Deborah Riley-Magnus's Blog, page 6

Author Success Series: Cross Marketing – Crossing the Line into TURBO Creative Thinking

How creative do you really think?

As writers, we are free thinkers and do our best not to focus on the rules while we create, but those rules are there, looming even bigger if you're just getting started as an author. If you're attempting to gain a literary agent, there are all the query rules and format rules and acceptable approaches rules to consider. There are the rules about clean genre, clean manuscripts, clean elevator pitches.  If you're going the independent or small publisher route, they have their own set of requirements and each one is different. If you self-publish, there are perfect editing necessities, a formatting learning curve and of course, all the distribution and promotional systems to master.

With all these rules floating around, crowding and confusing the process from point a) the finished, beautifully imaginative novel you wrote, to point z) the actual book sales, how creative can one really be? It's as though the course of action we must take simply chokes the creativity out of us. There are so many tiny commandments to follow it's too easy to get sidetracked into pleasing the process and forgetting the book buyer.

I'm here to talk about breaking those patterns we learned in nursery school. Don't follow the rules. Don't worry about being correct. Don't question the process I'm about to suggest because if you do, you may just find yourself spending more time satisfying the "system" and never reaching your own goals.

Yes, sorry. I am from the sixties. It's time for a little REVOLUTION in the marketing process. It's time to tap into all the beautiful colors and emotions and excitement you felt while writing your book. Because frankly, if you don't recapture and convey that intensity … why should anyone want to read your book, much less pay for it?

See, it's not always just the perfect crafting of a 10 word sound bite or 25 word elevator pitch that gets someone's interest … it's the author's energy. That flash of excitement can and should be in those few words, but it also must be present in the process the author uses to communicate with the prospective buyer.

It's time for a little mind-blowing magical mystery tour. Yes, this will seem weird for anyone born after 1955 but this will be fun. AND, it's vital! I'm going to ask you to take ten minutes out of their crazy day to just sit and clear your thoughts. Come on, you can spare a few minutes away from twitter, facebook, your iPhone and texting. This is important and it's most important you do it AWAY from your technology. Go outside and sit in the grass if you can. (I said SIT in the grass, nothing else with the grass, just sit.) I know it sounds stupid but really, when your book idea came to you, what did you do? Get onto twitter and facebook? Text the world that you have an idea? My bet is that you didn't even sit at your keyboard right away. You sat someplace quiet … and you thought. I need you to get back to that emotional space. Be peaceful. Clear everything else from your mind. Breathe nice and even, meditate for a few moments if you can. Now that you're there, you can start …

Recall that process of your story, how it came to you, all the curves and u-turns it took before it became the final novel. Feel the characters, what you like and don't like about each one, explore the emotions in the events and then plant yourself firmly into the locations. Even if your book is fantasy, science fiction or deep historic, get yourself there, feel it, smell it, taste it. No grumbling. If you went this route to develop your story, it's not new to you. If you love your story, it's no hardship. AND, most importantly, if you reconnect this way, everything about marketing and cross marketing the astounding book you wrote will be that much closer to you. So get into this. I promise, it will be rewarding.

Now … come back from your journey slowly so that you can retain the magic you originally found in the story. Examine what you brought back with you. While still sitting quietly, jot down the biggest impressions you got. Now set it aside and do the whole thing again for ten minutes the next day, and the next. Do this for four or five days then collect your jotted notes and begin.

If your goal is to seriously attack and gain visibility and sales for your book, this process may seem a little bohemian, but just go with me here.

Start with the biggest impression. Perhaps it was "Green". Maybe your book is about ecology, or raising milk cows, or a romance about a playground planner falling for a beautiful politician who hates kids, but "Green" was the impression you wrote down.  The key here is "Green". If "Green" stuck with you, it will stick with readers, but the key here is to get MORE readers than the average marketing strategy will reach. Let's play a mind stretching game and find a few cross markets. How many people can you capture with "Green"?

Green – plants, the color, ecological organizations, paint stores, interior decorators
Park – city parks, town parks, park developers, art parks, car parks, antique car clubs
Farm – dairy farm, farm markets, vineyards, wine gift stores, wine tasting gatherings
Garden – gardening clubs, online gardening groups, florists, flower arranging schools
Herbs – cooking, chefs, culinary schools, cooking gadget stores, cookbook clubs
Forest – Forestry groups, camping groups, Robin Hood, survival groups
Mountain – camping, hiking, rafting, skiing, climbing, wildlife preservation
Money – teaching, becoming the expert, cross marketing, making BIG sales

That last one is me, getting you back to practicality but first let's talk about the other ideas. As you can see, some of these directions went way off track, but did they? Can they possibly work for the book at hand? The idea here is not to think logically, but to let a concept like "Green" flow into as many different directions as you can find. Play with this. Laugh at it. Enjoy this process because that's a big part of regaining your joy for the book you wrote.

