Cindy Dees's Blog, page 14

SEALs of Honor? What’s THIS?

I’m thrilled to announce that I’m finally writing a new military series, and it’s about the first female SEALs! That’s right. The Medusas’ Navy counterparts are about to hit the street. Coming July 21st in a big, exciting bundled e-book edition with 8 New York Times Bestsellers contributing stories. And your truly will be writing the first in my new series about Female SEALs. Color me stoked!

NPR Radio Interview

Not that any of you need to listen to me talk any more than I already do, but here’s the link to my NPR radio show appearance a couple weeks ago on Tales from the South. We talked about things I learned flying airplanes and I told a few stories from my military career. Good times!

http://www.stitcher.com/s?eid=3385385...

HOW I GROW SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS

In no particular order, here a few things I've figured out about how to grow the number of followers I have on social media:
Twitter feeds Facebook and your web page. If you get Twitter followers and then post links to your other platforms, some percentage of those Twitter followers will migrate to your other platforms.
How to grow Twitter, then? I like an app called JustUnfollow. It tracks the number of people who follow and unfollow me, and it ranks orders my followers and the people I'm following but who haven't followed me back from oldest to newest or newest to oldest.
Okay, what the heck does that all mean in lay terms? I can follow a group of people on Twitter, and Justunfollow tells me who follows me back, who doesn't follow me back, who actively unfollows me, and who I followed the longest ago who hasn't followed me back. That last one allows me to unfollow people who've had a while to follow me back but didn't.
Someone's going to stand up right about now and yell that churning is illegal. And it is, according to Twitter's usage rules. Which is why I think of what I do as enlightened pseudo-churning. I follow and unfollow people at a steady, controlled rate that's not high enough or aggressive enough to trigger churning alarms.
Here's another thing I learned. I unfollow people who haven't followed me back in a couple of weeks and follow new people in their place EVERY SINGLE DAY. Building followers is a cumulative effort. There's no sense doing it hit or miss. You have to commit to an ongoing effort if you want to see big numbers. (This is also how you don't get suspended for churning. Do it slow and steady. Or, if you're feeling aggressive, medium and steady.)
I had 55 Twitter followers on May 15th last year when I started actively building my Twitter list. I have 79.5 thousand followers as of this minute.
Another feature of Justunfollow is an automated "thanks for following me. Hi, it's nice to meet you" type message that gets sent to everyone who follows you back. When I started growing my Twitter list, about 1 person in 50 went over and followed my FB page. And they tended to find my personal page.
Then, I wrote a warm, friendly, lightly humorous, hello, nice to meet you note for Twitter that includes a bitly link to my FB author page. Voila. 1 Twitter follower in 7 comes over to this page, now. Much better.
I also use an app call TweetDeck There are several similar apps that are just as good. It allows me to write tweets and schedule them for future posting dates and times. This means I can sit down once a week or so, write a bunch of tweets, and then spread them out through the week without having to get on Twitter every day and make tweets (which interrupts my writing time mightily and gets to be overwhelming, to boot.)
I use Justunfollow to find out when the bulk of my followers are online, and I schedule my tweets on TweetDeck to happen during the peak usage time for my followers.
Okay, one last tip and then I'll stop, because I can see your eyes starting to glaze over.
Justunfollow has a feature called copy followers. I can type in the Twitter handle of, for example, a really famous author who writes in the same genre I do. Her entire list of followers whom I don't already follow pops up on my screen. I can then follow her followers. This means I'm following people who a) are readers b) are active on Twitter and c) like an author who writes similar to me.
If even a quarter of these people follow me back, I'm populating my Twitter list with people who are likely to enjoy my books in the future. I can advertise my books on Twitter to them and stand a decent chance of some of them checking out my books.
I think the term for this is farming for followers. Regardless, it's effective and builds not only raw numbers of Twitter followers but USEFUL Twitter followers.
I apologize if that's too much detail for everyone but Keith, whose question sparked this post. Good luck with your own follower lists! (And if you follow me, I'll follow you back!)

HOW I GROW SOCIAL MEDIA FOLLOWERS

In no particular order, here a few things I’ve figured out about how to grow the number of followers I have on social media:

Twitter feeds Facebook and your web page. If you get Twitter followers and then post links to your other platforms, some percentage of those Twitter followers will migrate to your other platforms.

How to grow Twitter, then? I like an app called JustUnfollow. It tracks the number of people who follow and unfollow me, and it ranks orders my followers and the people I’m following but who haven’t followed me back from oldest to newest or newest to oldest.

