Sarah R. Yoffa's Blog: -sry's Goodreads Blogosphere

@BanbhaSeries Book 1 Sneak Peek #ebook #romance #romantic #suspense #novelines

I've been working on the first book of the Banbha Series, my upcoming Romantic Suspense series of books and have selected the "event" that will drive behind the romantic plot. I plan to include this "Disclaimer" which will give you an idea about the events and idea of the book. What do you think? I want to hear what my readers think, so please tweet me or post to the Facebook Page.

Thanks for reading!

-sry
@webbiegrrl



Disclaimer for BanbhaBook 1 of the Romantic Suspense Series(c) Copyright 2014 Sarah R. Yoffa. All rights reserved.

Some of the events described in this story are based on fact; however, the manner in which events actually occurred or the people actually involved may have been
dramatized by the Author for artistic purposes. Most of the characters
mentioned are pure figments of the Author’s imagination and do not exist in
real life, nor are they based on any real persons to the best of the Author’s
knowledge and belief.

The real events and individuals publicly acknowledged to have participated in them are delineated below. The Author does not intend to represent or imply personal
knowledge of motivations or decision-making rationale for any of the real-life
people or events listed. The story in this book is a fictional idea set against
a backdrop of reality based on generally-accepted documentation made publicly
available at the time this story’s writing. Any mistakes in accuracy or factual
reports are entirely the Author’s doing and it’s just too bad if you don’t like
the mistakes because once you read this story, the Author might just have to
kill you!

1) FACT: There was a period of civil unrest in the Balkans during the spring and summer of 2001 often referred to as “The Kosovo War.” FACT: One of the many incidents of the Kosovo War was the Battle of Aračinovo, which occurred in June of 2001. It was a battle carried out on Macedonian soil in which Macedonian civilians were caught in the crossfire, between NATO forces and Albanian insurgents.

2) FACT: The Rt. Hon. Lord George Robertson was the Secretary-General of NATO at the time of the Battle of Aračinovo and he did, in fact, urge the Macedonian government to refrain from defending itself against the attacks.

3) FACT: Glenn Nye, who was a U.S. Representative (D) for Virginia's 2nd Congressional District from 2009 to 2011 was, in fact a new foreign service employee in 2001 and was stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia. Nye was personally involved in the evacuation of the embassy and then stayed behind in order to facilitate the rescue of 26 American private military contractors being held by the Albanians. FACT: For these actions, Nye later received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for his valorious acts.

4) FACT: The American private military personnel (mercenaries) rescued by Nye were employed by a company then called Military Professional Resources, Inc. or MPRI (now a subsidiary of L-3 Communications Corporation). FACT: That company had
just ended a contract in March of 2001 in Colombia related to the
then-so-called “War on Drugs” and moved into Macedonia.

It is still unclear today if the MPRI personnel were sent in to aid the Albanian insurgency
or battle against it—or a little of both. All that is known for a FACT is that
MPRI went in with the knowledge and approval (funding) of the United States
government…so plausible deniability didn’t exist but the mercs did. It is also
unclear if these 26 men were held hostage behind enemy lines or were simply
overcome by events as the “battle lines” moved quickly past their position.
FACT: It is known that the Albanian insurgents took the passports of these
Americans as a means of identifying them for ransom back to the American
government.

There is no official record of precisely what happened to the 26 MPRI personnel, before, during or after the “rescue.” There are a lot of conspiracy theorists reporting about
this incident and other instances involving MPRI. The idea that the United States hired Israeli-based mercenaries to facilitate the rescue or that the NATO
Secretary-General had any knowledge of or part in the planning of any such
extraction effort is NOT a fact and is a figment of the Author’s imagination.
That’s not to say it didn’t happen or that there aren’t secret documents
somewhere in a deep, dark underground facility proving the story true…but you didn’t
hear that from me. I never said it. I wasn’t here. And like I said at the start,
if you knew the truth, I’d just have to kill you.

Blog Closed

To all my regular readers, thank you for your ongoing support. As you may have heard, I'll be closing the blog for a short time.


Because some jerk has been spamming me while the blog's been closed, until future notice, new comments are moderated or not allowed.


I am not conducting any other Author Features at this time.

I am not accepting any additional books for review at this time.

I am interested in taking on freelance work doing:
content editing or developmental (helping you develop the pacing, plotting and characters of your Indie book)line editing aka copyediting or my favorite "wordsmithing" (polishing the edges off your work line by line--hence line editing--without making any substantive changes to the story, itself) This is the single-most common thing new authors do, themselves, when they think they are "editing."
proofreading (correcting spelling, punctuation, grammar or obvious typos using the wrong words--e.g., "one" for "won" or "their" for "there")interior book formatting (either eBook or print formatting - pricing varies depending on media and book length, as well as being higher when graphics, tables and charts are involved)cover art graphics (simple, no illustrations - also reformatting of existing/legacy JPG files for the new "hi-res" rules that came out in 2012) If you have a freelance job you'd like me to do for you, please contact me on gmail.com at webbiegrrlwriter with a query. Be sure to tell me the type of work you need addressed (e.g., content editing, legacy JPG conversion, proofreading) and the length of the book (number of words) as well as the genre. If it is non-fiction, you'll need to indicate whether or not there are any charts, tables or graphics in the interior content. I'll reply to your query within one week (7 days) from the date of receipt.

If you have a sample of the work online, please send me a link to it. Do not attach any files to your query or I'll assume you are a spammer and mark your email address accordingly (so I'll never have to see another message from that address). Sorry but that's what the world has come to these days. Spammers abound.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

Closing for the Haggim--and Beyond!

To all my regular readers, thank you for your ongoing support. As you may have heard, I'll be closing the blog for a short time.

I shan't go away entirely. I'll be posting on the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Page or filling the

Other Features While Closed
While my weekly blogs are on hiatus, I'll try to make a dent in my reading and review queue. I had a 4-5 month backlog which has now slipped another 2 months due to "life" interrupting.

I am not conducting any other Author Features at this time.

I am not accepting any additional books for review at this time.

If you have an editing job, you can contact me on gmail.com at webbiegrrlwriter but my turnaround time will not be quick (could be as long as one month for a full-length novel) and I shall have an unbooked period from mid-May to mid-June of 2013 to allow me to move residences.

TUESDAY TIP Removing Hidden Bookmarks in MS Word #howto #indie #selfpub #pubtip @markcoker

Welcome to my last Tuesday Tip blog for a while. For more on why that is, see the "What's Next..." section at the end of the post. To all my regular readers, thank you for your ongoing support.

Since my 30,000 Hit Giveaway in December, I've averaged about 5,000 hits a month and am at just under 45,000 Hits now. I'm surprised, flattered and blessed to have such a devoted following.

