking outside the box.

Should you be thinking about finding your own brand’s purple cow? Finding that truly unique way of telling your story means taking risks and surprising your audience. That means the first step down the path to a more memorable bovine brand is to figure out if you’ve been boring your followers.

 

3 warning signs that you might be boring your followers:

1. Your Twitter engagement rate is low

Once Twitter has rolled out their analytics tools to all users, determining how well your messaging is performing on the microblogging network is easier than ever. Perhaps the most telling of all metrics available to users is the engagement rate, a number calculated based on the number of impressions (i.e. how many people saw the Tweet) and the number of engagements (link clicks, favorites, retweets, etc.) with your Tweets. Obviously, the higher the engagement rate, the better you’re doing. We experienced this ourselves when we doubled our Twitter engagement rate in two months.

 

Read the full post, which includes two more signs you may be boring your readers and six tips for fixing boring content, on the Hootsuite blog.

 

Kindle Scout

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This post by Polly Iyer originally appeared on The Blood-Red Pencil on 5/20/15.

My book, Indiscretion, has been on Amazon’s Kindle Scout program for an entire week as of today. It’s been on and off the “Hot and Trending” list, which I guess is natural. This is measured by how many people read the sample and nominate my book during a thirty-day period. I’ve done some promotion, but there’s a fine line between promo and overkill. I try to be cognizant of where that line is. That said, self-promotion has never been an easy fit for me.

So what is Kindle Scout, you ask? This is from the Kindle Scout website:

“Kindle Scout is reader-powered publishing for new, never-before-published books. It’s a place where readers help decide if a book gets published. Selected books will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50% eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing.”

Bloggers have debated the pros and cons of the program. From my point of view, the answer depends on where you are in the publishing world. I’ve self-published seven books with Amazon. The difference with Kindle Scout, besides the nice advance, unheard of for an indie writer, is the strength of Amazon’s marketing that I wouldn’t get otherwise.

 

Read the full post on The Blood-Red Pencil.

 

How to Price Your Work on Amazon

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This post originally appeared on Writer’s Circle.

So you’ve decided to publish a book on Amazon (and hopefully read our helpful guide for doing so). Before those pages hit the presses – or the Kindles – you’ll need to price your work on Amazon, and we’re here with a bit of advice on finding the right price for your readers.

Think about your motive. This is a great tip from Publishers Weekly, which advises writers to think about the purpose of their book: readership or revenue? Ideally, of course, you could get both, but a lower price will likely earn more readers (e.g. people will be more willing to try a new e-book author when the price tag is only a buck or two) while a higher price could earn you more revenue. The latter is true, of course, especially if you already have an established fan base – but many new authors prefer to price on the lower side to attract new readers.

Consider paperback vs. e-book. E-books should not cost as much as paperback books, for two reasons: Firstly because fewer resources are needed to publish the work, and secondly because research shows that expensive e-books don’t sell well, according to Mill City Press. While paperbacks can easily find success priced above $10, e-books do best when priced between $2.99 and $9.99 – in fact, PBS says $3.99 seems to do really well.

 

Read the full post on Writer’s Circle.

 

Do's And Don'ts On Writing A Book Blurb

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This post by Nicholas C. Rossis originally appeared on his site on 5/2/15.

The inspiration for this post came from a little gem I found on the Passive Guy’s Newsletter (if you aren’t already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? It’s free!). After some heavy editing, it ended up as this post.

The original post came from the Self Publishing Review, if you wish to see it in its entirety.

 

Writing a Book Blurb
By far, the weakest part of many self-published books is the synopsis*. Writing a decent blurb is an art form totally separate from writing a book.

Authors, myself included, often feel this is their least favorite part of the process. It can make you feel icky writing superlatives about your own book. At the same time, too many superlatives can literally be icky (“A work of genius” comes to mind). A good blurb needs to strike a balance between being informative, but not too informative, salesy, but not too salesy, while somehow seducing a stranger into spending money. It’s difficult, to say the least.

That said, there are some very common errors that show up time and again, and are pretty easy to change.

 

Read the full post on The Power of Six.

