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

8 Common Facebook Mistakes To Avoid

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This post by Donné Torr originally appeared on the Hootsuite blog. It’s targeted to social media managers, so if you’re an author acting as your own “social media manager” this will be valuable information.

Among the many tasks social media managers face, one is learning how to navigate the ever-changing world of Facebook. Previously on our blog, we discussed the most common social media strategy mistakes. Today, we want to focus on specific Facebook mistakes social media managers need to avoid.

To put it plainly, there is much anxiety surrounding the do’s and don’ts of social media, especially when it comes to what social media managers should do. In light of the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm, the following are 8 common mistakes that can be avoided on Facebook.

 

8 Facebook mistakes social media managers should avoid

Overly promotional posts

According to the recent changes with Facebook, they will be reducing the number of overly promotional page posts in users’ News Feeds. This is as a result of an ongoing survey with Facebook users, in which the most common feedback was that people wanted to see more stories from friends and Pages they care about, and less promotional content. An overly promotional post is one that solely pushes people to buy a product or install an app, enter promotions and sweepstakes with no real context, or reuse the same content from ads. The best way to avoid creating overly promotional posts is to leave product promotion to Facebook Advertising.

Example of this type of post:

 

Read the full post on the Hootsuite blog.

 

Authors Vs The Marketing Rabbit Hole

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This post by Deborah Riley-Magnus originally appeared on SavvyAuthors on 4/21/15.

Authors are as innocent as Alice when it comes to marketing, but nowhere near as fearless to take the plunge. What’s really down that rabbit hole? It’s called the MARKETING rabbit hole so it must be dark, terrifying, and worse yet, ineffective. After all, everyone knows that marketing is hard to do, takes way too much time, and just plain doesn’t work. You’ve already tried everything, jumped on all those cool promotional ideas your author friends are doing. You’ve tweeted like crazy, held Facebook launch parties, and guest blogged on all your best author friend’s blogs. You’ve purchased book markers and some really cool swag, and participated every time your author friends pulled together for a live or online event. Still not happy with your bottom line results? No? So that’s proof positive that marketing doesn’t work, right?

Nope. Not really.

See, the problem isn’t that you’re not trying hard to market; the problem is that you’re not marketing SPECIFICALLY for your book alone. Really taking that leap down the Marketing Rabbit Hole isn’t about just doing what everyone else is doing, and it certainly isn’t about doing it with other authors—your competition. A true trip down the Marketing Rabbit Hole is a personal adventure that focuses on your book and nothing else. It’s a different way of looking at marketing, and a clearer way of understanding what makes marketing really work for you.

 

Read the full post on SavvyAuthors.

 

Social Media Without Draining Your Day

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This post by W. Terry Whalin originally appeared on TWJ Magazine.

How in the world, have I tweeted more than seventeen thousand times? Yes, that is an accurate accounting of my activity on Twitter.

First, I was an early adapter and have been on twitter for seven or eight years. While there are times when I have not blogged or put out my newsletter or other ways to touch my audience, there are very few days that I haven’t sent out consistent information about publishing on twitter.

The result is that I’ve built a large following on this platform. Publishers are looking for authors who have a large and on-going social media presence. I’ve often written about platform-building ideas and even have a free Ebook on this topic (use the link to get it immediately).

Social media doesn’t have to consume your day and hours of time. It can—but doesn’t have to do so. It does not drain my day and I’m active in the social media area. For example, I have over 130,000 twitter followers. I want to give you several tools and insights of what I’m doing to consistently have a growing social media presence yet I do it with focused effort.

 

Read the full post on TWJ Magazine.

 

Setting Up A Book Tour

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This post by Trish Nicholson originally appeared on The Writer’s ABC Checklist on 4/16/15.

A book tour is an excellent way for you to increase the exposure of your book, to meet potential readers, and to make many useful contacts for the future. It can also be fun. Even if you have a publisher, they rarely offer their authors book tours these days, so here are some tips from my own recent experience to help you create your own book tour whether you write fiction or non-fiction.

Where to tour: it’s not necessary to jet around the world – with a little imagination a successful tour can be arranged within your own region. It’s a good idea to boost your confidence by beginning the tour locally where you are already known, and then extend your reach to new opportunities beyond your comfort zone.

When to start: a book tour is not something you can do entirely alone. You need co-operation from others to host events, or provide venues and local publicity. So begin planning well in advance: eight to twelve months beforehand is not too soon to start looking for potential hosts and ‘partners’. Many bookshops, festivals and interest groups set their programmes a year ahead.

