Elizabeth Spann Craig's Blog, page 34

February 6, 2022

Promo for Introverts

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

As if writing a book wasn't hard enough, writers are then faced with the prospect of promoting it. Since any writers are introverts, this is a pretty daunting task. And, like many daunting tasks, it can be something they put off.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to increase awareness of your book without doing the most extroverted of promo activities… festivals, book signings, and conferences.

Here are a few.

4 Ways for Introverts to Find New Readers

Add your website as an email signature. This is an easy, passive way to raise awareness among acquaintances and others that you write books. It can be awkward to bring up writing in conversation…this is a great way to bypass that problem.

Start a reader newsletter. Again, this is a very passive way to promote your books. Readers who want to know when you have a new release will sign up. All you have to do is come up with an engaging newsletter (fairly easy for writers). Reedsy offers a free course for setting up your newsletter, if you need help.

Have a profile on Goodreads. Goodreads can make some writers nervous and I get that. The reader reviews there can be harsh and it's never been the friendliest of environments for writers. Still…it's a great way for readers and new readers to find you. If you set your profile up there, link to your blog, add your books and series, etc., then your profile will act as a great discovery mechanism. If you want to take it a step further, you could also run a giveaway. Writer Chrys Fey has written a couple of posts for making the most out of Goodreads, here and here.

Find a social media platform that makes you feel (at least somewhat) at home. There's no point in stretching yourself too thin. Try to find a single platform that you feel comfortable using. If you don't feel comfortable on a platform, you're not going to spend time there. It may make it easier to schedule posts using a free tool like Hootsuite. But the point of social media is engagement, so be sure to reply to any comments you receive.

Are you an introverted writer? What tips do you have for handling promo activities?

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Published on February 06, 2022 21:01

February 5, 2022

Twitterific Writing Links

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 61,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you're there, check out the Writer's Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer.

Have you visited the WKB lately? Check out the new redesign where you can browse by category, and sign up for free writing articles, on topics you choose, delivered to your email inbox! Sign up for the Hiveword newsletter here.

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Published on February 05, 2022 21:02

January 30, 2022

Collaborating With a Cover Designer

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Working with a cover designer can be a great experience. When I was traditionally published, this was part of the process that I never really got to be part of. The most involved I ever got was when I was shown the cover for approval.

As a self-published author, I really get the opportunity to discuss elements I'd like to see on my covers. I get the chance to develop new series cover ideas. And I get to make changes, if I need to.

A Tip for Making the Process Less Time-Consuming:

My cover designer is Karri Klawiter and she does a great job getting my cozy mystery covers just the way I want them. But she's very busy (her business books up many months in advance) so I want to make sure I don't waste her time or mine. I use a sort of email template to remind me of all the different components I need to include for her to be able to start work on the project. Since there are a lot of moving parts, it definitely helps for me to list them prior to reaching out.

In case it helps you to organize your thoughts and what you need from your designer, you can find my template here.

Here are a few important things to remember:

Do a little shopping around before you choose a designer. Find covers of books in your genre that you like and see if the author has thanked the cover designer on their site or in their acknowledgments (they certainly should have). Diana Urban at BookBub wrote a post listing 12 questions to ask when hiring a designer.

We need to know what, legally, we can do with the images designers create. The post “Do You Know Who Owns Your Book Cover” from attorney Helen Sedwick on the Book Designer site may be helpful.

Be accessible and responsive. This is another way to get the process finished faster. Check your emails frequently on your cover design day so you can respond to any questions.

If your designer is busy, remember to go ahead and get on his or her calendar again.

Since designers are freelancers, it's important to pay promptly.

These are my tips for collaborating with a designer. Do you have any to add to the list?

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Published on January 30, 2022 21:01

January 29, 2022

Twitterific Writing Links

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 63,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers. While you're there, check out the Writer's Digest award-winning Hiveword novel organizer.