I hope you know I shan't go away entirely. I'll be posting on the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Page or filling the
Today I'll illustrate for you one last useful tip every Indie Author must have: how to rid your book of the ever-annoying  "Hidden" bookmarks in Microsoft Word. Click through the jump break for the full monty ^)^



The Problem
When a new Indie Author uses Microsoft Word, they will experience something untoward without even knowing it. Microsoft will "helpfully" add all sorts of hidden bookmarks to their document. Why? I suppose there might be a Software Engineer at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond who knows a feasible reason, but the bottom line is, these "Hidden" bookmarks are just for the software's internal use. They do not add anything to the reader experience and they certainly do not help your Word document become an eBook.




Why Should You Care?
This is an especially critical step if you plan to generate an ePub format because the "Hidden" bookmarks will utterly confuse your NCX file (the "Navigation Control file in XML or an internal reference list like your Table of Contents, or TOC). Even if you plan to submit your book only to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform, you'll want to remove all the myriad of "Hidden" bookmarks before they trip you up.

The "Hidden" bookmarks will "translate" into HTML and XML as navigation that does not actually exist. Not only will they potentially hijack your true navigational system, but they might bloat your eBook file to the point Amazon tells you it's too large. See? It's not always your cover image file making the eBook bloated.




The Solution - The Hard Way
As with everything in life, there's an easy way and a hard way. Here's the hard way first. Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, generously outlines this Troubleshooting tip in Step 20d of his Smashwords Style Guide, which is priced at free!!

Here's a screen shot from that section of the Style Guide showing what these "Hidden" Bookmarks look like--but be warned, this is a little misleading and in a kind of critical way: you cannot select multiple bookmarks from this dialog box  :-(




In Step 20d of the Smashwords Style Guide, Mark explains how to remove the "Hidden" bookmarks prior to submitting your Word document for conversion into an eBook by doing it one at a time--the hard way. I'm going to explain to you an easier way. Even if it seems a little daunting at first, trust me, automation is easier than thelong, drawn out tedious process of selecting one "Hidden" bookmark at a time and clicking delete for each and every one of them. You may have 100 or more of these buggers hiding in your document!



The Solution - The Easy Way
Behind the scenes of your Word document, Microsoft is creating an XML file, a file in the markup language similar to what's used to create web sites. Your document is like a miniature web site. As such, the document has a fairly standard structure, following the rules of how XML says to structure a web site or web page.

In addition, since early on in the history of Microsoft Word, Microsoft has allowed users to access this XML (was a slightly different markup language back then, called SGML) using a programming language Microsoft created and defined: Visual Basic. They let you record what you're doing in Microsoft Word and "save" those steps in something called a "Macro." Then, later, you can do all of those steps again - automatically, with one click! - by simply "running" the Macro.

As you can guess, there is a way to run a Macro to remove all "Hidden" bookmarks in one click.  In fact, the Microsoft Office support page at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184041 has free code to do it for you. I've used it and can attest that works just great. All you have to do is get it into your document and "run" it. That's where many of you might not know what to do and what I'll cover in the rest of this Tuesday Tip (after the code snippet).

If you already know how to setup and run a Macro in Microsoft Word, here's the code to use to remove only the "Hidden" bookmarks (not "all" bookmarks). Your bookmarks for your TOC will remain just as they were but I suggest you run this Macro before you setup your TOC, just to be safe.

Code to Strip Hidden Bookmarks from an MS Word DocumentSub StripHiddenBookmarks()
Dim stBookmark As Bookmark
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.ShowHidden = True
If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count >= 1 Then
For Each stBookmark In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
If Left(stBookmark, 1) = "_" Then
stBookmark.Delete
End If
Next stBookmark
End If
End Sub

Now, for those of you who do not know how to setup and run a Macro, here are the steps - with pictures! ^)^



Step 1: Open the Visual Basic Editor
On the Tools menu, select Macro and then the submenu for Visual Basic Editor. The Visual Basic Editor will open in a new window.



Shortcut: You can also just press Alt-F11 from anywhere in the document to open the Visual Basic Editor in a new window.





Step 2: Copy/Paste the Code
Highlight the code shown above (only the preformatted text, not the heading) and paste it into the empty Visual Basic Editor window (the one in the screen shot with "(General)" above it). Now your screen should look like this:




Notice that the title of the code "StripHiddenBookmarks" will get automatically filled into the little pulldown list on the right (which was previously blank).



Step 3: Save Your Macro
You need to save the code in your document. This will add it to your Normal.dot Template so it'll be available in all future documents you create, too. Click the disk icon OR choose "Save Normal" from the File menu OR just press Ctrl-S.

Step 4: Run Your Macro
You can run the Macro from the Visual Basic Editor OR you can run it later from inside your Word doc. First let's run it now while it's right there in front of you. Choose the Run menu and select "Run Sub/UserForm" or just press Ctrl-F5 to run it. Since the "StripHiddenBookmarks" macro is the only one you have, it will be the default one to run if you press Ctrl-F5.




To confirm for yourself and see that your document is free of "Hidden" bookmarks, go to the Insert menu and select Bookmarks... then uncheck and recheck the "Hidden bookmarks" checkbox. If you had any before, you won't now. It's just that easy.


Although it is unlikely you will ever want to remove all bookmarks (versus just the annoying "Hidden" ones), Microsoft provided the following second snippet of code on the same page so I'm providing it to you also. To use it, just follow the same steps as above, replacing the "StripHiddenBookmarks" code with the following:

Code to Strip All Bookmarks from an MS Word DocumentSub StripAllBookmarks()
Dim stBookmark As Bookmark
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.ShowHidden = True
If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Count >= 1 Then
For Each stBookmark In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
stBookmark.Delete
Next stBookmark
End If
End Sub

Don't forget to save and run it after you copy/paste it into the Visual Basic Editor! I hope you found today's Tuesday Tip helpful. In case you haven't already figured it out, you can actually use these steps to add other macros to your documents to do other things. There are programmers out there who write--and give away free--code to do all kinds of things. Now that you know how to get it into your document, give it a try.

Just be careful to only use macros from trusted sources . As you might be able to guess, a macro is a great way to trick you into running malicious code on your computer--sabotaging yourself! If you don't know or trust the source, don't use their macros. The Microsoft Office Support site has a great "knowledge base" (kb) of helpful macros for typical tasks you might need to perform in the normal creation and preparation of documents. Get fancy at your own risk!



What's Next....Closing for the Haggim and Beyond
Right now, we're in the midst of the spring Jewish Haggim (High Holy Days). The Jewish calendar has a series of Haggim twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. In the fall, Rosh Hashanah, Yom HaKippurim and Sukkot cover a period of about 3-1/2 weeks. In the spring, Purim, Pesach (Passover), Lag B'Omer and Shavot cover a period of about 10 weeks. Although I am not right-wing religious, I've decided to take some time out for spiritual reflection. I need to examine my life and life choices--plus, at the end of the Haggim (around Memorial Day) I'll have to move residences again. It seems like a good time to do a little focusing and re-evaluation.

On top of that I've been wanting to give the blog a major overhaul, moving the content off of Google's Blogger and onto a Wordpress site, since I already own one. When I do "come back online" it'll be with a new site and a new look. I hope I see you then, but I'll understand if many of you drop off the follower list during the transfer.

