Sally Murphy's Blog, page 44

Five Minute Promo: Day 12

Welcome to Day 12 of the 5 Minute Promo. We are more than one third of the way through the challenge and by now you should be finding most of the tasks pretty easy – because you did the setting up of accounts and platforms in the first few days and now it’s mostly about keeping it all ticking along with new content and an increasing audience.

Today’s task is another easy one, similar to yesterdays. Are you ready?

5 Minute Promo #12

This whale tail is completely unrelated to all of my books, but it makes me smile.

Head to Twitter and  share a link to something completely unrelated to your book. If you’re a football fan, tweet about your football team. If you’re a gardener, tweet about your roses. If you have a dog, tweet a link to a dog video. You get the idea? Something that is not about your book or even about stuff that happens in your book.

How is this promoting your book? It isn’t, not directly. But, indirectly, it helps. You see, people on Twitter (and Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest etc) don’t like constantly being advertised at.

If you met a friend in the street and started trying to sell your book, they would probably get turned off. But if you exchanged genuine conversation with them and then they heard you’d written a book, they might be interested in buying it.

The same goes online. People want to hear from you about all kinds of stuff and then, as they get to know you, they are more likely to respond to the plugs you give your book.

So, off you go. In the next five minutes find something to share and Tweet it. If that doesn’t use your whole five minutes, spend the rest of the time seeing what other people are tweeting about and try retweeting or replying.

Enjoy. And see you tomorrow.

 

A Cautionary Tale of Birds, Birds and More Birds

This is a tale with a  moral and I feel inclined to tell you the moral first: be careful what you wish for.

See, I’m in Adelaide at the moment and a few days I took a rather pleasant stroll along the Torrens River, admiring the surroundings and the black swans, including this beauty.

So, this morning was a little cold and blustery but I really wanted to visit the birds again, so off I went.

I’d just got to the river when I started spotting birds. First there was this swan, huddled up against the cold wind.

Then this shag, which was doing duck dives (shag-dives?) under the water.

A mudlark flew in front of me, and I could hear parrots in a nearby tree. I had this sudden idea that I would try to photograph as many birds as I could, and blog about them. There’s  my wish.

Further along the bank I could see two pelicans also huddled up against the wind, and I wanted to get them on camera, so I wandered towards them. But, before I could get close to them, this happened: goose attack!

I think I managed to placate the goose, and did get a shot of my sleeping pelicans.

But then I realised I was being chased again:

It was funny but also just a little bit like being in the movie The Birds. There were swamphens, and coots, ducks, all following me. so many of them! And it was then I remembered that I’d wanted to see lots of birds so I could blog about them. Wish granted: in a bit of an awkward way.

Later, I walked into the city, thinking I was away from the birds. But, as I sat on a bench to get my breath, a speckled pigeon and a banjo-playing busker united to give me a laugh.



So maybe, morals aside, I’ll still go looking for birds (and other things) to take photos of and blog about.

Life is good.

Five Minute Promo: Day 11

Welcome back to the 5 Minute Promotional Challenge where every day in July I’m sharing – and doing myself – a five minute task you can do to promote your latest book.

Back on Day 4 the task was to set up or update an author page on Facebook. Today’s task involves finding some new content for that page. Here goes.

5 Minute Promo #11

On your Facebook author page, add a link to an item that relates to your book in some way. That is, not a link about your book, but one which readers of your book might be interested in.

Here are a couple of examples. My author page is used to promote all of my books, and the people who follow my page include my target readership (children) but also parents, teacher, librarians and other book enthusiasts, as well as fellow writers. So, recently, I have posted:

I love to engage with my audience.

– A link to an article about writing stories in rhyme in the Guardian.

– A link to an article on The Conversation about why watching sport makes us cry (which I related to books) and

– A link to a post on Publishing Perspectives about copyright issues.

Today I might search for something related to chocolate, since chocolate features heavily in Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape.

Think about your book and your readership, and find an article, blogpost, video or image to share on your author page. This makes your page much more interactive and informative and helps it not just to be a big advertisement.

Clock’s ticking – five minutes and you should be done. Feel free to also tweet the link, or pin an image from the article.

See you tomorrow.

 

Five Minute Promo: Day 10

Welcome to Day 10, roughly one third of the way through the 5 Minute Promo challenge I have set myself, and which I’m inviting fellow book creators to take part in.

Some tasks have been challenging, and others quite easy. Today is a super easy one, so I’ll get straight to it:

 

5 Minute Promo #10

Head over to that Twitter account you opened (or updated) back on Day 2 and which you’ve hopefully been checking regularly. Now it’s time to build up some followers and to start to use it more regularly. SO, today’s task is to follow 20 new people.