The Top Writing Links From Last Week Are On Twitterific:
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Published on January 29, 2022 21:01

January 23, 2022

Starting a Writing Business on the Right Foot

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Starting out as a writer can be really tough–there's so much information out there that it's easy to get overwhelmed…especially if you're hoping to be writing for a while and plan on setting up your own business.

But there are a few basic things that you can do to ensure you start out on the right foot.

8 Tips for Starting Out on the Right Foot

Choose your genre carefully. It's going to be much easier for you to pick a genre that you're very familiar with. Genre readers have certain expectations and it's important, for commercial success, to be sure you know them and follow them. It doesn't hurt to choose a genre that's popular with readers, either, especially if you're looking to write in a series (which you should be. More on that below.)

Write in series. Not only are series popular with readers, they're also much easier for us to write. Readers who've already invested time in learning the story world and its characters are glad to continue the experience with more adventures with the characters. As for us, it means we've already got a set story world and developed characters…so much of the hard work has already been taken care of. Make sure to keep a “story bible” with important facts about your characters for future stories and for the sake of consistency.

Have a basic online identity and home base. The most important thing to remember here is that it's best to use your name (or the name you're writing under) as the name for the site and for any social media you establish instead of the name of your book. It's also important to remember to have a way for people to contact you on your site. If you write under more than one name, strongly consider consolidating those names under a single site. It's tough to try to promote under more than one name (take it from someone who's tried it).

Slow and steady wins the race. True for turtles in an ancient fable, but also true for writers. If you develop a consistent writing habit, you'll end up producing books fairly quickly. Yes, writing quickly does help, but to me consistency is even better. In the for-what-it's-worth category, outlining can also help make the most of your writing sessions (take it from someone who's been converted to outlining).

The more books you have, the easier it is to promote your books by running sales, having a perma-free book, and giving yourself more visibility on retail sites.

When you're ready to publish, consider self-publishing. There's nothing wrong with traditional publishing, but the process can take a very long time. If you don't want to query agents and publishers, think about setting a deadline for when you want to stop and publish the story yourself. With self-publishing, we do have a lot more control over how often and what we publish and can help the book reach more markets.

In that vein, consider going wide with your books, if you're going to publish more than once. Although some authors (particularly, I hear, writers who've published a single book) have reported doing well publishing through KDP Select, you have the ability to reach a wider audience by publishing your book to multiple platforms. I'm published on Nook, Apple, Kobo, Overdrive, Scribd, and many more platforms.

Ensure your books are well-edited and well-designed. This just makes sure that your brand as an author is known for quality. And happy readers make for repeat readers.

Publish your book in multiple formats to reach readers however they like to read. Instead of only focusing on ebooks, make sure your books are available in print, too. There are also audiobooks to consider, as well as translations.

There's obviously a lot more to consider…I haven't touched on promo here. But these are some of the most important basics when you're starting out with a writing business. Remember that, like everything, this takes time. Finding success as a writer doesn't usually happen overnight. But it's worth it in the end.

Are you just starting out as a writer? How's it going so far? Or, if you're an established writer, what other tips can you offer?

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Published on January 23, 2022 21:01

January 22, 2022

Twitterific Writing Links

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The Top Writing Links From Last Week Are On Twitterific:
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Published on January 22, 2022 21:02

January 16, 2022

Self-Publishing My First Infographic Book

by Hank Quense, @hanque99

I've written and published a number of books, both fiction and non-fiction, both print and ebook. All of these were text-based, sometimes with a few graphic files scattered about.

Recently, I bought a book on financial planning for the my grandkids. It was an infographic style book and as I thumbed through it, I had the idea that it would be cool to make an infographic edition of my book Creating Stories.

Once I began this project, I ran into a big problem, namely I knew squat about making infographics. After trying out a few websites, I settled on Canva and then spent time getting to understand how to use infographics and how to modify templates. After that, I started putting the new book together. Each page in the book is a single graphic file in .png format. The pages consist of text boxes, and small graphic elements added to a modified template and downloaded to my computer.

