Frances Caballo's Blog: 10 Twitter Tips Writers Need to Know, page 37
June 16, 2017
Indie Author Weekly Update – June 16, 2017
In this week’s Indie Author Update, bloggers write about book launches, legal myths, how to write remarkable content, and how to pitch your book too media. Great topics, right?
Meanwhile, summer is here and I’m thrilled. In Northern California where I live, our winter and spring consisted of one rain storm after another. While our water-starved state needed those downpours, I’m so happy that summer is here and with it, warm, dry weather. What’s happening in your world?
Indie Author Update
Launch Higher: How to Get Book Reviews Before Your Launch Date by Kate Sullivan: “We all know that reviews sell stuff. After all, when’s the last time you took a chance on buying something online, sight unseen, without checking the reviews? You want to know what other people who’ve already bought it think so that you can be sure you’re making the right choice.”
5 Legal Myths That Writers Still Fall For, Debunked by Helen Sedwick and from BookWorks: “There are certain persistent legal myths that refuse to die. For instance, every few weeks l come across a blog post that advises writers to use the “poor man’s copyright” by mailing themselves a copy of their manuscripts and never opening the envelopes. Somehow, the postmark is supposed to provide legal protection. Nonsense, I yell at my computer screen. I’ve emailed bloggers to explain that they are encouraging writers to waste paper and postage for no reason. But a few weeks later, the poor man’s copyright pops up again.”
9 Tips to Create Totally Remarkable Content from Survey Anyplace: During all my encounters with content marketers, the same question kept popping up: how can I make my content stand out, make it more remarkable? In almost every industry, companies are investing heavily in content marketing. But as it turns out, all these companies are doing the same: creating some sort of FAQ page based on extensive keyword analysis.
How you can make your blog stand outClick To Tweet
The 5 Golden Rules of Blogging by Maikel Michiels: “You see them all around don’t you? Bloggers that have a huge audience, have major influence, tons of traffic and are making a pretty good amount of money. The kind of bloggers that just seem to have it all. You may even become a bit jealous…
It Takes a Village to Launch a Book by Joel Pitney and from TheBookDesigner.com: “Some of us are natural born networkers. You know the type . . . they never lunch alone, they seem to specialize in connecting people in ways that benefit both parties, they have no problem promoting themselves or their projects or ideas in ways that aren’t off-putting. In my experience, most authors aren’t natural born networkers (if you’re an exception, my apologies). We tend to be more of the wallflower types, happy to write and create and let others do the talking and promoting.”
Pitch Perfect – Author Media Pitches That Get Results from BookWorks and by Penny Sansevieri: “With the media’s attention becoming more and more difficult to capture, it’s essential to master the perfect pitch. Media pitches are a bit of an art form. Why, because especially with national media, but also with regional media, and even bloggers, it’s important that each aspect of your pitch be on point. Today, I’ll be teaching you some great practices to consider.”
Media pitches are a bit of an art form Click To Tweet
Quote of the Week
Author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
The post Indie Author Weekly Update – June 16, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
June 12, 2017
Sell More Books with Less Marketing
In a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff.
Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing innovator
Seth Godin probably didn’t have book marketing in mind when he penned that line, but it is, as my daughter would say a truth fact. Authors are faced with too many choices when it comes to book marketing. There is always someone or something around the corner that promises to sell more books.
Many self-published authors find marketing debilitating. For the most part, it is not a creative task, so that is the first strike. Putting on the marketing hat can feel more like drudgery, and you’d just rather write, right?
For some authors, book marketing is pure drudgery Click To Tweet
I really believe that most authors, no matter how many books they have published, can reach maximum success with a very basic marketing plan to sell more books and build raving fans. That plan needs to be customized to their own skills, time, budget, resources, and size of backlist. And, most important, it is based on timeless best practices of how to sell.
Please note: The plan to spend less time marketing does not nullify the author who wants to embrace marketing as a creative task and have fun with the challenge. This plan is for those authors who don’t want to approach marketing as a guessing game or an á la carte menu and would rather figure out how to sell more books with a minimal amount of marketing. It can be done.
Most authors can reach maximum successClick To Tweet
Step One: Identify Your Essential Goals
The first step in selling more books with less marketing is to identify the less marketing part. So I’m going to give you three essential goals that can guide your marketing plan. We’ll follow these with three essential components or tools you’ll need to carry out those goals. If done well, you won’t need anything else.
Three Goals to Rule It All
Why do authors need book marketing goals anyway? If you write a good book, won’t it just sell itself? Not really. In the last 30 days, there were more than 95,000 new books released on Kindle eBooks. How do you expect your book to stand out in a sea of new titles? Everything you do in book marketing should be guided by one of these three goals: discovery, sales, and building loyalty.
Discovery : How will new readers find your books? Search online bookstores? Read review blogs? Recommendation from a friend on Facebook? Discovery is like getting introduced to new people at a party. Whether or not they remember you depends on the connection of that first meeting. Discovery strategies aimed at your target audience should get you on their radar.