 

Welcome to the Shark Tank

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This post by Rachelle Gardner originally appeared on Books & Such on 5/5/15.

If you’re a writer trying to wrap your mind around the business end of publishing, I hope you’re watching ABC’s Shark Tank.  The show has nothing to do with publishing. But it has everything to do with understanding exactly what you’re doing when you put your query or proposal in front of an agent, editor or publishing committee. You’re going into the shark tank.

The program features venture capitalists looking for businesses in which to invest. The contestants are entrepreneurs with small businesses needing capital. Each contestant stands before the “sharks,” pitches their business, specifies the amount of money they’re asking for, and what percentage of their business they’re offering for that investment. So a guy might ask for $65,000 in return for a 15% stake in in his business; or $150,000 in return for a 30% portion of the company. The sharks get to decide whether they want to invest in the business, and they’re free to negotiate any way they want.

I love this stuff! I’m constantly noticing all the ways the whole scenario resembles publishing. When you’re trying to take your writing out of the personal realm of art and into the public realm of commerce, you’re just like these entrepreneurs asking for others to invest in them.

You’re asking a publisher to invest in you.

 

Read the full post on Books & Such.

 

Everything You Need to Know to Set Up Your First Twitter Chat

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This post by Matt Diederichs originally appeared on the Hootsuite blog in 4/15.

You see the hashtags on Twitter every week: #SBizHour, #MediaChat, #CMGRHangout, and on and on. These tags refer to Twitter chats, one of the best examples of community building on Twitter. Using a shared hashtag, users meet at a pre-determined time to discuss issues of community relevance. These chats generate tons of conversation, and build deep connections between the people partaking and brands who host.

That kind of engagement has benefits for brands and personal brands alike. A successful Twitter chat community builds advocacy, loyalty, and community with participants. You’ll grow the social following of your accounts, generate valuable discussions and feedback, and show thought leadership with an outspoken audience.

Could you host your own Twitter chat? It’s not as simple as you’d think, but we’ve got your back. Here’s your step-by-step guide:

 

Before Your Chat

As tempting as it is to just jump in, you’ll need to build a plan. We recommend you consider well thought-out answers to the following questions:

Why am I hosting a chat?

 

Read the full post on the Hootsuite blog.

 

Smashwords Introduces New Metadata Option for Box Sets

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This post by Mark Coker originally appeared on the Smashwords blog on 5/11/15.

Smashwords today released an enhanced metadata option for box sets. The new option will pave the way for us to make box sets more discoverable in the Smashwords store, and longer term (and more importantly), it will enable better merchandising at our retailers.

But one step at a time. First we need to collect the metadata, and that’s where you come in.

Smashwords authors and publishers are already well-versed in metadata. Metadata is data about your book. Metadata is comprised of things like book category, book title, author name, book description and price. Metadata makes it easier for readers to discover your book by screaming, “Look here! I’m what you’re looking for!”

Ebook box sets are a relatively new phenomena, and indie authors are leading the charge. Until now, metadata for box sets has been lacking. Most obviously, a box set is treated like an ordinary ebook, when in fact it’s a bundle of books either from a single author or multiple authors. Retailers have shown increased interest in box sets over the last two years, but the process of identifying them is still manual. Retailers who want to promote them, and customers who want to read them, must perform manual searches on the phrase “box set” and hope the author placed the words in their title or book description. That’s kludgey. There should be a special designation for box sets so retailers have the option to create custom virtual shelves to promote them, and so customers can easily find them.
 

Read the full post on the Smashwords blog.

 

Crowdfunding, A Passion For Print And WB Yeats With Orna Ross

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This post by Joanna Penn originally appeared on her The Creative Penn on 5/10/15.

Crowdfunding is becoming ever more popular with creatives to raise fund for various projects. But when is it a good idea for an author?

In this interview with author, poet and creative coach, Orna Ross, we go into her love of WB Yeats and how this passion has turned into her own print project, as well as tips for other authors considering crowdfunding. Orna is also the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, so she is very knowledgeable about the current state of publishing.

 

Watch the video or read the full transcript on The Creative Penn.

 

Author Websites, Blogs, and Book Sales Pages

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This post by Joel Friedlander originally appeared on his The Book Designer on 5/11/15.

