R. Leonia Shea's Blog, page 12
August 27, 2014
And today I made a calendar…
I have all of these great ideas for marketing my new release as well as my “back list” but I have resolved to not be “hit or miss” with this marketing thing anymore. That means I need a logical and consistent approach to get all of my ideas accomplished. I have actually set it all up on my outlook calendar – because I’m a visual person, I need to see every step laid out in black and white (and blue and gold). This is the rough draft of my calendar – laying out when things need to get done.
What I haven’t put in yet is when I’m going to do the things that are on this list – that’s a whole separate set of tasks. It’s one thing to post but I find it helpful to write my posts ahead of time or even just jot down a rough idea of what I’m posting about. Sitting down and facing a task that says “post” is pretty daunting because then I not only have the pressure to get it done, I have to compose each post. What generally ends up happening is I get frustrated or run out of time and things don’t get posted – then the next time, I feel like I’ll never get it done because my last experience was so negative. My new resolution is to compose my posts on the days where nothing is written in the calendar. We’ll see how that goes.
The very fact that I’ve already posted about this new marketing strategy is a good sign – it means I’m taking the challenge seriously! See…that’s PROGRESS!
Filed under: Uncategorized
August 23, 2014
Writing really is a business
I write because I love it – I have tales to tell and I want my readers to have a few enjoyable hours where they can escape the doldrums and stresses of every-day life. I want my books to be fun, light, and smart. I want my readers to know the characters, relate to them, and maybe get a few chuckles out of the scenes I construct.
I also want to sell books.
Yesterday, someone challenged me to spend some time evaluating what I do as a writer to market my books. Truthfully, I’m hit-or-miss when it comes to that aspect of writing. I write. I edit. I publish. I might throw a few random comments out about my books, I do a bit of promotion when the mood strikes, I have a facebook page (find it here: http://on.fb.me/1tvlOlb), I have pinterest http://bit.ly/1t1XcTr, twitter http://bit.ly/VINA1n and I post on some facebook sites on a pretty consistent basis – and it’s never seemed like work.
It’s also never produced huge royalty checks.
So I’ve accepted the challenge to start evaluating what I do to market and (here’s the big buzz word) BRAND myself as a writer. I’m starting with this post. I’ve also re-written my book descriptions on Amazon (check them out from the tabs above). Tomorrow I’m going to write an honest-to-goodness marketing plan and probably re-write my other book descriptions. I’ll post any interesting links for authors that I come across because it really is a business – and I will do the marketing experiment for three months – I promise, really….
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August 15, 2014
Available for pre-order!
I am just beside myself with excitement about Amazon KDP’s new option to make books available for pre-order! This is awesome news! I can make Legendary Magic available and then take as long as I want to make those final tweeks (as long as I don’t take longer than 90 days). This either takes the pressure off to finish that last little edit (or adds more to get it done by the deadline) but this weekend I’m going to make it available for pre-order and see what happens.
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August 10, 2014
Add your email to my list!
https://vr2.verticalresponse.com/s/readerlist
I’d love to have you add your email to my list – this is for my readers and I’m excited to be able to begin building a list so I can share free short stories and advanced notice of new releases! Come on…you know you want a free short story…
Filed under: contemporary fantasy, fantasy writer, Historical Fiction, indie author, short story, writing Tagged: Author, book launch, Urban fantasy, urban fantasy release
August 8, 2014
What Makes People Buy Self-Published Books?
Originally posted on Tara Sparling writes:
In this post, I discussed the findings of a scientifically incontrovertible study (of myself) on the factors which influenced me when buying a self-published book.
#166991782 / gettyimages.com
The findings surprised me (which surprised me, because I was surveying myself). I found that I knew what made me buy a self-published book when it was in front of me, but not what put that book in front of me, unless I was browsing by genre (e.g. today I feel like reading a romance set in Ulaanbaatar: therefore I will now search specifically for such a story).
It was still hard to know what put those books in front of my eyes in order to buy them; to quote one of the commenters on that post – this is the thorny issue of “discoverability”. How will we find these books in the first place?
So I did the unthinkable, and asked some other people…
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