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Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army To Be Released September 15th, 2015!

Hey party people,

Okay, so I’ve been in a state of “radio silence” for quite some time.  My apologies for that.  I found that it’s difficult for me to blog AND work on my novels at the same time.  Much like rubbing my tummy and patting my head, I either have to do one or the other.  By the time I’m done blogging, I don’t feel like writing fiction.  By the time I’m done writing fiction, I’m too exhausted to blog.  So I chose to focus on the thing I’m most passionate about, which is finishing the novels I have planned for completing this year.  In 2014, I did a lot of traveling for my book tour, which made it hard to write.  This year, I’m all about being productive!  Especially when it comes to the Earthman Jack series.

Probably the most common email I get is:  When’s the next Earthman Jack book coming out?

And my responses have ranged from “When I get it done,” to “Soon,” and even the occasional “Heck if I know!”

But the good news is that I now have a definitive answer to that question.  And that answer is:  Tuesday, September 15th.

Yes, book two of the Earthman Jack Space Saga will be publicly available next month!  It is titled Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army, and picks up where the last book left off, taking us on a whole new adventure with Jack and the gang.  I’ve spent the last few months sending out Advanced Review Copies to select reviewers, and so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. In fact, many readers are telling me it’s even better than the first one!  (I don’t know if that’s a polite way of saying the first book sucked, or that the second book is an all-new level of awesome.  Either way, I guess I’ll just take it as a win.)

Though I was able to write Secret Army fairly quickly (well, compared to the 5 years it took to write Ghost Planet), the editing phase took longer than expected, and then we needed to have 4 months of lead time for reviews and stuff.  So unfortunately, I couldn’t release the book until the fall of this year.  The cool thing is that my birthday is September 3rd, so I get to publish this book I’m passionate about during my birthday month and celebrate it’s release along with another year of being alive on this Earth (which, if you’ve read Ghost Planet, you know is kinda important!).

So what does this mean for you Earthmaniacs?  When can you get your grubby little paws on the book?  What will it be about?  What characters will be returning?  What new characters will be entering the fray?  What crazy antics will Jack get into this time around?

Well, though you may have to wait until September 15th to find out all the answers to these questions, the good news is that in the weeks leading up to the book’s release, I am going to be doing special previews of the book right here on my website.  Things like revealing cover art, original illustrations from the book, sample chapters, character profiles, and giveaways!  So be sure to join my email list to get notified when these things are posted.  Or just check the blog regularly.  Either method should work.

On Thursday, August 27th, I’ll be doing a cover reveal where I’ll show you all the official cover of the book, talk a little bit about it, and share with you the book’s blurb so you can get a taste of what the story will be about.  As always, feel free to comment on my posts, and if you have any questions that I’m able to answer, that’s where I’ll do it.

Thanks for stopping by, reading, and all that jazz!  I’m excited that I’ll get to share the Secret Army with you soon!

The post Earthman Jack vs. The Secret Army To Be Released September 15th, 2015! appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

Author Marketing 101: Ranking The Social Networks

I think every author knows that social media is an essential marketing tool.  However, the problem is that the time investment required to make those tools effective in terms of sales generation (or lead generation, or whatever the case may be) is an extremely large one.

The past couple of months, I’ve been experimenting with various social media websites, and I want to share my results with others so they can make a better decision as to where to invest the bulk of their time.  I’m presenting 14 different social media platforms I’ve played around with, along with a verdict based on the quality of the platform (user experience) and whether or not I’d recommend it for book marketing efforts.

Here’s the breakdown:

Facebook

I think everyone is familiar with this platform.  Recent changes to the FB algorithm have really made this a bad investment of time and effort from a marketing standpoint, IMHO.  I recently had a lengthy chat with some heavy Facebook marketers and learned a lot about the changes Facebook made (you can find out more about my take on Facebook Marketing here.) and the prognosis is not good.  Facebook used to be a good way to build a readership and promote books, and if you really work at it, it still can be.  But the time investment for the results you get just isn’t there anymore, mostly because your fans and readers are unlikely to see your posts!

Verdict:  Low Quality, Not Recommended

Twitter

The second most popular platform next to Facebook is Twitter.  Twitter has a rabid user-base, but has recently gotten stricter in how people market on it in terms of growing your followers.  This makes Twitter very time consuming, but you can also get very good results from it.  However, the signal to noise ratio on Twitter is very high, so you need to post and interact a lot to stand out from the crowd.  This can make Twitter a full-time job.  I do see results from Twitter, but you need to post frequently and they can’t all be marketing posts.  Some automation tools are available to make building Twitter followers a bit easier, but using them runs the risk of getting your account flagged.  That said, Twitter is a safe bet at the moment.