Okay, what the heck does that all mean in lay terms? I can follow a group of people on Twitter, and Justunfollow tells me who follows me back, who doesn’t follow me back, who actively unfollows me, and who I followed the longest ago who hasn’t followed me back. That last one allows me to unfollow people who’ve had a while to follow me back but didn’t.

Someone’s going to stand up right about now and yell that churning is illegal. And it is, according to Twitter’s usage rules. Which is why I think of what I do as enlightened pseudo-churning. I follow and unfollow people at a steady, controlled rate that’s not high enough or aggressive enough to trigger churning alarms.

Here’s another thing I learned. I unfollow people who haven’t followed me back in a couple of weeks and follow new people in their place EVERY SINGLE DAY. Building followers is a cumulative effort. There’s no sense doing it hit or miss. You have to commit to an ongoing effort if you want to see big numbers. (This is also how you don’t get suspended for churning. Do it slow and steady. Or, if you’re feeling aggressive, medium and steady.)

I had 55 Twitter followers on May 15th last year when I started actively building my Twitter list. I have 79.5 thousand followers as of this minute.

Another feature of Justunfollow is an automated “thanks for following me. Hi, it’s nice to meet you” type message that gets sent to everyone who follows you back. When I started growing my Twitter list, about 1 person in 50 went over and followed my FB page. And they tended to find my personal page.

Then, I wrote a warm, friendly, lightly humorous, hello, nice to meet you note for Twitter that includes a bitly link to my FB author page. Voila. 1 Twitter follower in 7 comes over to this page, now. Much better.

I also use an app call TweetDeck There are several similar apps that are just as good. It allows me to write tweets and schedule them for future posting dates and times. This means I can sit down once a week or so, write a bunch of tweets, and then spread them out through the week without having to get on Twitter every day and make tweets (which interrupts my writing time mightily and gets to be overwhelming, to boot.)

I use Justunfollow to find out when the bulk of my followers are online, and I schedule my tweets on TweetDeck to happen during the peak usage time for my followers.

Okay, one last tip and then I’ll stop, because I can see your eyes starting to glaze over.

Justunfollow has a feature called copy followers. I can type in the Twitter handle of, for example, a really famous author who writes in the same genre I do. Her entire list of followers whom I don’t already follow pops up on my screen. I can then follow her followers. This means I’m following people who a) are readers b) are active on Twitter and c) like an author who writes similar to me.

If even a quarter of these people follow me back, I’m populating my Twitter list with people who are likely to enjoy my books in the future. I can advertise my books on Twitter to them and stand a decent chance of some of them checking out my books.

I think the term for this is farming for followers. Regardless, it’s effective and builds not only raw numbers of Twitter followers but USEFUL Twitter followers.

I apologize if that’s too much detail for everyone but Keith, whose question sparked this post. Good luck with your own follower lists! (And if you follow me, I’ll follow you back!)

 

GAINING TRACTION in SELLING BOOKS

So, I've been actively working to increase my visibility, and hopefully, my sales for exactly one year, now. A number of people have asked me what the secret is to getting their books noticed, and here's what I've learned in my own search for an answer to that one.

I blissfully wrote forty books in obscurity, and without lifting a finger to do any self-promotion or social media work for ten years, on the mistaken assumption that if I just wrote enough good books, readers would find me and I would be successful.

I've won some great awards and generally get excellent reviews. Editors love my work and I've studied the craft exhaustively. I think it's fair to say I'm not a half-bad writer.

And yet, my sales have languished. They're not bad, especially given the state of today's market, but they just weren't going anywhere. They were flat. Lying there like a dead fish.

Then two things happened. My entire backlist of forty books was put up as ebooks by Harlequin. I did the math as my royalty statements came in and saw that I made about 3K on the list over two years, and Harlequin made 150K.

Let me write that out. One-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars. Of which, I got chump change.

The second tectonic shift in my perspective came with my first sale to Entangled Publishing, a strictly e-publishing house with a brilliant and business savvy publisher at the helm by the name of Liz Pelletier. I got a crash course in the potential power of e-publishing and of social media.

Like it or not, I was forced to admit that I was getting left in the dust and needed to move into social media and e-publishing. Immediately.

I started with 55 Twitter followers, 156 FB followers, and a dreadfully outdated website that I hadn't updated in two years.

It's now one year later, and I've got 77K Twitter followers, 12K FB followers, 4K Goodreads followers (hey, I've only been on GR for two months), 1K Linked In contacts, and a vibrant new website that reflects both genres I write in. I even guest blog occasionally for other people. Go me.

But how are my visibility and sales doing?