Getting back to feeling and seeing the creative process of writing your book is the ONLY, I repeat, ONLY road to being creative with marketing and cross marketing your book. Using strategies and tried-and-true systems are good, but combine them with TURBO creative direction is the key to cross marketing success.

Now, of the ideas above, if the book is the romance about a playground planner falling for a beautiful politician who hates kids, let's see how many of the "impressions and ideas" above could work.

Aside from the standard romance avenues for marketing, you can now cross market to:

Playground designers associations
Safe and ecological playground and park organizations
City, county and local community center book stores
Vineyards and wine gift stores (for the romance aspect)
Gardening clubs
Romantic cookbook stores or cooking classes
You can teach about safe playgrounds or ecology, or cooking for children or making romance part of everyday life or including kids in helping in the garden or cooking in the kitchen – in other words, you can become the expert on these subjects and speak to parents, single parents or community clubs.

Not one of these ideas fall into the standard "romance" marketing category because NOW you're thinking about Cross-Marketing … and thinking about it in a TURBO creative and productive way!

You can put away your bellbottoms, tie-died tee shirt and headband now, LOL.

Next week we'll discuss … Taking your platforms to even more effective places for awareness and sales results. See you then!

 

Author Success Series: Cross Marketing from the Obvious to the Sublime!

I call Cross Marketing the Author's Magic because it's so simple and so easy! As I mentioned before, Cross Marketing has been used by just about every other industry in the world since the beginning of time. P.T. Barnum used it to get as many different kinds of people as possible into the big top to see his shows, and you can use it to get as many differed readers into your book too.

Let's start with a simple, non-book subject.

Imagine you've just inherited a pizza oven and rented the perfect little location on a high foot-traffic street. You've decided to make pizzas. Woo hoo! You're going to be rich! Everyone loves pizza, right? Nope. Believe it or not, not everyone out there loves red sauce, pepperoni and melted mozzarella cheese. You're barely making ends meet and need to gain more customers or you'll be out of business. You have a competitor a few blocks down the street so you go take a look at what they're doing. They're serving the same kind of pizza and they're hopping everyday. So what's the problem?

The problem is that your competition has been established and has loyal followers. What's a pizza marketer to do? Cross Market.

The first thing you do is examine who loves pizza.

Young adults
Young working parents who love it for the convenience
Pizza aficionados who tour the city for the best pizza
Foodies who seek the unusual
Health buffs and vegetarians
Kids

Now you look at why they go to a specific pizza shop

Is it for the price point?
Is it for the quality?
Is it for the uniqueness of the service or atmosphere?

It's time to look for ways to bring in more than the few customers you have while making sure to return the loyalty to those who have started to come to your shop regularly.

Let's take this one target at a time.

Young adults. Protect the price points and look for things those young adults love in other parts of their life. Perhaps you can have a Teen Hour where the music is loud and fun and there are contests for those young people to enter to win a free pizza party or tickets to rock shows.
Young working parents. Maybe it's a good idea to have a special line for taking phone, text or fax orders so that the pizzas are ready for pick up or delivered at the perfect time.
Pizza aficionados. Perhaps you can create a competition between all the local pizza places to raise money for a charity, kind of like American Idol only with pizza.
Foodies. If you've decided this is a lucrative customer, you'll need to add special foodie items to your menu. Toss some fresh basil or rosemary into your pizza dough, top the pizza with unique sauces and ingredients. Maybe add a dessert pizza, something with a whipped cream cheese sauce topped with fresh seasonal fruits and sprinkled with chunky crystallized sugar.
Health buffs and Vegetarians. This requires healthy menu choices that cater to these customers.
Kids. Like McDonalds, you can do a few super kid-friendly things. Offer catered kid parties, have kid-sized personal pizzas on the menu, design the little pizzas with a pepperoni smiling face.

Next you must make sure all those new targets know about your activities to serve them.

Walk around and give away discount coupons targeted to each of your new menu features.
Give away free sample bites to everyone who walks in.
Take kiddy pizzas to one of the local little league games for the players to enjoy.
Place an add in the foodie, health buff and vegetarian publications
Make sure your signage lists your weekly events and who those events are targeted for so that passers-by can see it and make note.

NOW you've taken your pizza shop and reached 6 new highly targeted customers than you originally had.