 

Read the full post on The Writer’s ABC Checklist.

 

The 10 Commandments Of Authorial Self-Promotion

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 4/15/15. Note that it contains strong language.

*wheezes while stumbling down a mountain carrying ten stone tablets*

*dumps stone tablets on the ground and most of them break*

*coughs for like, 40 minutes*

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. WHY DO PEOPLE WRITE COMMANDMENTS ON STONE TABLETS. IF GOD’S SUPPOSED TO BE ALL POWERFUL WHY DIDN’T HE JUST HAND ME AN IPAD. DOES HE HAVE A THING AGAINST APPLE? GOD’S ONE OF THOSE STRIDENT ANTI-MAC PEOPLE ISN’T HE. SO HEAVY. IT HURTS. IT HURTS SO BAD.

Ahem. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Hi!

It is time to speak about the sticky subject of self-promotion. You’re a writer. You’ve written a book and somebody — you, a big publisher, a small publisher, some spider-eating alley hobo — has published it. And now you want to know how you promote the book so that the world can fling money at your face in order to greedily consume your unrefined genius. But it’s not easy. You don’t know what works. What makes sense. You don’t want to just stand on a street corner barking at passersby and hitting children with your book. But you also recognize that you’re just one little person, not some massive beast of marketing and advertising, hissing gouts of pixelated steam and vacuuming up potential buyers into the hypno-chamber that is your belly.

What do you do? How far can you go? What should you say?

Thus, I bring you these ten tablets.

Ten commandments about self-promotion for authors. In a later post I’ll get into the larger practicalities of self-promotion — what seems to work for me, what seems to do poop-squat for me — but for now, we’re going to cover the overall basics.

Let us begin.

 

Thou Shalt Throw Pebbles

The self-promotional reach of a single author is not very far.

Big publishers and companies have giant cannons.

You, however, have a satchel of pebbles.

A publisher will ideally dp outreach that puts your book in front of various folks within the distribution process — book buyers, librarians, the secret tastemaker cabal that operates out of a warehouse in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood. You, as lone author, do not have that effect.

The best you can do is pick up one of your pebbles and throw it.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

Top 105 Blogs and Websites for Writers and Authors

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This post by Hiten Vyas originally appeared on e-Books India on 4/13/15.

Are you a creative writer looking to improve your skills? Maybe you’re a beginner novelist looking to pen your first book. You might be a blogger wondering how to make more money from your blog. Whatever type of writer you are, the Internet has some wonderful blogs and websites that provide advice, tips and inspiration to help you. This article takes a look at 105 of the top blogs and websites for writers and authors.

The blogs and websites have been categorized using the following headings: (1) Writing, Publishing, Sales and Marketing, (2) Freelancing, (3) News, Industry Analysis and Advice, (4) Blogging and (5) Writing Platforms and Communities.

There are of course more blogs and websites relevant to writers and authors. If you think you’re blog or website should also be included in this list, please do comment in the comments box at the end of the article and let us know about you, your blog, what it is about and how it helps writers and authors.

Without any further delay, let’s move onto the 105 blogs and websites!

Writing, Publishing, Sales and Marketing

1. Sameer Kamat

Sameer Kamat is a bestselling author of two books; namely Business Doctors, and Beyond the MBA Hype. He also has a website, which has a list of great articles that Sameer has written based upon his own experiences of writing books and ebooks. You can find advice on both self-publishing and on the traditional route. Many of the articles Sameer has written are geared to helping writers get published in India. These in particular, are great reads.

2. InstaScribe Blog

InstaScribe is an online app designed to help authors create professional looking ebooks. There is also the InstaScribe blog, which provides articles about ebook publishing, writing in different languages, and latest news from across the world in the areas of books and publishing. The InstaScribe blog also has some eye catching visuals in the form of inspiring quotes, and infographics in the areas of writing, and publishing ebooks. You can also read an interview with the founder of InstaScribe, Jaya Jha here.

3. Writers Helping Writers

The Writers Helping Writers blog is run by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. The blog is packed with great articles that help you to improve your fiction writing. In particular, articles at the blog about how to create different types of characters and how to give them various personalities, traits and skills are extremely useful. Interested authors can also submit guest posts to Writers Helping Writers.