I have to say, my visibility is definitely improving. It's clear that more readers know who I am when I go to reader events. Other writers are starting to know who I am and what I write. I'm gaining traction.

It's not an overnight success story. I'm working hard and putting in a lot of hours. But it is gradually working. I've been hurt by a gap in my publishing schedule, but I'm picking up momentum as more books start coming out in a steady stream again.

A couple of great opportunities have dropped into my lap as a result of my hard work, and I'm hoping to capitalize on at least one of them later this summer. As it unfolds, I'll let you know how it goes.

My sales are growing a little. It's not a giant leap in tax brackets...yet...but the visibility is definitely translating to new readers.

Is my hard work paying off? Yes. Slowly. It's taking time, patience, and a ton of effort to make myself more visible to readers. I have to actively market myself and my books. And I have to write a lot of good books and keep a continuous flow of them coming.

It's taking persistence bordering on sheer, cussed stubbornness to claw my way to higher visibility and sales. This is not a project for the faint of heart. But it can be done.

I've met any number of extremely successful authors in both traditional and self-publishing. And let the record show, they ALL work their asses off.

There is no magic shortcut to increasing your visibility and sales. Quit looking for it and get to work.

GAINING TRACTION IN SELLING BOOKS

So, I’ve been actively working to increase my visibility, and hopefully, my sales for exactly one year, now. A number of people have asked me what the secret is to getting their books noticed, and here’s what I’ve learned in my own search for an answer to that one.

I blissfully wrote forty books in obscurity, and without lifting a finger to do any self-promotion or social media work for ten years, on the mistaken assumption that if I just wrote enough good books, readers would find me and I would be successful.

I’ve won some great awards and generally get excellent reviews. Editors love my work and I’ve studied the craft exhaustively. I think it’s fair to say I’m not a half-bad writer.

And yet, my sales have languished. They’re not bad, especially given the state of today’s market, but they just weren’t going anywhere. They were flat. Lying there like a dead fish.

Then two things happened. My entire backlist of forty books was put up as ebooks by Harlequin. I did the math as my royalty statements came in and saw that I made about 3K on the list over two years, and Harlequin made 150K.

Let me write that out. One-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollars. Of which, I got chump change.

The second tectonic shift in my perspective came with my first sale to Entangled Publishing, a strictly e-publishing house with a brilliant and business savvy publisher at the helm by the name of Liz Pelletier. I got a crash course in the potential power of e-publishing and of social media.

Like it or not, I was forced to admit that I was getting left in the dust and needed to move into social media and e-publishing. Immediately.

I started with 55 Twitter followers, 156 FB followers, and a dreadfully outdated website that I hadn’t updated in two years.

It’s now one year later, and I’ve got 77K Twitter followers, 12K FB followers, 4K Goodreads followers (hey, I’ve only been on GR for two months), 1K Linked In contacts, and a vibrant new website that reflects both genres I write in. I even guest blog occasionally for other people. Go me.

But how are my visibility and sales doing?

I have to say, my visibility is definitely improving. It’s clear that more readers know who I am when I go to reader events. Other writers are starting to know who I am and what I write. I’m gaining traction.

It’s not an overnight success story. I’m working hard and putting in a lot of hours. But it is gradually working. I’ve been hurt by a gap in my publishing schedule, but I’m picking up momentum as more books start coming out in a steady stream again.

A couple of great opportunities have dropped into my lap as a result of my hard work, and I’m hoping to capitalize on at least one of them later this summer. As it unfolds, I’ll let you know how it goes.

My sales are growing a little. It’s not a giant leap in tax brackets…yet…but the visibility is definitely translating to new readers.

Is my hard work paying off? Yes. Slowly. It’s taking time, patience, and a ton of effort to make myself more visible to readers. I have to actively market myself and my books. And I have to write a lot of good books and keep a continuous flow of them coming.

It’s taking persistence bordering on sheer, cussed stubbornness to claw my way to higher visibility and sales. This is not a project for the faint of heart. But it can be done.

I’ve met any number of extremely successful authors in both traditional and self-publishing. And let the record show, they ALL work their asses off.

There is no magic shortcut to increasing your visibility and sales. Quit looking for it and get to work.

WRITING WITHOUT A NET

Before I was published, I used to sit down at my computer and write whatever story most captured by interest and enjoyment. I knew nothing about genres, or commercial categories of stories, or the targeted audiences of major publishers. I just wrote to please me.

But then I sold, and quickly I found myself boxed in creatively by which stories my editors would let me write. Publishers are not entirely wrong to build these boxes, by the way. They do careful sales analysis and closely watch which types of stories are selling well and which types tank completely. They want their authors to write books that will actually sell well and make them money.