As you know, anyone can make a pizza, good bad or boring – and in this day and age, anyone can write and publish a book, good bad or boring. The competition for the book buyer's dollar is big so making sure you reach as many audiences as possible is one of the great keys to success. You have strong, long-established competition right in your genre. You have difficulties with reaching new book buyers and you have the same challenges the pizza shop has. But, as you can see … it's all about what's on the pizza … or in the book … that makes the difference.

Okay, now back to Cross Marketing for authors. (Just give me a minute to lick the sauce from my fingers.)

Genre Games (THE OBVIOUS)

Let's say you've written a romance. Everyone loves romance, right? Maybe. But just setting up shop, just announcing that your romance is being released, won't be enough. Of course you will reach the avid romance readers looking for new authors but will that be enough?

Start with your subgenre. Is it paranormal romance? Is it YA romance? Is it erotic romance? Does it have a mystery in it making it a cozy or hot mystery romance of sorts? Playing the genre game is very important when planning your cross marketing strategies.

For example, there are ways to stretch the limits of a genre. Granted, for sales purposes on websites and in book stores as well as seeking an agent, you better be very clear on the genre, but think about what happens beyond that and who out there might love your book.

If your book is an urban fantasy with romance in it, why can't you market to romance readers? If your book is about romance with a werewolf, there's no reason you can't cross market that paranormal romance with general romance. We're talking about subtle approaches here, not slam-bam crashing into the door of a traditional romance readers book club and insisting they'll love your book. There's a careful strategy to approaching cross market targets and that's not it. Research carefully. If a book club or reading group or even a book reviewer specifically says they want romance, dig deeper. You'll discover that romance is romance and falls under several genres. The key here is to reach readers your primary genre isn't reaching.

The Meat (THE SUBLIME)

For this strategy, it really doesn't matter what your genre or subgenre is. This strategy is completely determined by WHAT'S INSIDE YOUR BOOK. You wrote this book and even though you may not have known it at the time, you've already written your Cross Markets into it. Just take a look at your manuscript. Where are the new markets?

Does your main character love to cook? If so, no matter what kind of book you've written, cooking supply stores, cooking clubs, cooking schools, cooking tools websites etc, etc, etc are great new Cross Markets!

Does your main character live in a specific, historic or destination part of the world? Now you can Cross Market to the museums, welcome centers, gift shops and travel websites for that location.

Does your main character travel, eat donuts, love chocolate,  live on the beach or in the mountains?

Have I made my point? The sublime magic of Cross Marketing is to go places other authors don't bother to go to reach readers. If your character loves coffee, there's no reason you can't ask coffee shop's to permit you to post a daily comment on their website to promote your book. Each day you can mention the daily brew and if your werewolf private eye likes it, or which pie he prefers, or even what newspaper he's reading while enjoying his coffee.

Good Cross Marketing is about seeing beyond the average. Dig deep into your manuscript and find those possible markets. They're yours for the plucking simply because there is no competition with other books or the product you're connecting with. As long as the coffee store continues to gain customers, they're happy. And if you gain book buyers, it's a win/win!

Next Tuesday, we'll cover Crossing into TURBO Creative Thinking. See you then!

Author Success Series: What is Cross Marketing?

Wow, it's been a while! Sorry. Moving 3,000 miles and getting settled took far more time than expected, but I'm back. And as promised, I'm finally beginning the Author Success series on Cross Marketing. Best place to start? Let me explain what cross marketing is and how valuable this tool is for authors.

 

WHAT IS CROSS MARKETING?

I've touched on this subject in several of my workshops and in many of the Author Success series here on my blog – in the Book Business Plan series and in the Platform Building series. Now it's time to dedicate a series exclusively to Cross Marketing for authors.

Cross Marketing isn't magic, it isn't some surreptitious pass-worded process where you need to know the secret handshake or swallow live gold fish to learn the tricks. It isn't something only highly educated and experienced professionals use when you pay them boatloads of money to make you famous. Cross Marketing is simple and you can do it all by yourself! It's a way of finding multiple markets for your book, no matter the genre or basic target reader. It's a way of diving into your manuscript to mine new readers you never thought about. It's a way to develop an instinct about writing your next book that allows you to build in a few viable markets other authors may not have thought about. After all, isn't that the ultimate goal? To gain more readers, more followers, more fans?

Your book is your product and as grand as it is to reach the standard reader – mystery lovers for your mystery, or paranormal lovers for your werewolf adventure – it's even more exciting to see your readership expand and grow into areas you hadn't originally imagined.

We're talking creative, financial and emotional gratification here and all you need to do to expand your fan base is follow a few strategies.

THE CROSS MARKETING STRATEGIES

Mastering the simple strategies for cross marketing isn't difficult. Every industry in the world, no matter what they produce, does the same thing. There's no reason why authors shouldn't take advantage of these simple processes.