Sales: Get readers to click on the buy button. Once readers have made a decision to buy one of your books, what is going to get them to click? A link to a perma-free book that puts them on your email list? A BookBub ad? A featured book in the shopping section of your Facebook page? A website cover photo of your latest book on sale with a buy button embedded? The strategies involved in this goal have to do with presenting buying opportunities where readers are likely to buy. Make buying easy.
Building loyalty : Build raving fans who will continue to buy your books and share them with others. Generosity builds loyalty. Give your fans more value than you ask for in return and they will be glad to buy your books.
The Only Three Tools You Need to Succeed
Each of the three tools is a required element in your marketing plan. That doesn’t mean you can never have more than three, just that you should never have less.
You Need a Professional Website
When people want information, they go online. Whether it’s a laptop or a phone, they go to Google. The internet has allowed us to find out literally anything we want to know with a few keystrokes. Without a website, your business is a second-class citizen.
The key elements your professional website needs:
A domain name that is your author name. If you can’t get your own name for a domain, try adding “writes” or “books” to the domain.
Email Capture. Use your website to gather email addresses with sign-up forms.
Responsive Design. This is a term that means your website view will be optimized for whatever device the visitor is on, such as a phone, tablet, or laptop. Nonresponsive websites are often disconcerting on mobile phones.
Ample Hosting Space. Many free websites will not allow you to host or embed video or large files because of storage constraints. That may not be a deal breaker for you but just be aware that free sites have limited storage. Make sure you know the limits up front.
Design Options. When you choose a “theme” or built-in design for your website, make sure it has all the options you need and is easy to navigate for your readers.
You Need an Email Marketing System
Of the three necessary marketing tools for authors, none has evolved more in the last five years than email marketing. It has grown from a tool just for chatty newsletters to a sophisticated platform capable of growing audiences, selling boatloads of books, and deepening reader loyalty quickly. Let’s consider some of the data:
Automated email messages, such as those sent in a follow-up sequence, average 70 percent higher open rates and 152 percent higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages (Epsilon Email Institute).
You are six times more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet (Campaign Monitor).
Email subscribers are three times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources (Quick Sprout).
Of the 3 necessary marketing tools for authors, none has evolved more than email marketingClick To Tweet
Today’s successful email marketing has to include automation. That means you need an email program that can set up an autoresponder (or welcome) sequence that automatically goes out at scheduled intervals to turn new subscribers into engaged fans in a short period.
You Only Need One Primary Social Media Channel
Today, learning how to sell more books with social media involves pulling back, not widening out. The secret is designating one primary channel to engage with your readers and develop the rest as outposts where you redirect potential readers to your primary channel to engage.
This method of primary and outpost channels allows you to spend less time on social media while getting better engagement. Many authors are so stressed out by the pressure to be everywhere that they are failing to build relationships anywhere. Making friends takes time.
What is a Primary Channel?
Your primary channel is the social media network or site where you personally engage with your readers. This is where you answer their questions, have conversations, post interesting and valuable content for them to interact with, run giveaways, gather email addresses, and earn the right to sell your books.
The rest of the social media channels are outposts—places where you have a presence that is updated when you are launching a book or running a short-term campaign, but not where you post to engage with fans. Outposts are channels where you redirect readers to the primary channel where they can connect with you personally and buy your books.
Some authors find this disconcerting after years of being told to be marketing everywhere. They fear they will be missing people. But the truth is that although you might be able to find fans everywhere, you don’t need to engage with them everywhere.
Five Measures
When it comes to designating a primary social media channel, look for a place where you can build loyal fans and sell more books. When deciding on your primary social media channel, you want to find the best mix of five measures:
Find the best fit for your reader/audience demographics. You have to do some audience research and find out which channels target your readers. Look at age and gender for starters.
Look for the channel with the best overall global numbers. The answer to this is currently Facebook. A whopping 79 percent of people on the internet age 18 and older use Facebook, according to Pew Internet Research.
Look for the channel with the best commerce tools or opportunities to buy a product without having to leave the platform. Again, the answer to this one currently is Facebook. No other platform offers the variety of applications for converting leads, including buying your book, signing up for your email list, and other opt-in actions, without ever leaving the page.
Look for the channel that is a good match for your genre. The difference between this measure and number one is that every channel that matches your demographic might not be a good match for your genre. For instance, if you’re a fiction writer, LinkedIn may fit your reader demographic by age and gender, but in reality it’s a worthless channel for fiction authors.
Look for the channel with the best ability to help new readers find you (discovery) and then convert them to a sale. According to research by AOL Platforms/Converto, it is YouTube first, Facebook second. The other channels conversion percentages that are very low in comparison.
Find the best fit for your reader/audience demographicsClick To Tweet
My final advice before you dig in: Don’t give in to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Think about your return-on-time-investment on every channel you’re thinking of using. A number of sales you will get against the amount of time it takes to develop engagement is a key factor. Remember, less time marketing means more time to write.