If you're already following me via the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Page, you don't have to do anything. If you're not, be sure to "like" the Page and pull down the "like" button to select "Show in Newsfeed" and you'll see my posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

MONDAY MARKETING Content is Still King #branding #pubtip #indie #selfpub

Welcome to my last marketing blog for a while. For more on why that is, see the "What's Next..." section at the end of the post. If you're just interested in reading today's post, click through the jump break.

Today, I'm going to talk about a favorite topic of Indie Authors: words. No word is ever taken alone and we Indie Authors rarely offer just one. Every word we offer, however, will be received by the listener or reader in a pre-existing context of their mind. Each word we choose carries connotations, a point I touched on last week. The key, therefore, is to use words that will create the connotations or perception to match your Author Brand, and thereby maintain your position -- or establish one if you're still working on getting inside your readers' minds.

What's amazing to me is that we writers don't choose our words more carefully. Click through the jump break for more on this puzzling phenomenon.


Content or Content-Marketing?
The fact that consumers only evaluate products against a context which pre-exists inside their minds has annoyed and perplexed marketers for generations. Al Ries came up with this term "positioning" which explains what the phenomenon is but it doesn't tell you what to do about it. Or not exactly.

As Indie Authors, we produce content, and then we try to conduct marketing activities to sell our content. But are we content-marketing? Do you even know what "content marketing" is? Here's a good definition from "The Content Marketing Institute" (talk about a selling site name!):

Content marketing is [...] creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a [...] target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Basically, content marketing is the art of communicating with your customers [...] without selling. It is non-interruption marketing. Instead of pitching your products or services, you are delivering information that makes your buyer more intelligent. The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we[...] deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information [they'll] reward us with their business and loyalty.

Sounds exactly like the goal of branding--but more actionable, more centered on the words we choose. As Indie Authors, we are in the golden position of having our product and our "content" being one and the same. We can deliver the content message and our product at the same time--and without using a "hard sell" approach.

Free sampling of a book is still the #1 most powerful sales tool after effective cover art. The strategy of "content marketing" is the reason why. If you are not providing a free sample or if your sample (the first part your book) is not well-written, your sales record will reflect the lack. If your sample is great and you offer it free but are still not getting sales, consider having the sample available in other places, too. Then add a link from those other places--Goodreads, your blog, wherever you can get someone to post an excerpt of your book--to a sales page.

You do still have to ask for the sale but you don't have to do it up front. In fact, it's best to pitch the brand, hooking the consumer's interest so they'll "pull" the sample on their own volition, and then have the link there to ask for the sale after they've enjoyed the freebie.



What's Next....Closing for the Haggim and Beyond
Right now, we're in the midst of the spring Jewish Haggim (High Holy Days). The Jewish calendar has a series of Haggim twice a year, in the spring and in the fall. In the fall, Rosh Hashanah, Yom HaKippurim and Sukkot cover a period of about 3-1/2 weeks. In the spring, Purim, Pesach (Passover), Lag B'Omer and Shavot cover a period of about 10 weeks. Although I am not right-wing religious, I've decided to take some time out for spiritual reflection. I need to examine my life and life choices--plus, at the end of the Haggim (around Memorial Day) I'll have to move residences again. It seems like a good time to do a little focusing and re-evaluation.

On top of that I've been wanting to give the blog a major overhaul, moving the content off of Google's Blogger and onto a Wordpress site, since I already own one. When I do "come back online" it'll be with a new site and a new look. I hope I see you then, but I'll understand if many of you drop off the follower list. If you're already following me via the Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Page, you don't have to do anything. If you're not, be sure to "like" the Page and pull down the "like" button to select "Show in Newsfeed" and you'll see my posts.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

TUESDAY TIP #Amazon's Latest Hostile Move + 6 Tips to Revive Dead Sales Records @markcoker @Cassie629 @Dranea79

Okay, the officially Tuesday Tip is here. I am not a fan of Amazon's business practices, as regular readers will know. I don't object to the Kindle Store as a concept. I object to the way Amazon runs the business and treats the content providers--Indie Authors, specifically. I've been online "forever" and I actually remember when Amazon.com first opened. The slogan "World-Class Customer Service" was there from the start, but in the 1990s, Jeff Bezos started moving further and further away from his customer's needs and more towards his company's growth.

I don't like exclusionary or restrictive attitudes in general and especially not in an industry where openness and availability are key to success. Amazon's latest hostile move is a refusal to pay Affiliates advertising fees to any site that "primarily" promotes free Kindle eBooks, where "primarily" is a term that will be defined by data only Amazon will have access to review. This news came at the start of Read an eBook Week with tens of thousands of eBooks going on promo as free free free to drive traffic to Indie Authors' Amazon pages. Not exactly a way to say thank you to your content providers or highest referring URLs, is it?

On the upside of the coin, however, Mark Coker, found of Smashwords, decided to blog "6 Tips" of advice to Indie Authors on how to make their books more appealing--and he encouraged participation in the site-wide promotional catalog he set up for the week-long event this week. The contrast is, I hope, obvious. Click through to read more from both sides of this Digital Publishing coin.





The Issue
Amazon is in the business to make money. I get it. It's their site and they want to make a profit off of every visitor who lands there. I really do get that part. That's just basic business sense. But being penny-wise and pound-foolish is not the way to maintain a content-rich site--it never has been nor will it ever be. The internet is just too full of opportunity to support a Grinchy Scrooge approach.

Amazon isn't just restricting the marketing decisions of the content providers (Indie Authors) anymore. Now they're restricting the choices of the Affiliates (or Associates) who drive the traffic to the Amazon sites from their own web sites. One of those sites is the huge repository of Michael Gallagher's blog here. Read over his article. He's one of the Affiliates that was making a living providing Kindle readers with links to free Kindle books--and Amazon is threatening to stop paying him for the 20,000+ referrals he sends to them daily . It's just wrong.



The Solution
Happily, Gallagher like so many others, isn't folding. He's regrouping. Smashwords offers Kindle books too. In fact, a lot of sites offer free Kindle books but Smashwords is probably the most secure, best-maintained and offers the widest selection. Give Gallagher a referral fee by clicking here to shop. With that "?ref=gagler" at the end of the link, he'll earn up to 15% of the cover price for all your purchases at Smashwords in that one visit. Don't forget, this week, tens of thousands of eBooks are on promo at Smashwords in the Read an Ebook Week Catalog.



WARNING: Shameless Shelf Promotion
As you might guess, I have my books entered into the Read an Ebook Week Promo Catalog at Smashwords. I have 2 offered for free and 2 on deep discounts. All require the Smashwords coupon codes at checkout so the regular prices appear on the book pages and Amazon will not "suddenly" reprice my books. I hope! Here are my links and discount codes if you haven't seen them already:



Get my marketing handbook, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (for Indie Authors) FREE by using coupon code RW100 at checkout.