Last week Stephanie Chandler invited me to do a presentation for the Nonfiction Writer’s Conference, an online event featuring lots of speakers on topics of interest to self-publishers and nonfiction authors.

The topic was “Essentials for Author Websites, Blogs and Book Sales Pages” and it was designed as a 40 minute teleconference presentation, so no visuals or slides like we would rely on in a webinar or live presentation.

(Stephanie also interviewed me last month for the Nonfiction Writer’s Association blog, and I got pretty personal in the interview. You can read it here: Expert Interview: Joel Friedlander)

For the last several years I’ve been giving talks, keynotes, and presentations to a variety of book industry groups and, to be honest, it’s one of the more enjoyable parts of my own platform building efforts.

But that’s a subject for another day.

Today I wanted to share with you the some of what went into this presentation, because thinking through your online strategy is never a bad idea. Because I use mind mapping to prepare many of my presentations, I’ll use the mind map for this event to illustrate the main points I wanted people to walk away with.

 

Read the full post on The Book Designer.

 

May 2015 Author Earnings Report

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This post originally appeared on Author Earnings in 5/15.

Welcome to the May 2015 Author Earnings Report. This is our sixth quarterly look at Amazon’s ebook sales, with data taken on over 200,000 bestselling ebooks. With each report over the past year and a half, we have come to see great consistency in our results, but there is always something new that surprises us. Often, it’s something we weren’t expecting, like the massive shadow industry of ISBN-less ebooks being sold, or the effect Kindle Unlimited has on title visibility. This time, we went into our report curious about one thing in particular. But we were still not prepared for what we found.

If you’ve been shopping for ebooks on Amazon lately, you may have seen this new addition to many ebook product pages:

Nelson Book

This announcement can be found on ebooks from several of the largest publishers, and it appears to serve as both an apology from Amazon and also a shifting of the blame for high ebook prices. Amazon has stated in the past that they believe ebooks should not cost more than $9.99. Self-published authors are no doubt familiar with this price constraint, as their royalties are cut in half if they price higher than this amount. But after a contentious and drawn-out negotiation with Hachette Book Group last year, Amazon relinquished the ability to discount ebooks with several publishers. Prices with these publishers are now set firmly by them.

 

Read the full report on Author Earnings.

 

Facebook Ads: Should Indie Authors Buy Them?

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This post by Frances Caballo originally appeared on his The Book Designer on 5/14/14.

If you have a Facebook page, have you noticed that fewer of your posts are reaching your fans’ news feeds?

You’re not alone. As Facebook moves further in the direction of monetization, and as it adjusts its algorithm, fewer of our Facebook page posts are reaching our fans.

Facebook’s reasons for the recent improvements make sense to some extent. A brand page (also called a company page or an author page) you liked when you were 37 may not be a page you have any interest in when you’re 42. Similarly, a friend you were close with four years ago could have moved away and may no longer be in your tight social sphere.

Facebook whittles your news feed to reflect your changing preferences based on your actions in the form of Likes, Shares and Comments.

According to a February 2014 Pew Research Center report, half of all adult Facebook users have more than 200 friends in their network. Users who are 29 and younger have even more.

In addition, last year AllFacebook reported that the average user had liked 40 pages but that figure is higher for residents of the United States, where the average user likes an estimated 70 pages.

In light of these numbers, Facebook assumes that the average user doesn’t have sufficient time to review every post from every friend and author page they’ve liked in the past several years. So the network steps in and determines which friends you’d prefer to hear from, based on your most frequent interactions, and decides which of your own posts from your Facebook page will appear in your fans’ news feeds.

In other words, if all of your fans don’t engage with your page on a regular basis, fewer and fewer over time will see any of your carefully written Facebook posts.

 

Research Proves that Organic Reach on Facebook Is Plummeting

 

Read the full post on The Book Designer.

 

Author Branding: How to Get Started

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This post by Janine Savage originally appeared on Write Divas on 5/4/15.