Author of this post: Chris Syme is a 20-year veteran of the communications industry and is the principal of the award-winning CKSyme Media Group. She is a frequent speaker on the national stage and the author of three books on book marketing. Her new book, The Newbie’s Guide To Sell More Books With Less Marketing is on preorder until June 10 for $0.99. The book also includes an online class. You can follow her on Twitter @cksyme and get more tips on her blog for authors here. Chris also co-hosts the popular Smarty Pants Book Marketing Podcast.
Author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Sign up to hear Helen Sedwick, a California attorney and author of the Self-Publisher Legal Handbook. She’ll discuss common legal issues authors need to know and be available to answer your questions. Hear her on June 14 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET by registering now.
The post Sell More Books with Less Marketing appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
See More Books with Less Marketing
In a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff.
Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing innovator
Seth Godin probably didn’t have book marketing in mind when he penned that line, but it is, as my daughter would say a truth fact. Authors are faced with too many choices when it comes to book marketing. There is always someone or something around the corner that promises to sell more books.
Many self-published authors find marketing debilitating. For the most part, it is not a creative task, so that is the first strike. Putting on the marketing hat can feel more like drudgery, and you’d just rather write, right?
For some authors, book marketing is pure drudgery Click To Tweet
I really believe that most authors, no matter how many books they have published, can reach maximum success with a very basic marketing plan to sell more books and build raving fans. That plan needs to be customized to their own skills, time, budget, resources, and size of backlist. And, most important, it is based on timeless best practices of how to sell.
Please note: The plan to spend less time marketing does not nullify the author who wants to embrace marketing as a creative task and have fun with the challenge. This plan is for those authors who don’t want to approach marketing as a guessing game or an á la carte menu and would rather figure out how to sell more books with a minimal amount of marketing. It can be done.
Most authors can reach maximum successClick To Tweet
Step One: Identify Your Essential Goals
The first step in selling more books with less marketing is to identify the less marketing part. So I’m going to give you three essential goals that can guide your marketing plan. We’ll follow these with three essential components or tools you’ll need to carry out those goals. If done well, you won’t need anything else.
Three Goals to Rule It All
Why do authors need book marketing goals anyway? If you write a good book, won’t it just sell itself? Not really. In the last 30 days, there were more than 95,000 new books released on Kindle eBooks. How do you expect your book to stand out in a sea of new titles? Everything you do in book marketing should be guided by one of these three goals: discovery, sales, and building loyalty.
Discovery : How will new readers find your books? Search online bookstores? Read review blogs? Recommendation from a friend on Facebook? Discovery is like getting introduced to new people at a party. Whether or not they remember you depends on the connection of that first meeting. Discovery strategies aimed at your target audience should get you on their radar.
Sales: Get readers to click on the buy button. Once readers have made a decision to buy one of your books, what is going to get them to click? A link to a perma-free book that puts them on your email list? A BookBub ad? A featured book in the shopping section of your Facebook page? A website cover photo of your latest book on sale with a buy button embedded? The strategies involved in this goal have to do with presenting buying opportunities where readers are likely to buy. Make buying easy.
Building loyalty : Build raving fans who will continue to buy your books and share them with others. Generosity builds loyalty. Give your fans more value than you ask for in return and they will be glad to buy your books.
The Only Three Tools You Need to Succeed
Each of the three tools is a required element in your marketing plan. That doesn’t mean you can never have more than three, just that you should never have less.
You Need a Professional Website
When people want information, they go online. Whether it’s a laptop or a phone, they go to Google. The internet has allowed us to find out literally anything we want to know with a few keystrokes. Without a website, your business is a second-class citizen.
The key elements your professional website needs:
A domain name that is your author name. If you can’t get your own name for a domain, try adding “writes” or “books” to the domain.
Email Capture. Use your website to gather email addresses with sign-up forms.
Responsive Design. This is a term that means your website view will be optimized for whatever device the visitor is on, such as a phone, tablet, or laptop. Nonresponsive websites are often disconcerting on mobile phones.
Ample Hosting Space. Many free websites will not allow you to host or embed video or large files because of storage constraints. That may not be a deal breaker for you but just be aware that free sites have limited storage. Make sure you know the limits up front.
Design Options. When you choose a “theme” or built-in design for your website, make sure it has all the options you need and is easy to navigate for your readers.
You Need an Email Marketing System
Of the three necessary marketing tools for authors, none has evolved more in the last five years than email marketing. It has grown from a tool just for chatty newsletters to a sophisticated platform capable of growing audiences, selling boatloads of books, and deepening reader loyalty quickly. Let’s consider some of the data:
Automated email messages, such as those sent in a follow-up sequence, average 70 percent higher open rates and 152 percent higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages (Epsilon Email Institute).
You are six times more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than you are from a tweet (Campaign Monitor).