It’s easy to find new people to follow. Twitter suggests people based on who you’ve already followed – ie people or organisations with similar interests – in the right hand column of  the Twitter homepage. You can also find people by looking at who your friends follow, and who they retweet. Or, you can use the search function. For example, I write children’s books, so I could use search terms such as children’s author, or kids’ books, or Australian authors.  But it’s a good idea not to simply follow other authors – I try to follow an eclectic range of people, including booksellers, publishers, librarians, teachers, sports people, entertainers, and people who post quirky things.

So, how does following people help promote your book? Two ways: firstly, the people you follow often follow you back, and thus will see your tweets. Secondly, you learn all kinds of things which may give you opportunities to promote, or interesting tweets which you can retweet and thus engage with your followers.  If you are still not sure what to do on Twitter, it’s worth rereading my previous article explaining what I do on Twitter here.

What are you waiting for? Your five minutes starts now. If you follow me,  that’s only 19 more people you need to find, and I’m likely to follow you back.

It’s always fun to have lots of followers.

5 Minute Promo: Day 9

Good morning. It’s Day 9 of the 5 Minute Promo series and, if you’ve been following along, by now you should have your Facebook Page, Twitter , Instagram  and Pinterest accounts all set up and have started adding content, including two blog posts and other content. Today’s task is probably going to take you less than five minutes but at the same time it is going to save you time in the future AND help you find new content to share on your various social media platforms. What is it?

It’s always good to know what’s being said about you.

5 Minute Promo #9

Set up a Google Alert for your book.  Doing this will mean that any time your book gets mentioned online, you will get an email notification letting you know. Then, once you’ve checked it out and made sure you like what you’re reading you can share the link to a review, discussion, teaching idea or whatever via your Twitter account, or your Facebook page, or you can Pin the content to your Pinterest board.

I  have a number of these alerts – one for each new book (including, of course, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape) as well as more general alerts for topics including Sally Murphy Author (that’s me!).

If you’re not sure how to set up an alert, there is a simple guide here.

Enjoy – and drop back tomorrow for the next 5 minute task.

Poetry Friday: Salfie

It’s Poetry Friday and I’ve been thinking about selfies: you know, those photos people take of themselves. I got a new mobile phone a couple of months ago, chiefly because I wanted a better camera – and gosh I’ve had fun snapping all kinds of things on my walks, my excursions, and at home.

Like lots of people, some of the photos I take are of myself – and I’ve coined the term Salfie (a bit punny, but there you go). I share these photos on social media, and text them to family and so on, but I always double check that I’m happy with the shot, and am quick to delete those I don’t like. It’s one of the wonders of digital photography – the ability to take dozens of shots and simply delete the ones we don’t like rather than waiting till after the film is processed, as in the not-so-0ld days.

Thinking about this self-editing (or Salf-editing) lead to today’s poem which, since it’s about photos, I’ve made into a Photostory.

 

Have a great Friday.

Five Minute Promo: Day 8

Welcome to Day 8. If you’re here for the first time, every day in July I am offering a five minute promotional task you can do to promote your latest book and, since I have a new book out myself, I am completing each task myself. Today’s task involves a little writing, but, since you’ve just published a book, that won’t be hard at all, right?

5 Minute Promo #8

Write a blog post about the writing process (or illustration process if you are an illustrator)  for your new book. You’ve only got five minutes remember (though feel free to take longer) so don’t try to cover every aspect of your writing: choose one. People love short blog posts that tell them something.

For my post, I decided to focus on the creation of a series. You can see my effort here (or just scroll down).

Once you’ve written it, post in your blog – remember to include a picture or two, and to add links to where the book can be purchased. Then, tweet and facebook about your new post, and pin one of the pictures. Easy peasy. And, if you leave a comment here with the link I will head over and read it.

See you tomorrow.

Writing a Series Vs Writing a Stand Alone Story

I’ve written over 40 books (actually, hundreds if you count the ones I’ve written that haven’t been published) and the writing of each one has been different. But Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape is the first book in my first ever series and, as such, I was keenly aware as I wrote it of how different writing the first book in a series is from writing a stand alone story.