Get my Jewish Inspirational / Romantic Comedy, Coming Home (Dicky's Story) for 75% off (or only $1.50 after you apply the coupon code REW75 at checkout).

My SciFi books in The Phoenician Series are on sale, too.

Start with the short story/novella When Minds Collide which is FREE when you use code RW100 at checkout.

Then get the long novel, Conditioned Response for 50% off by using code REW50 at checkout.

In case you hadn't already heard, I'm working on the new book in the SciFi series. I've just finished the outline and its story will fall in between When Minds Collide and Conditioned Response on the series timeline. When it comes out all depends on how quickly I can find a new day job (I want a desk job this time!) to pay the damned bills so I can focus on writing. *grrrrr*  I was designed to write; it's my purpose in life but funding this habit is such a PITA ^_^

Speaking about PITA, if you want to review a book these days, you usually have to have bought a copy. Smashwords books are no exception. If you've already read and reviewed an eBook, check the Smashwords catalot to see if it's being offered free for Read an eBook Week. Then you can get a copy while it's free, thus making you a "paying customer" at Smashwords, and that in turn means you can copy your review from Goodreads or your blog or wherever you previously had it posted. This great idea of how to support Indie Authors and it came from Indie Author and semi-professional Book Reviewer, Sadie S. Forsythe.

If you have your own books in the promo at Smashwords, you can post a comment here or on Sadie's blog thread (or both!) to provide readers with the URL where they can get your free or deeply-discounted book for Read an eBook Week. You might even get a review out of it ^)^






6 Tips to Revive a Dying eBook
Related to Read an eBook Week is the subject of how to boost sales. Even if your eBook sales have been dropping off--or have stopped completely--there are steps you can take to bring the trend back to life. Founder of Smashwords, Mark Coker, recently wrote a nice blog post detailing 6 things you can do to boost sales. It's not the first time he's written one of these--nor my first time either :) so here are some tips to turn that autopsy into a publicity bonanza.


1) Set it free! Set it free! It's not just Read an eBook Week, it's Read an eBook Month! Making your book free to boost reader interest and possibly garner some reviews was Tip #1. Here are the other 5, summarized. Get the full deets on the Smashwords Blog.

2) Freshen up your cover image. I like the little test he suggested. If you removed the title and author name (all of the text) from the cover image, would you immediately "know" what genre the book was? What the story promised to deliver? This kind of a test is precisely why I'm currently in the process of cartooning new covers for The Phoenician Series. I can't really afford to hire a graphic artist to design something so I'm doing it myself.

I haven't cartooned in 30 years so it's slow-going and may not be the most expert job in the end but I find I'm enjoying it as a creative outlet just as much as I enjoy writing the books. You might find the creation of a new cover concept is fun if you're doing it a year after you released the book. Now that you've gotten a little distance from the story and aren't immersed in writing the book, you might find you have a whole new outlook on what should be on the cover. Sometimes, we authors get so focused on our story that we fail to understand what visuals will really hook the readers. No, really! (LOL)

3) Check your pricing. Too high or too low, you have to have the "right" price for your genre, book length and quality of work. If you haven't really spent time proofreading--and you know it--you can't charge $9.99 for it. By the same token, charging 99 cents for an epic-length novel devalues the product.

Mark's done a few Slideshare presentations on the subject of pricing and I urge you to review at least one of them. Also, I've got a good marketing piece in my positioning series on pricing creneaus. I've done several marketing blogs on the subject of pricing actually. Think carefully about what you're charging per unit. Don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Don't give it away too cheap either. Find the sweet spot for your specific book.

4) Consider your conversion rates. In Mark's blog, he focuses on the conversion rate from when a reader downloads a sample of your book to when there is a download of the book from a paying customer. Since a paying customer can download the book multiple times--or once, a week or a month after purchasing the book--it's not a great rule but I've found it usually takes my readers 1-3 days to convert a sample download into a purchase.

I look at the purchase events rather than the downloads by paying customers and can tell the conversion rate of my sample to book is fairly high. Usually. What's low for me is the conversion rate of click-through's to the book page into downloads of the sample. That says to me that my descriptions are still not working. If you're not even getting click-throughs then your posts providing the link aren't working. Reconsider where, when and at what frequency you post the links. If you tweet the link once an hour, forex, it's probably annoying people and you may have saturated your reading audience. Try posting the link somewhere other than Twitter. Try a different method of "pitching" the book to get the link noticed.

No matter what step in the process you look at, you have several conversion rates to examine. Look at each step to determine which one of your many sales tools is broken--and then fix it. Or try. (I'm not Yoda, I believe in trying!)

5) Target Markets. This is discussed in my marketing handbook (which is free right now!) The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (for Indie Authors) .  Check out Law 13: Sacrifice. Sometimes you need to sacrifice and lose the battle to win the war. You always need to know who your target audience is, however. Pitch your book to readers who'll actually be interested. If you've just indiscriminantly been pitching your book as far and wide as possible, that might be part of your problem. Look for the "qualified lead" type of opportunity before you spin your wheels on--oh, shiny!

6) Never Give Up. I think this one is self-explanatory but just in case.... This does not mean you should keep doing the same things again and again but expect that, "magically" one day, you'll get a different result. Puh-leeeese. What you should do is not quit. If Plan A doesn't work, try Plan B. If that fails, try Plan C. If you get to Plan Z and still have no success, consult an expert--forex, hire a professional editor to tell you what is wrong with your writing. It's not a matter of proofreading; editing is far more than that! If you cannot master the mechanical skills of writing a book and weaving a story, you might be in the wrong line of work but if you have great story ideas that just won't stop, don't give up. Hire someone to help you.

I'm not just pushing my own financial interests but yes, I do developmental editing. Sometimes it's easier for an outside pair of eyes to get an objective perspective. There's a reason we writers love writers groups! Having someone else read and critique your work helps you fix your issues. That's not me pitching my services; that's just truth. Writers' groups have been around as long as writers have been writing.

So. I'll read your book before I talk to you about how to fix it and I'll try to figure out the changes to make it work--and then I'll expect you to make them. I won't do the rewrites for you. How would you learn anything that way? Besides, it's your book and your name has to go on it. I work with authors the way I'd like an editor to work with me--but I don't come cheap. Also, given I'm currently searching for a day job, I'm about to get busy so I can't promise a one-week turnaround.

There are a lot of great editors out there, though. In addition to myself, I can highly recommend Cassie Kelly McCown over at Gathering Leaves, with whom I've worked on all of my books. I can also recommend Amy Eye at The Eyes for Editing (though I've never worked with her myself, I've seen her work products). Both ladies are also open to negotiating fees for those who are just starting out.

The Indie Publishing community is a very supportive one--but you have to ask for help and not just get frustrated and give up. Writing is fun but publishing is work. To quote a bestseller (The Old Testament Holy Bible) Begin the work and I'll work alongside you. If you want to hire me, email webbiegrrlwriter at gmail dot com and put "editing" somewhere in the subject line. Give me an idea of where your project is in terms of completion and I'll give you a quote on rates and timeframe. The more iterations we have to go through, the more expensive it gets for you so I prefer to join your effort later in the process but if you've got the money to spend, I would love to forego getting a day job for another month! Drop me an email today!