Email subscribers are three times more likely to share your content via social media than visitors from other sources (Quick Sprout).
Of the 3 necessary marketing tools for authors, none has evolved more than email marketingClick To Tweet
Today’s successful email marketing has to include automation. That means you need an email program that can set up an autoresponder (or welcome) sequence that automatically goes out at scheduled intervals to turn new subscribers into engaged fans in a short period.
You Only Need One Primary Social Media Channel
Today, learning how to sell more books with social media involves pulling back, not widening out. The secret is designating one primary channel to engage with your readers and develop the rest as outposts where you redirect potential readers to your primary channel to engage.
This method of primary and outpost channels allows you to spend less time on social media while getting better engagement. Many authors are so stressed out by the pressure to be everywhere that they are failing to build relationships anywhere. Making friends takes time.
What is a Primary Channel?
Your primary channel is the social media network or site where you personally engage with your readers. This is where you answer their questions, have conversations, post interesting and valuable content for them to interact with, run giveaways, gather email addresses, and earn the right to sell your books.
The rest of the social media channels are outposts—places where you have a presence that is updated when you are launching a book or running a short-term campaign, but not where you post to engage with fans. Outposts are channels where you redirect readers to the primary channel where they can connect with you personally and buy your books.
Some authors find this disconcerting after years of being told to be marketing everywhere. They fear they will be missing people. But the truth is that although you might be able to find fans everywhere, you don’t need to engage with them everywhere.
Five Measures
When it comes to designating a primary social media channel, look for a place where you can build loyal fans and sell more books. When deciding on your primary social media channel, you want to find the best mix of five measures:
Find the best fit for your reader/audience demographics. You have to do some audience research and find out which channels target your readers. Look at age and gender for starters.
Look for the channel with the best overall global numbers. The answer to this is currently Facebook. A whopping 79 percent of people on the internet age 18 and older use Facebook, according to Pew Internet Research.
Look for the channel with the best commerce tools or opportunities to buy a product without having to leave the platform. Again, the answer to this one currently is Facebook. No other platform offers the variety of applications for converting leads, including buying your book, signing up for your email list, and other opt-in actions, without ever leaving the page.
Look for the channel that is a good match for your genre. The difference between this measure and number one is that every channel that matches your demographic might not be a good match for your genre. For instance, if you’re a fiction writer, LinkedIn may fit your reader demographic by age and gender, but in reality it’s a worthless channel for fiction authors.
Look for the channel with the best ability to help new readers find you (discovery) and then convert them to a sale. According to research by AOL Platforms/Converto, it is YouTube first, Facebook second. The other channels conversion percentages that are very low in comparison.
Find the best fit for your reader/audience demographicsClick To Tweet
My final advice before you dig in: Don’t give in to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Think about your return-on-time-investment on every channel you’re thinking of using. A number of sales you will get against the amount of time it takes to develop engagement is a key factor. Remember, less time marketing means more time to write.
Author of this post: Chris Syme is a 20-year veteran of the communications industry and is the principal of the award-winning CKSyme Media Group. She is a frequent speaker on the national stage and the author of three books on book marketing. Her new book, The Newbie’s Guide To Sell More Books With Less Marketing is on preorder until June 10 for $0.99. The book also includes an online class. You can follow her on Twitter @cksyme and get more tips on her blog for authors here. Chris also co-hosts the popular Smarty Pants Book Marketing Podcast.
Author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Sign up to hear Helen Sedwick, a California attorney and author of the Self-Publisher Legal Handbook. She’ll discuss common legal issues authors need to know and be available to answer your questions. Hear her on June 14 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET by registering now.
The post See More Books with Less Marketing appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
June 9, 2017
Indie Author Weekly Update June 9, 2017
Today’s Indie Author Weekly Update features posts from Joel Friedlander’s blog, BookWorks’ blog, and a variety of bloggers including Chris Syme. Learn about Facebook’s new inbox and take in some tips from Book Expo 2017.
Indie Author Updates
How to Set Up a Facebook Page for Authors from BookWorks: “Love it or hate it, if you’re an author, you need a Facebook page. With 1.86 billion monthly active users as of the last quarter of 2016, and according to the Pew Research Center, with 79% of all online adults in the U.S. using Facebook, you can’t afford to ignore it.”
Your Five-Minute Guide to Pricing Your Self-Published Book by Fred Johnson of Standout Books and from Joel Friedlander: “There’s one question that we editors hear again and again from the self-publishing writers we work with: how much should I charge for my first book? It’s certainly a tricky question. The history of self-publishing is littered with tragic tales of overpriced and underpriced books falling at the wayside as stingy or sceptical crowds pass them by. It’s one of the most common mistakes self-publishing writers make.”
The triple zero club: how to get more likes, comments and shares on your blog by Articulate Marketing: “Blogging is like launching a spaceship. It takes hours and hours of meticulous crafting, patience and perseverance to get lift off and maintain altitude. With an estimated 3.17 billion users on the internet worldwide you’d expect it to be easy, but it’s not. An increasing number of bloggers are finding themselves victims of the triple zero club – zero likes, comments and shares.”
