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Tag: promoting

Marketing for Writers and Readers

At this week’s meeting for my local writing group, I presented on the topic of marketing for writers with a focus on readers. Here are my notes.

RARE – respect, authenticity, reciprocity, expertise – FROM THE READERS’ PERSPECTIVE

Why focus on marketing:

  • Short-range – sell books
  • Mid-range – get reviews
  • Long-range – build a fanbase to sell more books

Who to market to:

  • Family and friends
    • Pros: feel happy/obligated to buy your stuff
    • Cons: Amazon cracking down on reviews by people you know, not as believable because people think they’ll be positive no matter what
  • Other writers – very common
    • Pros: often reciprocity with reviews, sales, and promos
    • Cons: hard to jump from writers to readers with content, reciprocity expected even if you don’t like what they write/different genre
  • READERS!!
    • Pros: readers want to read good books
    • Cons: hard to find, already bombarded by tons of ads/spam

Where to market:

  • In person
    • Direct sales to family and friends
    • Book fairs and readings
  • Online
    • Social media
      • Followers – real vs numbers
      • Comments on other blogs (indirectly only)
      • Targeted ads
      • Who’s seeing these posts?
    • Website
    • Newsletters/mailing lists
      • Your own
      • Group’s

When to market:

  • Daily – buzz about your books on social media
    • 20% formula (only 20% of posts about your books)
    • 5-3-2 formula (5 should be content from others, 3 should be content from you, 2 should be personal status updates)
  • Pre-launch
    • Snippets
    • Cover reveal
    • Pre-orders
  • Sale
    • Acceptable to buzz more frequently

What to market:

  • Your books
    • Snippets/excerpts
    • Random facts/research relating to your books
    • Links to purchase
  • Yourself
    • Blog posts
    • Social media posts that show your personality
  • Other people’s stuff
    • Reciprocity principle
    • Set your own personal guidelines for what you’ll share

How to market:

  • Social media
    • Twitter – quick status updates, links
    • Facebook – longer posts
    • Pinterest – images related to your works
    • Other sites – Google+, Tsu, etc – who’s there??
  • Website
    • Central place to send people to
    • Include link in signatures and blog comments
    • Provide meaningful content for your target audience
  • Ads
    • Newsletters/mailing lists
      • BookBub, Ereader News Today, etc – how big is their reach vs price
    • Facebook
      • Who are you targeting?
      • Impressions vs sales
    • Goodreads, Amazon
      • Expensive
      • Check conversion rates
    • Giveaways
      • Rafflecopter
        • Multi-author vs one author
        • Cost of prizes related to how many people enter
      • Goodreads giveaway – lots add to TBR, but few reviews
    • Mailing list
      • Frequency
        • set number vs something to share
        • too often = annoying, too infrequently = forget who you are
      • Mailchimp
    • Book fairs
      • Very low RTI – cost vs books sold; publicity?
      • Iowa City Book Festival, Midwest Writing Center events
    • Swag
      • Bookmarks
      • Business cards
      • Trinkets/widgets related to your book
    • Free books
      • Pros – new readers, possibly more reviews, push you up in rankings for later
      • Cons – too many free books to read, don’t see a bump later, only one book out
      • Most common with series book #1, short stories

Branding

  • Consistent look
    • Same picture for everything
    • Same bio
    • Similar color schemes/layouts on covers and across online
  • Tagline
    • “Writing stories of love and betrayal, sacrifice and redemption”
    • “Adventure romance”
  • Similar genres/themes
    • Pen name

Role of reader

  • “Don’t be a dick.” – Will Wheaton
  • How is your content benefiting them?
    • Entertainment
    • Information
    • Free stuff
    • Not annoying
  • Engagement
    • Social media – conversation
    • Ask them what they want – survey/poll
    • #QOTD

Resources

Thoughts on author events

IC book festival
At the Iowa City Book Festival with EP author Timothy C Ward

I’ve done three author events in the past couple months: The Iowa City Book Festival in October, a local author book fair at a nearby mall Thanksgiving weekend, and a reading/book fair event at a local library the first weekend in December. Here are my thoughts:

  • The success of these events depends entirely on how you define success. I didn’t sell many books, but I did a lot of networking. I represented my publisher, Evolved Publishing, for the first event, and we gave out a lot of information about them to people either looking to get published or not satisfied with their current publishing situation. For the other two events, I chatted with a bunch of local authors.
  • Being prepared matters… For each event, I had a ton of books (both mine and other EP authors’), bookmarks, and business cards. For the publisher events, I also made signs with cover images by genre, so readers could more easily find what they were interested in. Conversely, I had a couple people wanting a print copy of The Futility of Loving a Soldier at the mall event, but I didn’t have any yet (poor planning on my part). Fortunately they came back for the library event, but that’s not something I can always count on.

    grandma

    Posing with my biggest fan – my grandma

  • …but not as much as human interaction… Some of the tables at the events were pretty empty and the books weren’t great, but the authors chatted up passersby to make some sales. As an introvert, I’m not very good at this, but it seemed effective.
  • …or location. The IC festival was outdoors and COLD. We were tucked away, off the main pedestrian walkway, and a lot of people didn’t know we were there. Same with the mall book fair; although indoors, we still didn’t have a great location – nowhere near the mall’s bookstore, for example. Like with all sales, if your customers don’t know you’re there, you won’t sell anything.
  • Plants make you feel better. After sitting ignored or not having any sales, it’s always nice to see a familiar face. My grandma, for example, comes to all my local events, and someone from my in-person writing group usually stops by too. Having people you know drop by (and hopefully buy a book) will make the event more bearable.

Overall, even using a fluid definition of success, the events I did weren’t successful. I came out ahead financially (barely), but it was still a sizable chunk of time to do each event. I may still do events next year, but it’ll be ones that are close and don’t require a fee. When your time is limited, even exposure and networking can be expensive.