What's Next....
Next Monday we'll be back to talking publicity and on Tuesday, at long last, I'll publish this tip on how to remove those nasty and annoying hidden bookmarks in MS Word before they eat up your NCX and destroy your ePub or other eBook format. Hope to see you then.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

2 Tips in Favor of #FREE for #ebookweek #RAEW #indie #selfpub @markcoker @SadieSForsythe @amandapalmer @ThisIsSethsBlog

It may not be Tuesday but I have too many tips to jam-pack them all into one post this week, so I'm posting half of the discussion half a day early. I know you'll all hate me (not). Some of this stuff is time-sensitive and it's all inter-connected in my mind, so soak it all in overnight and come back tomorrow for the "real" Tuesday Tip. Here are the highlights of what's beyond the jump-break today:
(1) Read an eBook Week, the annual event first started by Rita Y. Toews in 2004 to promote public awareness of Digital Publishing and of course, to promote literacy around the world began on Sunday March 3d and runs through Sat March 9th. I've got 4 books entered under my 3 pen names; how's about you?
(2) Fan Patronage of the Arts as promoted by singer/songwriter/performance artist, Amanda Palmer and her "Art of Asking" speech to a TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) audience. Her move was considered radical--still is--but it's an old idea. My #1 favorite model was described in March, 2008 by Kevin Kelly in his 1000 True Fans model. Even his naming of this concept wasn't the original idea but his supporting articles (linked at the end of the 1000 True Fans post) are well-worth reading!
Click through the jump break to read more about each topic.



1) Read an eBook Week (#ebookweek)
I look forward to Read an eBook Week each year. It doesn't matter what titles I have out or am working on, it's an exciting time of year for eBook lovers--readers and authors alike. It's not just that there are a bazillion free eBooks out there; it's that the entire world is celebrating reading and getting online to do it. Check out the Twitter hashes for the event. The official one is #ebookweek or #REBW but this year, Smashwords and others have been using #RAEW. Checking any of those searches on Twitter will help readers find books or if you're an author, that's a great way to tweet about your own promos for the weekly celebration. Actually the celebration goes on all month, if you want to be technical about it.

If you have your book on your web site or blog (that is, readers can download a file directly) and you're making it free for this week, (a) yay, you! and (b) contact Rita Toews to request she add your book title and web site link to her list here. You can email her at r.toews at shaw.ca (that's a Canadian address) and you should put "Read an E-Book Week" (no quotes) into the subject line for her filters.

Then be sure to visit this page to pick up a badge or banner to display on your site linking back to her and supporting the entire event. You can get more ideas from Rita on her promote REBW page.

Don't forget, even if you don't have your book on your web site or blog (I don't!) but you have your book published via Smashwords, you can enroll your titles in the site-wide Smashwords Read an Ebook Week catalog - this is fed out through app stores to Aldiko and Stanza, too! Enroll your books now using the RAEW enrollment link on the Smashwords home page. I have mine enrolled and yeah, I have to do a little shameless shelf-promoting:

Get my Jewish Inspirational / Romantic Comedy, Coming Home (Dicky's Story) for 75% off (or only $1.50 after you apply the coupon code REW75 at checkout).


Get my marketing handbook, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing (for Indie Authors)   FREE by using coupon code RW100 at checkout.

You can try my--I mean, "Friday's"--SciFi books in The Phoenician Series, too.

I suggest you start with When Minds Collide which is FREE when you use code RW100 at checkout.

Get the long novel, Conditioned Response for 50% off by using code REW50 at checkout.

In case you hadn't already heard, I'm working on the new book which will fall in between these two on the series timeline. It's coming out great! I'm about 75% done so it shouldn't be long now--all depends on how quickly I can find a day job to pay the damned bills so I can focus on writing. *grrrrr* This battle to fund my writing habit just never ends! More on that below, though.

Last thing to note for Read an eBook Week. A great idea from Indie Author and semi-professional Book Reviewer, Sadie S. Forsythe (emphasis and notes added by me)

See something you’ve read and reviewed elsewhere? (e.g. posted a review on Goodreads, where it's free to post?) Why not grab a Smashwords copy while it’s free so you can post a review there? (Smashwords only allows paying customers to post reviews but with a coupon code to get it for free, you are a paying customer!) The author will love you forever... (too true, too true!)

If you'd like to be linked on Sadie's blog, she's been adding to her list, so just leave your deets in her comment thread here. A tweet @SadieSForsythe or link back would be a nice way to say thank you to her for the linkage.



2) The Art of Asking
Amanda Palmer--or as she's more properly known, AFP (which does actually stand for Amanda Fucking Palmer) gave an amazing presentation to the TED Audience last month on the subject of asking fans to support you--financially. That is, giving them your products free and trusting that they will want to pay you for your art.

She nailed it (for me, anyway) when she noted that the thing holding most of us back is fear. Fear of reprisal from our colleagues. Fear of failure to receive sufficient support from our fans. Fear of failure, period. Maybe it's fear of rejection or lack of acceptance, which aren't actually the same thing. It's definitely fear standing firmly between most of us and the full-on commitment to just make everything we produce free free free.  Watch her presentation in the video below (it's not all that long and it will move you, I think) and then think about it in terms of your books.




Amazon pushes KDP Select by dangling in front of you a carrot of the power to make your books free for 5 days in your 90-day enrollment period. They claim they'll pay you $2 for every time your "free" book is borrowed by one of their Amazon Prime customers, but how much does anyone really make? I've heard of some little hiccups in sales but it's temporary. In limited form. The authors I know who've made anything out of KDP Select have done it with one book free and the rest for-pay. Has anyone made everything free?

AFP leveraged her fanbase by exploiting the existing system at Kickstarter. Has anyone here ever tried to raise funds via Kickstarter? I have. Leastways, I've looked into it. For us Indie Authors it's not easy to work around the restrictions. The only way I saw to do it was to mealy-mouth around the rules or flat-out lie. My integrity wouldn't allow me to do either one. I have to sleep at night, you know?

Kickstarter is incredibly clear about prohibiting anyone from raising "life support" funds just to focus on your art. (see guidelines paragraph #3) You must have a tangible product with measurable progress and a finite delivery date at the end when your project can be deemed "completed" or "incomplete." Publishing a book on a specific date, forex, would work, but you'd have to have specific costs that you could attribute to the publication of the book--not your life while you're scrambling to publish the book. Of course, I did write a whole chapter on how to calculate these costs (see Ch 22 of my marketing handbook, which is free right now).

You also really do need to have a video presentation if you want to raise money. The most-successful pitches are done as videos--and I do not mean book trailers, but video presentations. That's another block for me. I'm not willing to go on video with my friends and lovers, let alone with strangers (O_o)  So for me, Kickstarter has been a non-starter. Until now. AFP has gotten me thinking about it again. There's got to be a way around these obstacles, right?