New Time-Saving Facebook Tool: The Inbox by Chris Syme: “If you haven’t noticed yet, Facebook is rolling out a new feature called Inbox. The new tool aggregates all the comments, messages, and reviews from Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram to your Facebook business page dashboard. On your phone, the new feature is on the bottom of your screen.”
How to Get Hordes of Subscribers With an Easy Opt-In Gift from Write to Done: “If you want to ramp up your subscriber numbers, you need to offer an attractive gift for your visitors in return for subscribing. This is called an opt-in gift or lead magnet. But what to offer? Many writers don’t know how to create an opt-in gift. It can be daunting. Many gifts take a lot of effort to create. But there are also some enticing gifts you can create in just hours. This is what you’ll learn in this article.”
7 Top Book Marketing Takeaways from Book Expo 2017 by Diana Urban: “BookExpo held their annual publishing conference last week in New York City. There were plenty of sessions and panels focused on book marketing, so we gathered several exciting takeaways we wanted to share with our readers. From consumer data to personalized marketing campaigns, publishers and marketers were buzzing about researching your audience, fostering reader relationships, and running innovative marketing campaigns. Here were our top seven takeaways from BookExpo 2017.”
In A Galaxy Far, Far Away: Blending Storytelling In Web Content by Express Writers: “What do you and Tolkien have in common? While it might be tempting to answer, “nothing,” I’d encourage you to look a little deeper. Sure, Tolkien invented magical lands and languages and creatures few of us could concoct in our wildest dreams, but there’s still a similarity. That similarity links you and me, and all of us who work in the written word, to Tolkien, Rowling, Nabokov, and Chekov. What is it? The similarity is a love of stories and a fondness for telling them.”
5 Skills Every Writer Should Develop from Joel Friedlander and by Frances Caballo: “Writers have to juggle a lot. Craft. Marketing. Blogging. Email list building. I know that I tend to think that I’m not doing enough. I could be on social media more. I don’t write enough books. (My last one was published in December and I haven’t started a new one.) I’m not meditating. I could exercise more. The list goes on. And the rub is that you can always do more. I think that I could always do more. At least that’s the myth that I tell myself. If only there were more than 24 hours in a day, right? Man, what I could accomplish with 28 hours!”
Quote of the Week
The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Hear Helen Sedwick June 14th
Sign up to hear Helen Sedwick, a California attorney and author of the Self-Publisher Legal Handbook. She’ll discuss common legal issues authors need to know and be available to answer your questions. Hear her on June 14 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET by registering now.
The post Indie Author Weekly Update June 9, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
June 5, 2017
Taking a Break
Guess what? I decided to take the day off. Be sure to check back this Friday when I regularly publish the Indie Author Weekly Update of the week’s best pots in indie publishing.
Until then, be sure to check out Joel Friedlander’s most recent Carnival of the Indies. It was chock-full of super posts from experts in the publishing industry.
Looking for even more information? Check out the blog at BookWorks. Some of the top indie publishing experts write for BookWorks.
The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Sign up to hear Helen Sedwick, a California attorney and author of the Self-Publisher Legal Handbook. She’ll discuss common legal issues authors need to know and be available to answer your questions. Hear her on June 14 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET by registering now.
The post Taking a Break appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
June 2, 2017
Indie Author Weekly Update – June 2, 2017
Never before has the Indie Author Weekly Update been so chock-full of information as it is this week. Enjoy posts from Penny Sansevieri, Carol Tice, Joanna Penn and others on posts ranging from Instagram to book aggregation. Wow!
One Simple Strategy to Draw In More Buyers by Penny Sansevieri: “Did you know that you have 7 seconds or less to convince someone to buy your book? And when readers are surveyed they consistently report book covers plays a major role in purchasing decisions, especially if the author is unknown to them or the book wasn’t recommended to them by a trusted source.”
How often should authors blog? from the Alliance of Independent Authors: “In our most recent post about blogging for authors, ALLi members posited many great reasons for blogging, from finding your voice to giving readers insight about you as a writer. But assuming you have decided to blog, how much time can you afford spend on this form of writing, without eating into valuable book-writing time? And how often do you need to post to make the activity worthwhile?”
How To Copyright A Book: A Comprehensive Guide from Reedsy: “So you’ve published your book on Amazon! Congratulations. Now imagine this nightmarish scenario: a year down the road, you pick up another novel and notice the dialogue sounds familiar. Upon further inspection, you realize that everything in this book is a dead ringer for your work — down to your character Mick, who now goes by Dick.”