We’ve all heard the advice to create your brand as an author, but what exactly is author branding? Being an author is so much more than just the books your write. It’s about your image in the real world and online in the cyber world. The Internet has made it possible for people to connect with people around the world and to create an online persona, all from the comfort of our homes. As an author, it’s a good idea to consider what your image or “brand” as an author is. But first you’ll need a few things to get your author branding started.

 

It’s All in the Name

Have you decided on a pen name or do you want to publish under your real name? The arguments for and against for each path are valid. What it boils down to is which path is right for you.

Pen Names: You keep your private life somewhat private. If your real name is hard to pronounce or unusually long, a pen name might be right for you. If you write for more than one genre, say steampunk, Viking romance and horror, the use of pen names makes it easier for your fans who read your steampunk books to follow you and not get mixed up with your books in the horror and romance genres. Some notable examples of authors who use pen names for different genres are Eleanor Robertson, who writes as Nora Roberts (romance) and J.D. Robb (romantic suspense), and Joanne Rowling, who writes as J.K. Rowling (fantasy) and Robert Galbraith (crime fiction).

Real Name:

 

Read the full post on Write Divas.

 

How Keywords, Machine Learning Unlock Book Discovery

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This post by Jim Bryant originally appeared on Publishing Perspectives on 5/4/15.

Jim Bryant of Trajectory.com argues that advancements natural language machine processing leading to keywords may unlock a revolution in book discovery.

Leading publishing industry analysts started highlighting the increasing urgency of developing better “book discovery” practices more than ten years ago. Several years ago, this issue was highlighted as one of the biggest challenges facing the future of the publishing industry. Today, no one in the publishing world is seriously debating the relevancy of “book discovery.”

The challenge of “book discovery” is highlighted by the well-accepted facts surrounding the notion that never before in history have so many books been available to so many readers.

– Hundreds of thousands of backlist titles are being released by publishers.

– Hundreds of thousands of self-published books are being offered by ebook retailers and self-publishing platforms.

– Hundreds of thousands of titles from foreign publishers are making their way into domestic supply chains.

 

Read the full post, which includes informative charts and graphics, on Publishing Perspectives.

 

Which Authors Do Subscription Services Benefit?

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This post by Dana Beth Weinberg originally appeared on Digital Book World (DBW) on 4/28/15.

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

Subscriptions services may yet turn out to be a next game-changer in publishing, but for the moment that market is in a state of flux and expansion.

Oyster recently added an ebookstore loaded with Big Five titles, a move that could in turn bolster the subscription model, potentially attracting new readers and making the brand more competitive with Amazon. Scribd is steadily bulking up on audiobooks. Two major publishers added ebooks to new the multimedia subscription platform Playster in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to grow Kindle Unlimited yet continues to pay participating indie authors at rates similar to those that spurred grumblings late last year.

What do these services mean for authors? Since, on the one hand, ebook subscription providers typically pay authors less than an individual book sale, they could ultimately undercut authors’ earnings in a market where so few are “making it.” But on the other, subscription services may encourage readers to take risks on new authors, aiding certain authors’ discoverability over the longer term.

 

Read the full post on DBW.

 

Dip Happens—What Do We DO When Nothing Seems To Change?

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on her blog on 4/27/15.

Often I blog about things I am going through. Sometimes just writing things down, sketching out a plan of action, recalibrating MY perspective helps a lot. Hey, if nothing else, I have a blog post 😀 .

Lately, I’ve been in what Seth Godin calls…The DIP. In fact, I am even talking about The Dip over on my Dojo Diva blog for those who want more (and also a better chance of winning my 20 Page Death Star Critique).

*dangles carrot*

What is THE DIP? The Dip is that span of suck before the breakthrough. The Dip is where character develops, where dreams grow, where WE grow. Bad news is this is also the place where most people give up.

I’d love to say I’ve never given up when faced with a particularly tenacious Dip, but I am a terrible liar. Dips are tough. Why are Dips so hard?

Dips Come Out of Nowhere

We are zooming along and then it is as if an invisible force field comes out of nowhere. Maybe you started eating healthy and were losing weight steadily. Then…nothing. Another week? Nothing. Another week, I gained three pounds? WTH? And another and another and pretty soon, why bother?

 

Read the full post on Kristen Lamb’s blog.