4. Nathan Bransford

Nathan Bransford is a former literary agent and author. He also runs an extremely popular blog. He writes articles giving authors advice on how to improve their writing craft, on editing, formatting and get published; both through self-publishing and traditional publishing (and its associated requirements, writing query letters, synopses, finding literary agents etc.).

5. Write to Done

Mary Jaksch is Editor-in-Chief of Write to Done (WTD), which is a huge resource for writers whose archives date back to 2008. The website is updated regularly and contains expert opinions and actionable advice on all aspects of writing including blog writing, writing sales copy, freelancing, writing novels and non-fiction. If you happen to be new to WTD, the blog is well worth a visit.

6. The Procrastiwriter

The Procrastiwriter provides articles that share writing tips to help you to improve your writing, on motivation to inspire you to write, and on how to deal with self-doubt of your ability to be a successful writer. The blog is run by Shanan Haislip.

 

Read the full post on e-Books India.

 

7 Lessons Learned from Publishing 300 Guest Posts

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This post by Neil Patel originally appeared on Quicksprout on 4/13/15.

Over the last three years, I’ve ramped up the amount of content I create. Not only do I blog three times a week on Quick Sprout and a few times a week on my personal blog, but I also write guest posts all over the web.

In fact, currently I publish slightly more than 100 guest posts a year. As of today, I have officially published my 300th guest post.

My experience writing guest posts taught me a lot. And I can tell you that if you want to generate a positive ROI from guest-posting, you can actually do so as long as you learn from my mistakes.

Here’s what I learned from writing 300 guest posts:

Lesson #1: Go after a broad audience
Your blog already attracts a narrow audience. If it doesn’t, you should reconsider the type of content you are publishing. By going too broad on your blog, you’ll end up gaining visitors, but no conversions.

I learned this the hard way by attracting thousands of visitors to my corporate blog who wouldn’t convert into customers.

But going after too narrow an audience with your guest posts is a terrible idea. Why? There usually aren’t a ton of niche places you can go to guest-post. And if you find a handful of them, they probably won’t have the traffic volume you need.

 

Read the full post on Quicksprout.

 

My Haters, Myself: Mastering The Art Of The Haterbrag.

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This post by Amanda Hess originally appeared on Slate on 4/13/15.

Jennifer Weiner has sold millions of books, spent a combined five years on the New York Times best-seller list, and amassed 109,000 followers on Twitter. Last week, she descended into the basement of New York City’s Ace Hotel to share a handful of her self-promotional secrets. The talk, sponsored by the PEN American Center, was titled “How to Be Authentic on Social Media,” but its true subject was how to promote your book on the Internet without making everyone hate you. Weiner advised authors to tweet about the things they love (for Weiner, it’s the reality TV romance competition The Bachelor); to tweet about the authors they love (Roxane Gay and Gary Shteyngart are two of her favorites); and to tweet about their own projects “sparingly, carefully, modestly, thoughtfully, and absolutely as little as possible”—and let their now-loyal crew of social media followers spread the word. The talk was a handy primer, charmingly delivered. But it referred only obliquely to Weiner’s true social-media innovation: Co-opting her haters into her personal brand.

 

Read the full post on Slate.

 

How to Have a Successful Book Launch

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This post originally appeared on ChatEbooks on 4/7/15.

Finishing your book, from writing to editing, is not the end of your journey.  Holding a book launch is one great way to promote your book. Here are some tips on how to organize a successful book launch.

After spending countless hours writing, editing, and creating a book, it can be a rewarding experience for an author to celebrate their hard work, and can also be beneficial to have a book launch event to market and promote their book. As an author, this event gives you an opportunity to celebrate all the weeks, months, or even years that led to the publication of your book. If not organized and managed properly, however, book launch events can end up being extremely expensive and a waste of time. If done right, these events can provide crucial momentum. There are many tips for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book launch.

One tip for you to take into consideration to ensure a successful book event is to research potential venues. It can be beneficial to actually visit these venues in person. Potential venues should be based on who you wish to invite to the event and what goals you desire to accomplish by hosting the event. It can be helpful to host a book event at a retail location. Bookstores and other retailers will be content if you can bring in a lot of people to their store, and they are also usually willing to handle the sales. Another beneficial strategy is to locate a retailer that has connections to the book. For instance, if your book is about outdoor activities, a local recreational equipment store is an excellent venue to host the event.

 

Read the full post on ChatEbooks.