All I want to do is write. I was designed for this. I want this. I can do this and do it well. So how to get my 1000 True Fans -- or however many I have at this point, maybe only 100 would be my guess -- to donate to my cause? According to AFP all I have to do is ask. I think musicians and street performers have a better situation when it comes to finding a way to face their fans...well, face to face. Authors don't normally go on tour, physically. Especially not Indie Authors in a Digital Publishing industry. We do blog tours--virtually, not physically.

We don't get a chance for that magical eye contact Amanda's talking about. I know what she means. It's a pretty powerful moment when you have one. I've had a few of those in my life--few enough to count on one hand and possibly have a finger left over. None of them has been related to my writing, though.

Then I just so happened upon a golden nugget--timing, I guess. Seth Godin, the social media guru, has a Kickstarter project here and said:

"Please help me show my publisher, the bookstores and anyone with a book worth writing that it's possible to start a project with a show of support on Kickstarter."

Hm, was he talking to me? This blog discussion? Almost seems like it, doesn't it? Godin's Kickstarter project Why Make Art? was over-funded in its 29 days of life (no big surprise there). Godin made a great point in his pitch -- he's a great communicator. It always amazes me what he gets across in 140 characters. In his Kickstarter pitch, he said:

"This project on Kickstarter is my way to organize the tribe, to send a signal to risk-averse publishers and booksellers [...] loud and clear that this is a book that's going to get talked about."

In other words, he's creating advance publicity, hype and buzz prior to publication--with no risk involved because he won't produce the book unless or until the project is fully-funded. This directly relates to the last several weeks' worth of Monday Marketing blogs I've been posting. If you haven't been reading my thoughts on publicity, check some of the posts now.

I love Godin's comments in the video about his love of books. More importantly, though, his remarks about how to properly use Kickstarter in a "hybrid" business model really hit home for me. I think it's what my gut has known for these past 2 years while I've been struggling to crank out my measly 4 titles under my 3 pen names at the same time as living in poverty working manual labor jobs--literally being a "starving artist." Kickstarter is about leveraging the tribe and not about building it. Watch Godin's little speech below. It's worth the 3 minutes of your life.




Remember, you cannot succeed on Kickstarter without a tribe to whom to pitch--and you need to know your own tribe's limits. I firmly believe I have accumulated a tribe of about 100 members--but only a hundred. I don't think 100 True Fans can fund my life for 6-12 months nor do I really believe they should be asked to try! I need a larger tribe before I move to the Kickstarter model, so as I've been saying, I need a new day job, a solid/secure place to live where I can crank out another 1-2 books under each of my pen names and then I should have enough of a following, a tribe, to tap them for support--and get it. I'm not afraid to ask anymore but I'm afraid of dying before I get there.

On that grim but honest note (LOL) I urge everyone reading this to consider downloading and reading at least one eBook this week. It doesn't matter whose it is or even if it's from Smashwords (though I do love Smashwords!) but after you're done reading it, whether you enjoyed it or not, write the author a review. Give back some time and effort. It's the next best thing to money.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

MONDAY MARKETING Publicity without Press Releases #indie #selfpub #pubtip #mywana #pr #promo

In last week's Monday blog, I discussed some of the various ways Indie Authors could pursue publicity opportunities by sending out press releases, including the acquisition of a "Keystone Placement" which could later be turned into a credential.

For instance, for Digital Publishers, a review by Publishers Weekly could deliver a high ROI (Return on Investment) because Publishers Weekly is the leading trade magazine of our industry. Unfortunately, for Indie Authors, there's a hefty fee of $149 to purchase a "subscription" to PW Select which entitles you to request a review and only 25% of the PW Select books actually do get selected and reviewed.

If you have $149 to spend on the gamble, however, your investment could produce a quotable quote that helps you sell books. It all depends on how good the review you get really is -- and how good a spin doctor you are in terms of extracting a marketable quote from the review.

Not all of us have money to burn on a risky gamble, myself definitely being included in the tight-purse-strings group, so this week, I'll look at how to publicize your Brand without sending out press releases. It's more work for you, but it's an otherwise no-cost effort. Your time is money but doing marketing work is time or money well-spent. Click through to learn how.




Making It Personal
First, let's agree on our understanding of publicity and from whence it comes. To paraphrase the famous NRA slogan: products don't create publicity (buzz); people do. When people talk about a product, it comes alive. Without people, products are just inert, inanimate objects that people may or may not know exist.

Furthermore, when people talk about a product, it's not even the product they're actually discussing. In reality, they're talking about their reaction to the product. The people to whom they make these remarks are interested in how a product affects others so they can make an educated guess at how it will affect them, personally. Publicity is always personal because it taps directly into a consumer's "positioning" strategy for their world.

That is, hearing something new, a consumer must either accept or reject the information heard, and if accepted, they must "position" it in the context of their mind. This is what's called their set of product ladders. Every person has a set and every set is different. Publicity buzz is what happens when mutliple people define their product ladders in the same way at the same time.

Books are definitely a prime example of this. When people discuss a book, as many Indie Authors know, they make it personal. Readers unfortunately talk about what the author did or didn't do, rather than what happens in the book. It's as though the author is under review, not the story. Why is that? Much as you might not like to hear it, the reason is that the Author is what holds interests to the readers. That's why the Author Name Brand is so critical. You are your brand--or rather, you, after the spin doctor's done fixing your hair.




News Media for Books
Just as Newsweek or the Huffington Post are called "news media," allegedly report events that affect the world in which we live, the "news media" for the book world should report events that affect the book industry. Publicity should focus on the Author Brands available from which we readers can choose, and not simply advertise individual book products. Book bloggers and book-sharing sites like Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari, are the book version of news media networks.

When people on these sites talk about books or label/review/flag books, other readers listen. Other readers want to know what "someone they trust" thinks about this new Author Brand so they can decide if they, too, should try it out. Readers aren't actually determining anything about the book, itself, but rather, in their minds, they are assigning new connotations to the Author Brand's position.

Every time a review is posted or someone shelves your book or a discussion about your book is started, that event is publicity. Other users of the site will notice it and even if they don't know the person who shelved your book or flagged it or starred it or did whatever kind of interaction with it, each person who interacts with a book's page is making a "statement" about the Author Brand. Positive statements are positive publicity; negative statements are bad publicity. Pretty simple, right?

This is why, when one of the bullies on Goodreads creates a nasty-named shelf and labels your book with a negative connotation, it's deliberate negative publicity--and it does hurt your Author Brand. The key is to get enough positive publicity to drown out the negative. By the same token, don't collect too much positive publicity too quickly or it becomes less credible. Try other methods as well beyond reviews.



Getting Up Close - Not Personal
When an author makes a "guest blog appearance" or participates in a "blog tour" (collection of blog appearances), this is another opportunity for publicity. The truth is, readers want both an interview and a book review, so the typical book blogger will combine the two. Still, you'll find most focus more on discussion of how and why the author wrote the book the way they did, than on who the author is as a person. It is more about the public interface of the Author Brand through the book to the readers than about whether the author prefers rocky road ice cream more than strawberry flavor.