What are your thoughts on multi-author events? As a reader, do you attend? As a writer, are they worth your time?

library

At a local library event

#Free story for Halloween

timsarapromo

FREE psychological horror story to celebrate Halloween!

Tim and Sara” – 4.7 stars on Amazon

The victim of debilitating flashbacks, Tim is content to spend the rest of his life at Kirkbride, a state mental hospital. But his friend and fellow resident Sara is concerned that she has to save her soul before it’s too late, and so she devises a plan to break them out of the hospital. Can Tim help his friend while holding onto what’s left of his sanity?

FREE October 29th – November 2nd.

Iowa City Book Fair on Saturday, Oct 3rd

One of my goals for this year is to improve my marketing. In addition to running various ads, I’m also trying to fit in more appearances – book signings, author fairs, etc.

This Saturday, I’ll be at the Iowa City Book Fair, part of their annual book festival, running the table for my publisher, Evolved Publishing.

Stop by the downtown pedestrian mall from 10-5 to say hi, pick up a copy of The Lone Wolf and works by other EP authors, and get lots of free swag.

And the winners are…

I just finished up a big contest to celebrate launch week, giving away two signed print copies and 3 ebook copies of my novel, The Lone Wolf. The results are in:

Print winners: Naomi and Sarah

Ebook winners: Heather, Heidi, and Becky

Congrats to the winners! And thanks so much to everyone who participated – now that you’re connected to my updates somehow, you’ll have a competitive edge the next time a contest roles around. :)

If you’d like to get even more insight and prizes, consider joining the Evolved Publishing Street Team. In return for spreading the word about EP, you get sneak peaks on upcoming novels, special giveaways, and the ear of your favorite writers. Win-win all around!

The Lone Wolf launch!

Yesterday was the official launch day of my women’s fiction novel, The Lone Wolf.

After her husband’s infidelities are revealed, Kasey Sanford just wants to rediscover who she is. After an abusive childhood and years as a career soldier, Andrew Adams just wants someone to tell him that he’s doing the right thing with his life. When their paths cross, Kasey and Andrew embark on a tumultuous journey that demonstrates just what they’re willing to do to save the ones they love.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who’s helped me along the way; I definitely couldn’t have gotten this far by myself.

The book is available, in print or as an ebook, through AmazonBarnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

Or win a copy by entering my giveaway! And thanks again for all your support!

Free bookmarks!

I’m gearing up for the launch of my first novel, The Lone Wolf, in just a couple weeks. I’ve already made a book sell sheet, which I gave area booksellers when asking them to sell my book. It had all the information they needed to order my novel from their supplier.

I’m also planning some giveaways: a Rafflecopter contest here on my blog, a day to interact with my publisher’s street team on Facebook, something at this week’s NaNo write-in, and who knows what else.

And just this weekend, my The Lone Wolf bookmarks arrived! It took me about an hour or two to design them, and I’m really happy with how they turned out. I plan to give them out like candy. :D

Want one? Add The Lone Wolf on Goodreads, and then use the contact link above to send me your address and a link to your bookshelf.

And make sure you keep checking back, because there’ll be a lot going on between now and launch day on December 2nd!

Book sell sheets

Earlier this month, Indies Unlimited had a great post on book sell sheets, which are basically flyers with all your book’s relevant info on them: author name and contact info, ISBN and price, description and genre, etc.

Click for a bigger view

My first novel, The Lone Wolf, is launching in about a month. It’ll be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords, and my publisher’s website, but I want it available locally too – and a lot of bookstores are willing to sell local authors’ books. So I made a sell sheet.

And I’m really glad I did. It was great to walk into a bookstore and hand the order person all the information. They had the ISBN right in front of them to enter into the computer, and any questions they had were answered by the info on the sheet.

It paid off, too – Barnes and Noble agreed to stock my novel, BAM was a maybe (not a no!), a mall chain said they’d stock it if they can find space, and another said they’d most likely take it on consignment (but the guy I need to talk to is on vacation). And the library is getting a couple copies for circulation!

If you have a book you’d like to get into stores, I highly recommend you make a sell sheet too.

Weekend Writing Warriors 9/15/13 #WeWriWa

I’m going to be switching gears here, from A Handful of Wishes, my WIP about a boy and his genie, to my soon-to-be-released women’s fiction novel, The Lone Wolf, out December 2nd from Evolved Publishing.


After her husband’s infidelities are revealed, Kasey Sanford just wants to rediscover who she is. After an abusive childhood and years as a career soldier, Andrew Adams just wants someone to tell him that he’s doing the right thing with his life. When their paths cross, Kasey and Andrew embark on a tumultuous journey that demonstrates just what they’re willing to do to save the ones they love.

In this chunk, Kasey has just arrived home from running some errands.

As I stepped onto our front porch, an envelope tucked in the front storm door caught my eye—no return address, no postage, just Mrs. Sanford scrawled in messy feminine handwriting. I picked it up, opened it, and pulled out the contents: a letter, wrapped around several photographs. I smiled at the quaintness; who printed out pictures anymore when they were just as easy to email?

I set the letter aside and studied the photos. Their low-quality fuzziness indicated they’d been taken with a webcam, but I could still clearly discern two people intimately engaged. As I focused on the images, my smile faded. One figure was David; although his face wasn’t visible in the photos, after almost ten years together I’d have recognized his stocky frame anywhere.

The other figure, the female, was not me.

Want to read more? Sign up for my publisher’s newsletter in the next week, and you’ll get a 5 chapter sneak peek! (And sign up for my newsletter too – link over there on the left – for updates and giveaways – plenty to come as the launch approaches!)

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

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