 

Ebooks For Libraries

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This post by JA Konrath originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing site on 3/31/15.

TL;DR

I want to help authors get their ebooks into libraries.

I want to help libraries acquire indie ebooks.

To do this, I started a business called EAF – EbooksAreForever.com.

I want to sell your ebooks to libraries.

 

What’s going on with libraries and ebooks?

There are 120,000 libraries in the US. These libraries, and their patrons, are eager for popular ebooks. Many libraries have a budget they must spend, or they risk having that budget cut.

Currently, libraries have no allies in the ebook market. They aren’t happy with the restrictions and costs of the current leader in supplying libraries with ebook content, Overdrive. Through Overdrive, many publishers charge high prices for ebooks, some higher than $80 a title. They also require yearly license renewals, and may force libraries to re-buy licenses after a certain arbitrary number of borrows.

Just one example of the perils of this approach for America’s libraries is that a library must pay for extensions of time-limited licenses of old ebooks and purchases of licenses for new ones. All kinds of sustainability and predictability issues arise. And that’s true even if the budget remains the same, rather than declining, as many have in recent years. It will be harder than ever for libraries to grow their collection, whether the licenses are time-limited or come with limits on the number of times a library can loan a book.

So libraries are spending a fortune and don’t even own the content they’re spending that fortune on. In many cases, if they stop paying the fees, they lose the content they bought. This has been dubbed “digital decay”, and it’s a money grab, pure and simple.

What’s going on with indie authors and ebooks?

Some indies are on Overdrive and 3M. I’ve been on Overdrive for a few years. My last quarterly check was about $60, and I have a large catalog. This is small money, not just for me, but for any writer. And I was fortunate enough to have been invited into Overdrive. Many authors are not.

The vast majority of libraries don’t have access to many of the ebooks that readers are seeking. The latest AuthorEarnings.com report showed that 33% of all ebooks sold on Amazon are from indie authors. Libraries are missing out on 1/3 of available titles, because they have no way easy way to acquire them.

 

Read the full post on A Newbie’s Guide To Publishing.

 

The Author Platform – You Definitely Need One and It Should Have Been Started Yesterday

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This post by Karen Cioffi originally appeared on The Working Writer’s Club on 3/28/15.

Did you ever hear the expression, “a stitch in time saves nine?”

Whether you’re an author or freelance writer, that’s how you need to think of your writing platform. Get it started first, as the foundation of your business. It’s much more effective than trying to play catch-up.

If you’re an author, your platform needs to be in place before you hit the submissions road (if you’re going the traditional route). And, it certainly needs to be in place before you self-publish.

If you’re a freelance writer, you need to have an effective website and marketing strategies in place before you offer your services online.

To reinforce this thought, let me tell you about my father. He was in construction – he built homes. The first thing that gets done, after the blueprints are drawn, is digging for the foundation. Then the foundation is created. Then the house is built on top of the foundation.

It’s the same when building an online platform. Getting a website is the digging part; the added content and optimization of the website is the foundation of your platform.

 

Read the full post on The Working Writer’s Club.

 

5 Cheeky Tips For Bloggers Embarking On The A-Z Challenge

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This post by Tara Sparling originally appeared on her blog on 3/31/15.

April is a month when thousands of bloggers embark on what’s called the The A-Z Challenge: where people blog on 26 near-consecutive days (every day except Sundays) – on a theme of their choice. It’s a fantastic exercise. It can get the blog blood flowing, prodding bloggers either out of a pit, or into a routine; and it’s a sure-fire way to either increase your audience, or get one in the first place.

Well, I’m not doing it. You’ll thank me later, when you realise how much blogging content increases next month, that I’m not going to be adding to it. I’ll be slow blogging as usual, but reading and cheering all challenge participants loudly from the sidelines.

And yet I’m going to do one bolshie post on this whole lark anyway. How dare she make pronouncements when she’s not even participating, you cry!

Because it never stopped me before, that’s why.

And so, as I sharpen my mouse in readiness to click on the content of others, here are a few tips from one of the people who might be reading you in April.

1. Use the opportunity to do something you wouldn’t usually do.

 

Read the full post, which includes further elaboration on the first tip plus four more tips, on Tara Sparling’s blog.

 

Deadly Proof–Anatomy of a Book Launch

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This post by M. Lousia Locke originally appeared on her blog on 2/21/15.

I am proud to announce that Deadly Proof, the fourth book in my Victorian San Francisco Mystery Series, is now available for sale (see links below).