That led to a second problem: how to put together the book. I tried various word processors and discovered they were only suitable for text, not graphics. (I guess that is why they are called *word* processors). Once again I searched the internet and finally found a program called Swift Publisher 5. It's used for desktop publishing and it cost $20 but it's a Mac only program and it has a small learning curve. In a short time, I had figured out how to insert the Canva files into the publishing program on my computer.

Ultimately, I ended up with a book with 119 graphic files (or pages). The book took up over 70 megabytes of memory compared to around 12 or 13 megabytes for a text-based book.

Quite proud of myself, I soon discovered my process had created a huge problem. The book couldn't be edited! My editor had to write down typos and other issues on a separate document instead of marking up the text. It created a headache for me also. I had to go to the Canva site and correct each page, download the new graphic file and replace the page in the Swift manuscript.

This was not fun and it was apparent I needed a new process before I stated on a new infographic book. Now, I write the text, break it up into text box chunks, establish page breaks, get that edited and use the corrected text to create the Canva files and the infographic pages.

Uploading the manuscript (or attempting to) led to a few surprises. Swift will only export to a pdf file and those types of files can't be uploaded to Draft2Digital or Smashwords, thus limiting my ebook publishing options to Kindle which will allow a pdf upload. However, Kindle does whine a bit that a doc file is a better preference.

Once uploaded, both the print and ebook editions have pricing concerns that are quite different from text-only books. Because of the graphics, a print copy is about three times the cost of a text-only book. This severely limits the royalties that are available to the author. Jacking up the book price to increase royalties will decrease sales by making the book unattractive to many potential buyers.

Ebooks have a similar royalty limitation. This is caused by Kindle's download fee for the 70% royalty option. Because of the large size of the download, the royalties are reduced by $2.07 per book. To compensate, the ebook price has to be much larger than most other similar ebooks. Indeed, if you search Amazon for infographic books, the price for most of them exceeds $10.

Now I understand why these ebooks are priced so high: authors have to eat you know.

Here is the Amazon page for the book; https://www.amazon.com/Infographic-Gu...

I also ran into problems trying to promote such a large pdf file. The Booklife contest won't accept any pdf files. The Booksprout review site won't accept the file because it's too large. I'm sure I'll run into more problems as I continue to promote the book.

So, if you're interested in seeing what an infographic ebook looks like, you can download a free sampler of my new book here: http://hankquense.org/wp-content/uplo...

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Hank Quense’s website Writers & Authors Resource Center provides material relating to fiction writing, self-publishing and book marketing.

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Published on January 16, 2022 21:03

January 15, 2022

Twitterific Writing Links

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The Top Writing Links From Last Week Are On Twitterific:
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Published on January 15, 2022 21:02

January 10, 2022

What Are You Writing Today?

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is a quick writing tip that I learned from all my time doing writing sprints with other sprinters on YouTube and Twitch. If you're not familiar with sprints, a writer hosts them online and writers join in to get some work done. I talk a little bit more about it in this post.

Often, at the beginning of the sprints, the host will ask everyone what they're going to be working on in the next hour or however long the stream is. I've found that clarifying what my plans are has becoming incredibly useful for me.

Some days it might be “10 minutes on my current draft and 20 on my outline.” Other days it might be “15 minutes editing and 10 minutes brainstorming.” Sometimes blogging gets added to the mix, or uploading files for a pre-order or a translation.

Just the mere process of evaluating what my priorities are with my writing that day is incredibly useful and makes for a very productive writing session.

This works just as well on my own as it does when I'm writing with a group online. It's the process of clarification…really just a minute or two to figure out what's pressing…that keeps me focused.

That's my tip for this week. :) How about you? Have you made any discoveries while writing lately? Any tips to share?

Increasing Productivity by Clarifying Your Daily Goals:
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