Verdict:  Medium Quality, Recommended

Instagram

A photo-sharing app that is very popular.  It can be easy to build a following using Instagram since it operates much like Twitter.  However, it’s entirely visual based, since its about picture sharing.  Plus, they are now owned by Facebook, who will no doubt ruin them, so investing in Instagram in the long term is probably a bad proposition.  Because its entirely photo based, I don’t see Instagram helping authors all that much.  At least, my experience with it hasn’t helped me at all.

Verdict:  Medium Quality, Not Recommended

Google Plus

I’m actually liking G+ far more than Facebook nowadays.  Believe it or not, G+ is a pretty good social network.  They took the best parts of Facebook and Twitter and merged them together.  However, G+ suffers from lack of users.  That’s not to say it doesn’t have its own userbase, just that it’s nowhere near as popular as Facebook, and thus not as effective for marketing efforts.  However, unlike Facebook, Google is actually taking steps to improve things with their platform, such as introducing pseudonyms and the like.  I actually see G+ gaining traction in the future as Facebook pisses more and more people off.  It’s not quite where it needs to be right now, but its headed in the right direction IMHO.

Verdict:  Good Quality, Recommended

Tumblr

Tumblr is a great blogging platform with a loyal community.  However, it is very much biased toward visual medium, such as art and gifs.  That’s not to say there aren’t serious blogs on there, there are.  But I haven’t seen active reader communities involved in the site.  They are mostly based around porn, fashion, art, and counter-culture stuff.  Being on Tumblr allows its users to help discover your blog, but I have yet to find any meaningful following on it.

Verdict:  Good Quality, Not Recommended

Reddit

Reddit has a thriving community but is notoriously anti-marketing.  However, it is a fantastic place to meet and interact with passionate fans, and you can even start your own community there to attract followers to network with.  It may not be as big as Facebook or Twitter, but it is high quality in terms of networking.  To do Reddit right, you must invest a great deal of time interacting with the users there, but in a way, it’s far easier to do than if you were on Twitter.  Reddit users tend to participate fervently in kickstarters as well, so they do have money, and will spend it on causes they find worthwhile.  You just have to be subtle in your marketing and can’t expect to get away with blatantly promoting your book without first building up a reputation in the community.  Though Reddit is time consuming, I find it a far better use of time than what I spend on Facebook or Twitter currently.

Verdict:  Medium Quality, Recommended

Pinterist

This is the big daddy of “visual bookmark” sites, and I must say, I can see why its popular.  The darn thing is addictive as hell.  When I hop on Pinterist, all of a sudden hours pass by and I don’t know where they’ve gone.  However, I have yet to see how this site benefits authors.  Its good for models, photographers, and artists, but for writers I feel it is too much of a waste of valuable time.  Some people may be able to get it to work for them by posting book covers, and what not, for discovery purposes, but I feel the time commitment and lack of sales generation makes this social network a no-go.

Verdict:  High Quality, Not Recommended

Sumbleupon

Another bookmarking site, but I feel this one is worth pursuing for authors since there is a vibrant community there, and you can indeed target readers and help them discover blog posts and books you’ve written.  Plus, it does not require a large time commitment.

Verdict:  High Quality, Recommended

YouTube

I feel as though YouTube is a hit-or-miss proposition for authors.  After all, people who frequent YouTube don’t tend to read a lot (they’re there to watch videos).  This, of course, is offset by the large and vibrant community of Booktubers on the site.  So if you’re an author who likes to Vlog and make videos, Youtube can be a wise investment of time and energy, because you can indeed find avid readers on the site.  If you don’t like making videos, then I’d give it a pass, because Youtube does require a large time and energy investment, not just to create content, but to also create a following.  Plus, Youtube has made some serious missteps recently about how they treat content creators and how they allow people to comment on videos, so it can be frustrating to use if you take it seriously.

Verdict:  Medium Quality, Not Recommended

Goodreads

I feel like Goodreads should be better than it currently is.  If GR operated more like Facebook in how it lets people interact and comment with each other, I feel it would be an excellent resource.  As it is right now, the website is clunky, and the community runs the gamut from awesome to toxic.  However, there is indeed a vibrant community of readers active on this site, so you can indeed find good sales if you know how to use the site right.  However, the strength in GR seems to lie in its groups and getting reviews for your book, as opposed to actual sales.

Verdict:  Low Quality, Recommended

K-Boards

Not really a social network, but an active message board which was started based around the Kindle.  It’s a good place for authors to network, but I haven’t played with it enough to find out if its worth the time to track down book buyers on it.

Verdict:  High Quality, Recommended

Myspace

Yes, it still exists.  But it’s a shell of what it used to be, and is mostly geared towards music fans now.  Regardless, it’s not worth the time investment.

Verdict:  Medium Quality, Not Recommended

Blogging

I feel as though blogging is indeed a good use of a writer’s time.  Aside from creating rapport with fans, it also allows discoverability through search engines such as Google and Bing.  Plus, interacting with readers via the comments helps to create loyalty among your fanbase.  The only issue is attracting people to comment and participate on your blog to begin with.  However, if you can build your userbase by updating your blog regularly, it can be very rewarding.