In this series we'll be covering

Cross Marketing, from the obvious to the sublime
Crossing the line into TURBO creative thinking
Taking your platforms to even more effective places for awareness and sales results
Playing the genre game
Locating your alternative markets
How to approach cross markets
How to maintain new markets
A cross marketing worksheet
Time management that gives you TIME TO WRITE

Nothing here is scary to too difficult for an author, after all, you developed a fantastic idea, wrote a whole book and managed to find publication. You can do anything! You're already a successful writer, now it's time to become a wealthy one. It's possible!

Next Tuesday we'll begin. Until then, write on!

What on Earth is "The Author Success Coach"?

Just what is an Author Success Coach? Well, as THE Author Success Coach (long story) I guess I can explain it. Maybe the journey to becoming The Author Success Coach will help a little.

See, many, many moons ago – too many to count – I spent a majority of my days and many long nights in the world of advertising, marketing and public relations. Cool, huh? Not really and not always. It's a very unique world that prides itself in the many and varied techniques for cutting throats and piercing backs with nice long knives. After twenty-odd years of enjoying the creative part of that universe but dodging blades, I called it quits. Well, I thought I was calling it quits, I had no clue where things were about to go.

I chose other kinds of knives and became a chef – yes, a prepping, cooking, menu planning machine. I worked evenings and nights and weekends and although it was the hardest physical job I ever did, I adored every minute of it. What did I like most? Besides the creative flavor development and beautiful plating elements, I confess I liked the promotional parts of it. I loved being part of the ACF (American Culinary Federation) helping with marketing and PR for events at the various restaurants or country clubs or banquet facilities where I worked. I loved creating menus and food experiences for special promotions or clients. By the end of that career, I had become an executive chef and was still … you guessed it … promoting, marketing and actively doing publicity. It seemed my whole life was about writing and creating campaigns.

Regretfully I had to leave the culinary industry to save my back. Literally. It wasn't getting stabbed in the back I worried about, now heavy three gallon stock pots were trying to kill me. I'd always been a writer, for radio and television advertising, for print and media, for the press and articles … and for that book I secretly hoped I could write. So many fragments of novels I'd begun here and there started to come together and finally I began the real focus of a writer/author. I gained agent representation (another really long story) and finally publication for an urban fantasy series. Cold in California comes out June 15.

Now, (and by this point, you're probably thinking, "finally") we can get to the point. What is The Author Success Coach?

The Author Success Coach is not a writing coach. I don't work with writers on their manuscripts, I'm not an editor nor am I a plot strategist. I don't provide writing prompts or tricks for overcoming writer's block. If asked, of course I'll try to help, but that's certainly not my forte.  Trust me, for my fiction, I sought out a great mentor specific to the genre and suffered through all the shifts, changes and tweaks required to present a well written book for my agent search and publisher search. Like the professional kitchen, that was really hard work! Every author should do that. I believe it's the real difference between a writer and an author.

So, back to the question. What is The Author Success Coach? Having written articles my whole life, blogging was a natural direction. Unknowingly building my platform took me onto twitter and facebook and I discovered the most amazing thing over the past few years. See, I really did have something to offer … some serious value-added information to pass on to other writers and authors. And it all had to do with that career I tried to escape so long ago!

THE INDUSTRY

Because of the shifts in the publishing industry (which may not stop quaking for many years to come), authors desperately need to understand all the elements of marketing, publicity and promotions. Oh! Oh! I know how to do that! It became the focus of my blogs, it grew into a variety of wonderful tools and workshops which I've been teaching live and online. This information became so important and sought out … it became its own book!

So, basically what happened is that the platform created the book. Seems a little backward, since I approached the whole social networking world to promote my fiction work. Because of all this I've now become a non-fiction author too.

The Author Success Coach: Strategies for Author Success in a Turbulent Publishing Landscape is a book based on my various online and live workshops. It covers everything from creating an effective Book Business Plan, to developing multi-level promotional strategies. It's a book designed to help authors get past the terror of having to market their own book … and it will be out in September, 2011.

Any questions?  Anything you'd like me to add to the book?

In the meantime, these are the online workshops I'll be teaching over the next few months:

Upcoming Online Workshops at SavvyAuthors http://www.savvyauthors.com

Creating and Effective Book Business Plan, March 21 – 25, 2011

Platforms Building, One Plank at a Time, March 28 – April 22

Geisha Marketing for Authors, May 23 – 27

Tantric Publicity for Authors, June 13 – 17

I'll also be speaking live at the Orange County California Writers Club on Saturday, March 12 … and at the San Fernando Valley California Writers Club on Saturday April 16. For more information on either of these live presentations, please contact me at writerchef@sbcglobal.net.