How to Use Instagram Search & Explore to Boost Your Instagram Marketing from Buffer: “Instagram places a big emphasis on search and discovery of content. It’s one of the few social media platforms with a Search and Explore tab in its app. Being featured in the search results or in Instagram’s Explore section can be a great way to boost your success on the network with added exposure and the chance to reach new users who may not have otherwise seen your content. There are also several other ways you can use Instagram’s Search and Explore for your business — finding the best hashtags to use, engaging your fans, and finding influencers to collaborate with.”
10 Ways To Approach Book Publicity via Book Marketing Buzz Blog: “Promoting and marketing a book takes many skills, a lot of time, some money, and a handful of resources. But it also requires a certain mental approach, one that allows you to stay focused and to act with perseverance – even in the face of rejection. Here are some traits needed to succeed as a book marketer: (1) Act with a sense of urgency. No reason to put off things that you should be doing now.”
Afraid to Promote Your Writing? 5 Tips to Overcome Marketing Shyness from Carol Tice: “Why do so many writers have a hard time with self-promotion? Think about it for a second. You know you should promote your writing to grow your freelancing business. But if you’re totally honest, fear, doubt, or shyness sometimes gets in the way. Sound familiar?”
Global Sales, Multiple Streams Of Income & True Independence. Reasons To Go Wide from Joanna Penn: “I was recently interviewed on Kevin Tumlinson’s Wordslinger podcast about my reasons for being wide with my main series and author names. I do use KDP Select for some books, but prefer to keep most of my books on the other publishing platforms as well.”
Aggregation without Aggravation: Pronoun and PublishDrive from Joel Friedlander and by David Kudler: “In earlier posts in my series on creating and selling ebooks, I’ve discussed both online ebook conversion tools and ebook retailers and distributors. As it happens, in the months since those posts, a couple of new alternatives have come up that fall into both categories. This time around, I’ll be discussing two new ebook aggregator/distributor sites and their conversion options: Pronoun and PublishDrive.”
Quote of the Week
The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Sign up to hear Helen Sedwick, a California attorney and author of the Self-Publisher Legal Handbook. She’ll discuss common legal issues authors need to know and be available to answer your questions. Hear her on June 14 at 11 am PT/2 pm ET by registering now.
The post Indie Author Weekly Update – June 2, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
May 29, 2017
7 Habits Every Writer Should Develop
Having a career in self-publishing is a full-time endeavor. If you have a 9-to-5 job in addition to your writing career, then you have the equivalent of two full-time jobs.
Needless to say, you’re busy.
To succeed in today’s indie publishing arena, writers need to develop the following seven habits.
Stay Informed
One of the best ways to stay informed is to read the following blogs on a regular basis:
For overall indie author news, including information about marketing and publishing, read TheBookDesgner.com twice a week. Joel Friedlander’s blog is consistently among the top 10 on the Writer’s Digest 101 best blogs.
Want to work on your writing and your marketing? Then you’ve got to read Ruth Harris and Anne R. Allen’s weekly blog. It’s the best blend of rock-solid information mixed with an acerbic tone (at times) anywhere on the internet.
One of the best blogs for self-publishers is Jane Friedman’s . As a former publisher of Writer’s Digest, professor, and author, Jane writes an excellent blog of the indie author.
Want to boost your book sales? Be sure to read Penny Sansevieri’s blog at Author Marketing Experts.
To keep up with nonfiction writing, marketing, and how to find an agent, read Lisa Tener’s blog .
And for information on social media marketing and book marketing, you can always read mine.
May 26, 2017
Indie Author Weekly Update – May 26, 2017
In this edition of the Indie Author Weekly Update enjoy posts from Anne R. Allen, Amy Collins, Joanna Penn, Gary McLaren, and Publishing Perspectives. Topics range from blogging to Goodreads to Amazon Charts. Enjoy!
Practice Novels: 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Publish that 1st Novel…Yet by Anne R. Allen: “We often hear stories about authors who have phenomenal success with a “first novel.” I’m sure most writers fantasize about being one of those success stories as we begin our careers. I sure did. But here’s what I didn’t know when I was having those fantasies: a novel that is published first is rarely the actual first novel an author wrote.”
7 Mistakes You’re Making With Your Author Blog And How To Fix Them by Joanna Penn: “Book sales account for around 50% of my income, but the other 50% comes from the products and services offered on and around TheCreativePenn.com. These days, ‘blogging’ is just one part of content marketing, which is essentially using free, useful, entertaining or inspirational content to attract people to your site with the intention that they may eventually buy a book or a product.”
Expand your audience exponentially with smart Goodreads marketing Sandra Beckwith: “By now, most of us book people are familiar with Goodreads. It’s an amazing place to keep track of what you’re reading, what you want to read next, and everything to do with the bookish life. And since most authors are also avid readers, we tend to have our digital bookshelves well stocked and we regularly update our reading progress, reviews, and more.”
Amazon Charts’ Debut: Bestseller and Best-Read Listings From User Data from Publishing Perspectives: “By tracking user activity, the retailer feeds its Amazon Charts with consumer data on what’s being read and listened to (in digital) and what’s being sold on a weekly basis.”