Trust me, unless or until you are a celebrity author, no one cares what you eat or wear or even what you look like. Well, okay, most readers want to see a picture of the author but they don't really want to think about that image when they're reading your book. They want to envision your characters, your world, not you.

Ever hear about Tom Clancy's personal life? How about Stephen King? Well, King is an exception; he makes his own rules but even at his level of celebrity, very little is known about him personally beyond his "personal" writing habits. That's on purpose. You are an Author Brand, not just an author. When you make a public appearance--like on a blog tour--don't be "you"; be your brand.

Give great details about how the book(s) developed to this point, what's in store for the future of the characters or new books coming and when. All of these things are important to the reader--it's "what's in it for them?" and honestly, that's all they care about at the end of the day. No matter what any interviewer asks, never answer with personal details. I made this mistake last year. I'll never live it down now.

The best author interviews will focus on the attributes of the Author Brand that make their stories unique; not on the author's unique personality.

Fans want to know what your plans are for their buying future. Remember, a brand's power lies in its ability to influence a purchasing decision. Letting fans know the future plans for your books is the #1 most-powerful kind of publicity you can deliver.



What's Next....
Well, I was going to do a little tutorial on how to remove all those nasty hidden bookmarks from a Microsoft Word file but this weekend and week all kinds of news has broken in the Digital Publishing world. Tomorrow's Tuesday tip will be another roundup of bits and pieces, starting with Amazon's latest and greatest destructive act: refusal to pay Affiliate Fees to anyone who promotes free Kindle books "too much."

Yeah, "too much" is a very subjective term. If you can't wait until tomorrow to read up on this, check out Michael Gallagher's blog here.

Also, since it's Read an eBook Week over at Smashwords, there are all kinds of free eBooks--including Kindle books! They're not priced at free; you need a Smashwords coupon code. Be sure to check out my Webbiegrrl Writer Facebook Page and my Phoenician Series Facebook Page for discounts and codes on all 4 of my books. The two short ones are free; the long novels are deeply discounted.

TUESDAY TIP 3 Social Media Styles for #Indie #Authors #selfpub #pubtip #promo

Over the last couple of weeks, my favorite social media trade publication, Mashable, has run a few articles on different styles of social media presence for different kinds of businesses. None of them was written in a way making the advice immediately obvious to an Indie Author or other Digital Publishing professionals. However, I immediately saw how it translated into my own activities, so I thought I'd "translate" for the rest of you. Click through to get the scoop.



3 Social Marketing Styles
In this Mashable article, Todd Wasserman identified three different "styles" of social media presence that he believed made some businesses successful at leveraging sites like Facebook and Twitter. As the article states, successful companies found a way to:
Connect with fans on the subject of a shared passion and/or interest. Entertain fans with their engaging personality. Provide fans with interesting and/or important content.

If you're following Webbiegrrl Writer on Facebook, you'll know, I dabble in a little of all three. Wasserman advises, however, that I should focus on just one. He couldn't be more right about that! My favorite marketing guru, Al Ries, cites this as his #1 piece of advice on strengthening a brand: focus, focus, focus. So here's how to translate each of the three styles into actual actions an Indie Author can take.


1) Being Passionate About Books
Most authors try this tactic and share a flood of posts on their Facebook newsfeed all about books--all books, including their friends' and their favorites from their own recently read list. In other words, these Indie Authors are passionate about all books. That makes sense--but is it the right choice for sharing on your Facebook newsfeed? Do your fans want to know what you're reading--or what you're writing so that they can read it?

While it's a great choice for a book blogger or book reviewer to post about all of their favorite books in the world, it's not going to promote an individual Author Brand. Simply flooding your newsfeed with advertisements isn't the answer either; your fans will get bored or outright fed up with all the advertisements and just leave.

An Indie Author should focus on the genre or category of books which they, themselves, write. Post about your competition but don't necessarily write them a review. Just provide your fans with news about your categor, who's releasing what and when. If you really like one of your competitors, then go ahead and promote them but try not to convince your own fans to read the competition instead of yourself. ^)^

Promoting the category, not merely your own Brand Name, is the strongest branding choice you can make according to the Law of Category (Immutable Law of Branding 8 or Immutable Law of Marketing 2). The more your readers become aware of the category -- and who writes in it -- the more likely they are to "position" you in that category in their minds. If you're a leading source of information for them about the category, they'll also be more likely to look for your books than others' when they're browsing the category in a bookstore.

When it comes to marketing and branding, being the "leader" is not about being the #1 Amazon rank, but rather, being the first name the reader thinks of when they think of that category! Using social media to "be passionate about books" means you become the "expert" in your field in the minds of your fans.



2) Entertain with an Engaging Personality
Okay, I'll admit it, I'm a pretty high-energy personality and when I have time to "be" on social media, I'm pretty darn engaging. Or snarky. I always get those two confused :) I type incredibly fast and never run out of things to say--only time in which to say them--so I could keep a newsfeed flood just with my innane chatter. Not that the bulk of what I say is exactly innane ((grin))

Luckily for my fans, I don't spend much time online for long enough lengths of time to bore everyone I know to tears, so this is probably not where I would say I focus my energies. I do not "join every conversation, and I suspect my fans on Twitter lose interest when I disappear for a while.

If you're online all the time, however, or take it with you (forex, enjoy using an app on your phone, something I loathe doing because of the tiny keyboard on my Android phone), this might be the style approach for you. I would still, however, advise you focus your "charismatic personality" on your Author Brand and not just you and your life in general. Don't tweet what you had for dinner without mentioning how it relates to your writing. Call it "food for thought" even if it's not--or don't tweet your dinner and lunch menu.

Maybe you and your fans share an interest in a television show. Whether it's The Bachelor or Grimm or some other show you love to watch and talk about, you and your fans can regularly tweet or share posts on that topic. At least, while the show's running you can.

Just be sure the topic on which you choose to entertain your fans is one that complements and does not conflict with your Author Brand. In other words, don't choose The Bachelor if you write murder mysteries or don't choose Law & Order if you write fantasy genre. Also remember that the point is to bring it back to your own writing so perhaps you might suggest ideas from an episode for a character or an event and ask your fans to tell you if they'd like to read it. Try to engage your fans in the conversation--otherwise, you're turning Style 2 into Style 1 by trying to entertain the fans yourself.




3) Provide Fans with Valuable Content
This is the hardest to do and one that risks losing fans if you misguess their interest level. A lot of Indie Authors try this approach and then get frustrated with how much free content they feel obliged to give away.

Free chapters of one of your books, serialization of a new book, advance looks at book covers, coupon codes to get free copies of your own or other books in your genre (this is obviously crossing over into promotion of the category) are all great options for "valuable" content you can provide to your fans.

However, providing content is a hard line to walk because there comes a time when your fans want everything to be free and you stop selling books. You have to find the right balance. More likely, you hook a fan community with this style, then retain them using Style 1 or 2 above.