As with the other three novels in this series, Deadly Proof finds Annie Fuller and her beau, Nate Dawson, investigating a crime that will lead them (and the reader) into an exploration of the lives of working women in the late 19th century—in this case women who held jobs in the printing industry.

If you read my last two posts on my marketing strategy for 2015, you will know that I decided to take all my full-length books out of KDP Select and upload them everywhere and make the first book perma-free. My hope was that this strategy would provide a fertile field for this newly published book. So far, my hopes have been realized.

First of all, Maids of Misfortune, the perma-free book, is still being downloaded at a nice pace, making it highly visible in the popularity lists on Amazon and on the free lists in the iBook and Barnes and Noble stores, and I can see sell-through going on. The sales of the second book in the series, Uneasy Spirits, and now the third, Bloody Lessons, have been increasing each week. And now, some of these new fans of the series should be just about ready to  try this new book.

Second, while more complicated than back in the day when I only had to upload my books on Amazon, the process of uploading Deadly Proof for publication in multiple online stores was quite easy since I had recently gone through the process for my other novels and my short story collection.

 

Read the full post on M. Louisa Locke’s blog.

 

Socially Awkward: A Simple Guide to Social Media

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This post by Jandra Sutton with Steph Rodriguez originally appeared on San Francisco Book Review on 3/20/15.

Chances are you’ve read countless articles about the best ways to use social media outlets, like Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, or LinkedIn, and devoured list after list of quick-tips—even “for dummies”—at an attempt to implement a wealth of information with varying degrees of success. It’s great that you’re using social media, but that’s only one part of the equation. You’ve already mastered all the basics to be accepted by the social media in-crowd: “like,” “share,” “tweet.” Yet, what about the things you should avoid at the risk of becoming a social media outcast? By following these simple guidelines to online etiquette, even the most socially awkward computer user will roam the halls of social media with much success.

 

Tasteful Self-Promotion by Online Appeal

Facebook and Twitter are perfect outlets to express a variety of thoughts and experiences like: how great the bike ride to work was, photographs of a tasty dish from that new, swanky restaurant in town, an interesting article you read, or even as a means to self-promote your brand or new novel.

Still, as a general rule, only 1 out of 5 posts should be blatantly self-promotional, like those including a link to buy your book. The other four, leave open to share a new blog post, comment on a topic relevant to your book, ask followers a question that interests them, or retweet that insightful article you read over the weekend. Flesh out your social media pages with more than just attempts to sell. This will further engage your loyal followers.

 

Read the full post on San Francisco Book Review.

 

Which Bad Novel Is Perfect for You?

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This post by Katy Waldman originally appeared on Slate on 3/18/15. While authors who are interested in exploring the possibilities of the Kindle Scout program may find the article’s tone dismissive or even inflammatory, it provides some solid insight into the reader’s-eye-view.

Reading, and voting on, the books of Amazon’s new Kindle Scout program.

As the title of one of the new century’s most beloved novels reminds us, complexity can exist where we see only the absence of complication. A single color contains multitudes. That novel’s author, E.L. James, might have been commenting on the category to which her own work belongs: “bad” books. Fifty Shades of Grey is a bad book—cheesy, boilerplate, and silly, despite its silky dreams of sophistication and naughtiness. But man, the simple descriptor bad encompasses so many other vistas of badness, strange and terrible to behold. These are planets of implausibility and awfulness that revolve beyond our wildest imaginings.

Welcome to Kindle Scout.

Kindle Scout is a new initiative from Amazon, a “reader-powered” publishing platform for “new, never-before-published books.” It works like this: Authors submit their manuscripts, 5,000-word excerpts of which are posted on the website for a 30-day scouting period. During that time, Amazon members can browse the selections and nominate the ones they’d like to see published. A reader is allowed just three swappable picks at a time, to preserve the integrity of each recommendation. At the end of the trial run, a team of staffers tallies the nods, applying its own secret rubric to decide which manuscripts get released. (A Kindle Scout representative declined to elaborate on the criteria it uses.) Selected books, explains Amazon, “will be published by Kindle Press and receive 5-year renewable terms, a $1,500 advance, 50 percent eBook royalty rate, easy rights reversions and featured Amazon marketing.”

On the writer’s resource site Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss has a smart post assessing the authorial incentives and drawbacks of such a deal.

 

Read the full post on Slate.