7 of the Best Types of Blog Post – The Article Writer’s Toolkit by Gary J. McLaren: “Have you ever fallen into the trap of writing only one or two types of blog post? Some bloggers, for example, write only List Articles or ‘How To’ Articles. You might be very comfortable with your favorite type of article, but your readers will almost certainly appreciate a wider variety of posts.Building a popular blog starts with getting to know your audience very well, and then writing good articles that closely match those readers’ needs. If you also create a variety of types of article, your blog will be more interesting, keeping your readers captivated and engaged. Here are seven different types of articles, including some of the best types of blog post that you can write for your readers.”
Book Promotion: Do This, Not That from Joel Friedlander and by Amy Collins: “Each month, I go out and find authors and publishers willing to share their mistakes and goofs. It is a very public and scary way of being helpful when these talented men and women share what they did that they wish they had done differently. Well, this month, it is my turn. My book is now 14 months old and I have made a LOT of goofs over the last year. So, with no more delays or hesitation, here is the Amy Collins DO THIS NOT THAT list of goofs.”
6 Ways To Create a More Engaged Instagram Audience from Melissa Griffin: “By now you’ve probably figured out that we are huge fans of Instagram here. For good reason of course. With over 300 million active monthly users, Instagram is one of the best apps to get your blog and business noticed. Instagram is both fun and beautiful, but what we love most about it is the sense of community it brings!”
Quote of the Week
The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Hear Nina Amir in the next Conversations with Frances webinar as Nina explains how to turn your blog into a book production machine. Register now!
The post Indie Author Weekly Update – May 26, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
May 22, 2017
14 Twitter Apps and Tools for Writers
When was the last time you tried a new application? I’m often on the hunt for new tools to share with you that might make your day easier and your social media marketing more efficient.
So when I took at course recently, I learned of some applications and I immediately thought how cool it would be to share them with you. I’ve dropped the more expensive ones from the list since I don’t consider those indie-author friendly, but you’ll find most of them below.
Let’s get started!
Apps and Tools for Writers
Scheduling Tools
A scheduling app is like a piece of heaven, or New York cheesecake. I can’t decide. What I do know is that scheduling tools enable us to schedule our posts in the morning and then walk away from the computer or at least spend our day working on other digital projects.
Let’s start with MeetEdgar, an app I’ve known about but never before written about. Use this app to schedule recurring messages or blog posts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. MeetEdgar prevents the tedium of having to reschedule posts by hand from a spreadsheet.
Put posts into Social Jukebox to post on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Each Jukebox stores thousands of tweets and posts for reposting. The tool automatically generates thank you tweets every Friday, and Social Jukebox collects mentions of your Twitter account and stores them in a database for you to view.
You can start with a free plan and schedule your messaging in Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Hootsuite’s free plan allows three accounts, and they may also include Google+ page, Instagram, and YouTube.
Buffer is another scheduling application. With the free account, you can have one user on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and a Google Page account. The free account allows for ten posts at a time. The Awesome plan is just $10/month, includes Pinterest, and allows ten users and up to scheduled 100 posts at a time.
Community Reach and Management
Want to expand your community or reduce it? Try one of these apps for reducing your list of users you’re following or helping you to find new followers.
Check out these community reach and management tools for writers Click To Tweet
This app looks at all the users you follow on Twitter and then divides them into influencers and supporters, giving you insight into the people who are following you and engaging with your content. The app will also suggest a list of users you might want to unfollow plus followers you might want to follow.
Tweepi is a Twitter tool that enables you to follow followers and friends, unfollow inactives and those people who you follow but who aren’t following you back. You can also use the tool to search for users by bio, interest, full name, or location and follow users who just tweeted about a certain topic in your niche. In addition, you can unfollow users who neglect to upload an avatar, aka eggheads.
You can use the free version of this tool to unfollow Twitter users and to use some features to grow your account.
If you’re willing to pay $12/month, you have access to additional features. You can:
Unfollow users who aren’t following you back.
Unfollow people who don’t use an image for their avatar.
Unfollow people deemed to be inactive on Twitter.
Unfollow fake accounts you are following.
Block accounts that are fake as well as bots.
Unfollow users based on their influence (I don’t use this feature.).
Whitelist followers you never want to unfollow (I love this feature.).
Analyze and Report
Want to know how you’re doing on Twitter? Wondering what your ROI (Return on Investment) is like? Try some of these tools.
Use Twitter analytics to better understand your community and to keep tabs on how well your’re doing. The 28-day summary will tell you whether you’ve sent more or fewer tweets, how many tweet impressions you’re generating, how many users are visiting your profile, how many people are mentioning you, and how well you are growing your account. You can also glean information that you can use when you create your Twitter ads.
Mention https://mention.com/en/media-monitoring/
For $29/month, this tool will analyze public opinion with the idea of helping people learn what’s being said about them online.
This is an analytics and scheduling tool for Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Google+. The analytics are beautiful.