Now that I have dipped my toe into the world of self-publishing, I abruptly find myself freed from the traditional publishing box. Shockingly , I also find myself a bit agoraphobic after a decade of traditional publishing. I actually am uncomfortable without that box of publisher expectations containing, limiting, and directing my creative impulses.

I did NOT see that one coming.

I have to say, though, that, as glad as I am on the one hand to be able to write whatever stories I want and to believe in them utterly, on the other hand, I'm not willing to leave behind everything I have learned about commercial markets and reader preferences in my traditional publishing career.

I think there is value in paying attention to what sells. I'm not talking bout chasing fads. Those come and go way too fast to bother with. I'm talking about timeless elements of good storytelling. There are, in fact, tropes and techniques that sell consistently and never waiver in popularity. I'm not averse to knowing what those are and highlighting them as they happen to fit into the stories I want to tell.

There is value in staying up to date on what publishers are buying and in watching which types of books make the best seller lists. It's a good thing to read the authors who are selling millions of books and asking yourself what about their writing resonates so strongly with the reading public.

It's not that I'm going to be a sales whore and merely chase what seems popular this week. But I can put a few creative fences around myself that don't cramp my stories. When I face a choice in where to go with a story, it won't kill me to choose the path that leads toward commercially viable elements within a story.
This is a business after all (in addition to being an artistic expression of my personal internal insanity). While I'm delighted to be free to write wherever my imagination takes me, it's not a bad thing to nudge my imagination in commercial directions when doing so won't compromise my story.

Funny how often this business boils down to a balancing act between art and business. And even in the self-published world, that has not changed.

WRITING WITHOUT A NET

Before I was published, I used to sit down at my computer and write whatever story most captured by interest and enjoyment. I knew nothing about genres, or commercial categories of stories, or the targeted audiences of major publishers. I just wrote to please me.

But then I sold, and quickly I found myself boxed in creatively by which stories my editors would let me write. Publishers are not entirely wrong to build these boxes, by the way. They do careful sales analysis and closely watch which types of stories are selling well and which types tank completely. They want their authors to write books that will actually sell well and make them money.

Now that I have dipped my toe into the world of self-publishing, I abruptly find myself freed from the traditional publishing box. Shockingly , I also find myself a bit agoraphobic after a decade of traditional publishing. I actually am uncomfortable without that box of publisher expectations containing, limiting, and directing my creative impulses.

I did NOT see that one coming.

I have to say, though, that, as glad as I am on the one hand to be able to write whatever stories I want and to believe in them utterly, on the other hand, I’m not willing to leave behind everything I have learned about commercial markets and reader preferences in my traditional publishing career.

I think there is value in paying attention to what sells. I’m not talking bout chasing fads. Those come and go way too fast to bother with. I’m talking about timeless elements of good storytelling. There are, in fact, tropes and techniques that sell consistently and never waiver in popularity. I’m not averse to knowing what those are and highlighting them as they happen to fit into the stories I want to tell.

There is value in staying up to date on what publishers are buying and in watching which types of books make the best seller lists. It’s a good thing to read the authors who are selling millions of books and asking yourself what about their writing resonates so strongly with the reading public.

It’s not that I’m going to be a sales whore and merely chase what seems popular this week. But I can put a few creative fences around myself that don’t cramp my stories. When I face a choice in where to go with a story, it won’t kill me to choose the path that leads toward commercially viable elements within a story.

This is a business after all (in addition to being an artistic expression of my personal internal insanity). While I’m delighted to be free to write wherever my imagination takes me, it’s not a bad thing to nudge my imagination in commercial directions when doing so won’t compromise my story.

Funny how often this business boils down to a balancing act between art and business. And even in the self-published world, that has not changed.

WHY COPY EDITS MATTER

They ain't sexy, and they ain't glamorous, but spelling and grammar matter.

A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo's into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to "eat poopsite." Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.

Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A "real" writer, as it were.

The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.

The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.

And you, the writer? You're going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you're too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won't see what's actually on the page.

Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor's main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.

If you can't afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend--or better, several friends-- who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.

One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it's published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you're self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it's finalized.

The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.

WHY COPY EDITS MATTER

They ain’t sexy, and they ain’t glamorous, but spelling and grammar matter.

A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo’s into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to “eat poopsite.” Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.

Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A “real” writer, as it were.

The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.

The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.

And you, the writer? You’re going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you’re too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won’t see what’s actually on the page.

Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor’s main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.

If you can’t afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend–or better, several friends– who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.

One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it’s published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you’re self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it’s finalized.

The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.