The bottom-line secret here is to find a balance. I do a bit of all three but I'm trying more and more to focus Webbiegrrl Writer on Facebook on the subjects of my upcoming Romantic Suspense books, which will be published as Sarah R. Yoffa and not as Webbiegrrl Writer. I'm even starting to populate the new/as-yet-unused Facebook page for The Banbha Series with shares that I believe will be relevant to the books' fans. Over time, I'm trying to shift the focus of the two pages so they won't be identical.

I also maintain a third Page for The Phoenician Series and a profile for Marjorie F. Baldwin (FridayBaldwin on Facebook). Both of those streams are filled with SciFi-related and military-support-related shares...plus interesting stuff I just think is kewel. I'm still not focused there either, but I think the 5 different streams I maintain on Facebook are distinct enough you can tell the difference just by looking at them.

That's the key, I think. Being able to tell, at a glance, what the Page is "about" exactly. When one of my regular readers here, Maggie Jaimeson, first arrived and started reading the Monday Marketing blogs, Maggie asked me what Webbiegrrl's brand was, exactly. In trying to answer her, I realized, I wasn't very focused as Webbiegrrl Writer. Maybe as Sarah R. Yoffa or as Friday Baldwin, but I'm fairly sure Webbiegrrl Writer Page is still pretty vaguely-defined as an advice-giver. Do as I say, not as I do, hm? Maybe it's time Webbiegrrl took her own advice!


What's Next....
Next Monday we'll keep talking about publicity and how to generate it without sending out press releases. I hope to see you then. Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl

MONDAY MARKETING Dating UR Publicity #marketing #promotion #publicity #pubtip #indie #selfpub #promo

One of my favorite "advice columns" on how to query an Editor is Kit Whitfield's Dating Your Publisher, wherein she discusses the inappropriate things some newbie authors say or the way a newbie might say the right thing in such a very wrong way. Writing your press releases is another opportunity for catching foot-in-mouth disease. There's a right way and a wrong way to say things--and it's not just about promoting your brand, rather than your product. It's about drawing attention, standing out from the crowd and most-importantly, doing it with class.

The secret to doing publicity well is not limited to avoiding being too bland. Understanding how to write good press is also about not offending the consumer by being too personal, too lewd, too shocking, too...anything. You need to channel your inner Goldilocks and make your publicity "just right" the first time because you never get a second first impression. Click through the jump break to read more.



Picking the Right Pecker
Yeah, I'm actually referring to what you think I'm referring to here. There is a pecking order in the media industry and you must pick the right pecker at the right time and in the right place--or you are not getting lucky tonight, m'dear. That's okay, the pecking order is fairly well-known or at least, it's something you can learn how to do right with just a little advance research. You'll find it a heck of a lot easier than dating ^)^

For example, The Wall Street Journal won't do a story that has already run in USA Today; however, USA Today might be willing to do its own version of a story that ran last week in The New York Times. And none of the three of them will touch anything that appeared in Time, Newsweek or any of the major "consumer magazines." Not even the Time Magazine editors will touch a story that appeared in a supermarket tabloid.

So if you want publicity, you have to send your request to the right editors at the right time and in the right order. No one reads the media more than the media workers, themselves. They want to know why they didn't have the current "big story" first. They might decide to "find a new angle" and do their own story a week or two later. Not more than two weeks--it'll be "old news"--but not less than one week or it's "concurrent" and  makes them look like they can't get their own sources.

If you send out press releases yourself, bear all of this in mind when you address the editors and make sure to tell them about who else has run any stories on your brand, what's been said and maybe suggest a slant on a new story they can run that no one else has done yet. You never know unless you ask, so you might get turned down until you suggest a new slant they can use. The point is to make sure you remember it has to be of use to the editor, not merely to you--even if you're paying for the story to run (see "editorial islands" in advertisements).

The internal relationships between media outlets influence your publicity strategy. Some only want new ideas, some only those that have already gained credibility. Understand the difference and use the state of your brand to your advantage at all times. Just knowing "how to play the game" will make courting the press more of a "sure thing" and less of a dating challenge. So what do you do if you cannot tell who will run your story first? Just like playing the dating game, you simply have to pick one and see what happens. Make an educated choice, though.





Keystone Placement
This is exactly what it sounds like. You place an announcement or story in a media outlet where it will get some attention. It should be a media outlet you can later use as a foundation on which to build the rest of your publicity campaign. That is, you want to be able to reference the press you get in this keystone location when you pitch coverage to other editors later. You are using the pecking order to your advantage rather than having it defeat you.

If you contact a small blog or new eZine that just launched last year and only has 500 or fewer subscribers, it really won't help you. Writing to USA Today might. Obviously, it's harder to get into USA Today but again, if you don't ask, you won't find out if it's possible.

Sending a press release to The New York Times would help if they picked you up but like USA Today and other major news outlets they tend to get thousands of requests for PR (daily, not just weekly) so you'll need to either have extremely good luck, good timing or "know someone" who can get your press release read.

Instead of "knowing someone," there's always the option to use a service--PR Web comes to mind and they specialize in small business customers (yes, such as, Indie Authors). A public relations or press release service will cost you money whereas creating andsending out your own press release is free but you don't have connections--yet. If you did, you wouldn't need to get your foot in any doors. You would call your connection at The New York Times and get a review. Since you don't have the ability to just go the NYT directly, consider paying money for a service that does business with them regularly.  



Publicity Placement in the Publishing Industry 
Say that heading 3 times quickly! ^)^

One of the most-influential trade publications in our industry is called Publishers Weekly. Last year they started offering a small publicity opportunity called PW Select to Indie Authors for a small fee of $149. The name makes me cringe, deliberately linking PW Select to Amazon's KDP Select program. Given the class action lawsuit filed with the U.S. Department of Justice this past week by Indie Bookstores against Amazon and Big Six traditional publishers for violation of anti-trust laws (like the monopoly Microsoft tried with web browsers a decade ago) I'm not sure Publishers Weekly really should be getting into bed with Amazon by using a related name. It's like getting into bed with your cousin and that never ends well.

There are other, similar opportunities that don't tie you to Amazon or a law suit. You do have to look for them; they won't come looking for you. Again, it's a lot like dating. You wouldn't go out on a blind date in this day and age without running a background check, would you? Don't go sending out press releases without doing your research first. It's all part of being a Digital Publishing professional and it's not hard to do, but you do have to do it. Publicity doesn't "just happen" or happen "to you." It's something you start and the public finishes. Get started today.


What's Next....
I like to tie my Tuesday Tips to my Monday Marketing blogs so tomorrow's post will run through some tips on how to use social media to get people talking about your brand. These were all recently shared by my favorite online social medial gurus at Mashable but if you didn't see how to adapt them to being an Indie Author, be sure to stop back tomorrow and I'll try to connect the dots for you. I hope to see you then.

Thanks for stopping by!

-sry
@webbiegrrl