Conversations and Chats
Twitter chats are fun and they can widen your sphere of contacts and attract new followers. Find some to engage in using one of these two apps.
Use this app to find chats by an alphabetical listing.
Tweet chats displayed on the screen increase engagement by making joining and participating in a tweet chat super easy.
Hashtags
Hashtags are a gas, aren’t they? They have the magical powers of attracting people to you and helping you find the readers or consumers you want. Before you make up a hashtag for tracking, make sure it’s available and doesn’t have a nefarious meaning.
Hashtagify is a hashtags search engine. It’s hashtags encyclopedia allows users to search among 67,140, 249 hashtags and find the best ones. It’s paid plans start at $9.99 month.
Ritetag https://ritetag.com
Receive instant feedback on your hashtag choices. For example, type in a hashtag to find out whether it’s hot, has a long life, overused, or is underused.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!
The post 14 Twitter Apps and Tools for Writers appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
May 19, 2017
Indie Author Weekly Update – May 19, 2017
Today’s Indie Author Update includes posts on blogging, social media tools, word-of-mouth marketing, and so much more! I hope you enjoy these posts, ones I considered the best from all the post I read this past week.
How ‘word-of-mouth marketing’ REALLY happens by Dan Blank: “Today I want to share a small case study with you, illustrating how word-of-mouth marketing really happens. My goal is to encourage you to connect in meaningful ways with others who resonate with the writing and creative work you are passionate about. Okay, let’s dig in…”
10 Great New Social Media Tools for Indie Authors by Penny Sansevieri: “Social media is a big part of book marketing. I know that I recently said that there may be less emphasis on social media in the future, and that indie authors should refine their social media, only participating where they NEED to be. But the fact is, it will still be important for quite some time. And, with time increasingly a limiting factor for most of us indie authors, it’s important to use social media tools that will make our book promotion efforts much smoother.”
California threatens to shut down book signings and therefore small booksellers from the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog: “Today we filed this First Amendment lawsuit on behalf of beloved Bay Area bookstore Book Passage, and its co-owner, Bill Petrocelli. Book Passage is a hub of literary activity and free expression. In addition to selling books, it hosts over 700 author events a year—in which authors give talks, read passages, interact with readers, and autograph their books. Bill keeps copies of these signed books to sell later—which you can see scattered down the aisles of his store. Book Passage also curates a monthly book club, wherein readers are sent a first edition book signed by an up-and-coming author.”
9 Reasons Audiobook Growth Is Soaring from Digital Book World: “Audiobooks are today’s fastest growing digital book format … but have you ever wondered why? As an indie author or digital publisher, if you haven’t already created and distributed an audiobook version of your titles, now’s the time. As an author and a reader, I’ve never outgrown the desire to have stories read to me (as noted in my last post, “Confessions of a Lifelong Audiobook Addict”). Statistics show I’m not alone. Below are nine reasons why audiobooks continue to increase in popularity and profitability.”
What’s Your Author Strategy? 3 Mini-Strategies To Jumpstart Your Career by Carmen Amato from Anne R. Allen: “I think one of the reasons I landed a television deal for the Detective Emilia Cruz mystery series with a major US network was because of strong branding, including consistency across platforms that projects a professional approach and a quality product. All that didn’t come together by accident.”
The Top 5 Problems Of (And Solutions For) Maintaining A Writer’s Blog from Writers Relief: “A blog gives you the opportunity to connect directly with your readership, to contribute to the literary community, and, of course, to promote your writing. But maintaining an effective, interesting blog that keeps your readers coming back for more can be harder than you might expect. Just because you’re a writer and have a certain mastery of words doesn’t mean you’ll be a successful blogger. Blogging requires an additional set of skills, such as putting on your marketing hat and considering what will hook your readers.”
Twitter Marketing: How to Boost Engagement & Connect to Influencers – BookWorks http://dld.bz/fHDya from BookWorks and by Penny Sansevieri: “As an author using Twitter marketing, it goes without saying that you want to get in front of the right people, or in other words “key influencers.” Where you find them is just as important as how you reach them. Social media offers an incredible opportunity to connect with these influencers in a meaningful way.”
The author of this blog: Frances Caballo is an author and social media strategist and manager for writers. She’s a regular speaker at the San Francisco Writers Conference. In addition, she’s a contributing writer at TheBookDesigner.com, and blogger and Social Media Expert for BookWorks. She’s written several social media books including the 2nd edition of Social Media Just for Writers and The Author’s Guide to Goodreads. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online, building their platform, finding new readers, and selling more books. Her clients include authors of every genre and writers’ conferences. Not sure how you’re doing online? Sign up for my free email course.
Practical tips for marketing your books on the social web
Get a free copy of Avoid Social Media Time Suck from Smashwords!
The post Indie Author Weekly Update – May 19, 2017 appeared first on Social Media Just for Writers.
10 Twitter Tips Writers Need to Know
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