Firstly, before I could write story number one I had to have a strong premise for the whole series: strong enough to cover at least four distinct stories (since that was the number specified in the initial contract). I needed a premise that would give my characters opportunity to experience conflicts (problems) which would be varied but revolve around the same characters. I came up with the idea of a girl whose parents were television chefs, since that would allow me to use varied locations and scenarios.
Secondly, I had to plan my characters. Every story needs characters, but again, in a series, I had to plan not just the main characters – Sage, her parents, and her best friend Lucy – but also minor characters. In the first book I decided there would be two ‘baddies’ and I had to decide if they would be recurrent characters and whether they would be bumbling baddies or really nasty. This would set the tone for the rest of the series and was really important. In the end I decided my baddies would be not comic-book bumbling, but still a bit silly rather than horribly bad.

Sage Cookson, the title character, is a girl who has lots of adventures.

Thirdly, I needed to consider the level of self-containment. Some series must be read in the order of release to make sense, with each title leaving the reader on a cliff-hanger so that they want to read the next book to find out what happens next. Others are so self-contained that each book stands completely alone, and there is no need to read one to understand the others. I decided I wanted to sit somewhere between those two extremes: I want each story to be resolved so that a reader is left satisfied, and I also want a reader who picks up book 2 or 3 or 4 not to feel lost. But, at the same time, I want my characters to develop over the series. So, the books are sequential, but after Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape, each book will include enough mention of back-story that a reader isn’t left confused, without those earlier stories being ruined for a reader who wants to go back and read them out of order.

 

I am still working on the series, and the exciting news is that there will be at least six books in all. And, as I write each book I think back over these three points, and continue to learn more and more about series writing. I hope Sage Cookson won’t be the only series I write in my career.

In the meantime, Sage Cookson’s Sweet Escape is now available online and in good bookstores.

Five Minute Promo: Day 7

Day seven of the five minute promo challenge means we are more than a quarter of of the way through. Thanks for coming back – and, if you’re new here, thanks for dropping by.

Today’s task is one which could be done in as little as five minutes, or could take a whole lot longer. But, because I promised that each task would be five minutes (or less), I did a test run to make sure it was possible. So, here goes:

5 Minute Promo #7: Make a Book Trailer

A book trailer is a short ‘film’ adverting your book – like a movie trailer, though usually much shorter. It can be as simple or as complex as you, your talents and/or your budget will allow, including sound effects, acting, voice overs, visuals and more. If you are going to do all that, it will likely take you much, much longer than five minutes, but, if you use a simple tool such as Photo Story, and images you already have on hand, it can take as little as five minutes. Here’s my five minute effort:

I like using Photostory because it’s free, very simple to use, and creates it’s own music, so there are no copyright issues. I use my own pictures or ones from my books, so that again there are no copyright issues – and, in this case, because I already had them, it only took me five minutes to arrange them, add text and music, and create the video. The end slide I created in Paint. If I had more time I would have made it longer and probably included a voice-over, which is simple to do in Photostory.  There is a good explanation of how to use Photostory here.

 

As I said earlier, if you want to take longer than five minutes, there is no end to what you can do. Here is a longer trailer I made several years ago (in fact, the very first book trailer I ever made):

And here is much cleverer Booktrailer made by a wonderful teacher:



( created by Julie Hembree and shared here with permission.)

Anyway, the timer is ticking, so off you go and make your own booktrailer. When you’re done, upload it to Youtube, then post it on your website, your Facebook page and Tweet the link. As always, if you leave a comment here, I will check out what you’ve done. Have fun!

Five Minute Promo: Day 6

Set your timer and get ready for today’s 5 minute task, because I’m going to jump straight into it. Yesterday I promised the last day of getting you to sign up for social media platforms, so today I want to suggest you do something quick and easy – and it’s about signing something rather than signing up.

Day 6: Creating an Email  Sig Line

If you are like me you probably write and send dozens of emails every week. Some are writing related and others aren’t. But every one of those emails can bear an advertisement for your book or books. If you email your child’s teacher about her homework -and there’s a signature line? Your teacher learns about your book. If you forward a referral to your doctor? Your doctor learns about your book. If you send a query to a new ediotr? The editor learns about your previous book AND sees that you are willing to promote your work. It’s win win.

So, today’s task is to open up your email program and create a signature line which advertises your book (or books). Here’s a screenshot of mine:

You can see mine has pictures, my name plus the URL of my website. You could use text instead of pictures, and you could add more links (for example to online bookstores). There’s lots of possibilities.

 

There’s a quick guide to creating a signature for Outlook: here. If you use a different program, use a search engine and you will find a similar guide.

So, what are you waiting for? Your five minutes starts now. As awlays, feel free to leave me a note, or tweet me and let me know how you go.