Verdict:  High Quality.  Recommended

Email List

This is probably the best results I got in my tests.  Email lists will always generate more sales than all your other efforts, so taking the time to build your list and drive traffic to it is definitely time well spent.  Allowing your users to respond to the emails you send out also helps create a good connection with your fans, and having an email list allows you to direct the attention of your fans to new blog posts, new books, and anything else you feel is important.

Verdict:  High Quality.  Strongly Recommended

Conclusion

I’m sure there are other social networks out there that were not included in this list, but my feeling is that these are the “big” ones, and all the others may be too small to be worth the effort.  Some people may even disagree with my findings, having gotten different results from their efforts.  That’s fine too.  But if I had to recommend the social networks an author should invest time and energy into, they would be:

Twitter
Reddit
Google+
Blogging
Email List

With Goodreads & Stumbleupon thrown in if you have the time.  At the very minimum:

Twitter
Blogging
Email list

I’d also recommend focusing on just 1 social network until you’re comfortable with it before moving on to another one.  Time is a precious commodity, so you’ll want to maximize it as opposed to spreading yourself thin.

If you’re an author wondering what social network to invest in, I hope this post has helped you out.  As always, feel free to comment and tell me what an idiot I am.  I love hearing from you!  (What can I say?  I’m a complete masochist.)

The post Author Marketing 101: Ranking The Social Networks appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

Author Marketing 101: Facebook Marketing For Authors

Greetings fellow wordsmiths,

Today I plan on ranting about Facebook. Not because Facebook sucks (it does) or because it’s leading to the downfall of society at large (it is), but because the one thing it used to be good for is pretty much going the way of the dodo, so in my humble opinion, Facebook now has absolutely no redeeming value to it.

Basically, Facebook has made a lot of changes recently which has businesses who’ve been using them for marketing purposes up in arms. The first big grumble-worthy change was that of the organic reach of Facebook pages. For those of you who equate marketing terms with that of quantum physics formulas, this is just a fancy way of saying that fewer fans would be seeing your Page updates in their newsfeeds.

Essentially, Facebook decided to eliminate lots of newsfeed clutter to help deliver more “relevant” stories in their user’s newsfeeds, which meant putting the kibosh on a lot of the Page updates appearing in feeds. Now, Fan Page updates can only expect to reach 1-2% of your followers. That means if you have 100 fans for your page, only 1 or 2 of them may see your latest post on your fan page.

The second big Facebook policy change has to do with a process called “Like Gating.” This was where people incentivized Facebook users to like their page in exchange for a gift of some type, be it a coupon, ebook, or some other cool, instantly deliverable bribe. Many Fan Pages used this tactic to get people to click that “Like” button and build their fan base. Why? Because it worked, that’s why!

But of course, Facebook obviously doesn’t like stuff that works (even though they originally encouraged this practice). Here’s what they had to say about the upcoming ban on “incentivized likes,” which starts in November…

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Facebook advertisers see this for what it really is – another “money grab” by Facebook to gouge businesses who use their platform. Throttling down “organic” reach coupled with banning proven conversion tactics helps drive people toward paying for advertising on Facebook, and using it longer and more frequently to get the same results they’re getting now for free.

I don’t want to go off on a half-cocked rant about this type of idiocy you typically see from internet companies that have gone public, and someday I may even go off on a FULL-cocked rant about this. But for now, I am going to limit myself to how these changes (and upcoming ones) affect authors and their promotional/marketing strategy. Hopefully, this article will help other authors, like me, in their future endeavors.

To Those Who Are Not Authors…

If you’re not an author and you’re reading this article just because work has blocked all the porn sites or someone dared you to find a way to waste 15 minutes of your time, please understand that for those of us who make a living writing books, we have to treat such a thing as a business. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to write great stories or interact with our fans, it just means we need to make rent and put food on the table.

Thus, do not take anything you read in this article as a reason to “hate” authors for wanting to earn a living from their work, or see us as “evil” for employing marketing to get exposure for our work. We wouldn’t criticize you for going to a job to earn a paycheck. This is just something that comes with the territory of being an entrepreneur – we, as authors, must market our work if we wish to profit from it.

After all, if we don’t make money writing, we have to get jobs that allow us to survive and thus end up writing less. So if you’re not interested in this type of “behind the curtain” stuff, I ask that you move along and read something else (like my book, Earthman Jack vs. The Ghost Planet, for instance).

Understanding Facebook’s Position

So, lots of people are quick to throw verbal doo-doo Facebook’s way for these changes. And while Facebook is most deserving of this kind of criticism (because, let’s face it, it’s entirely about forcing people toward their ad platform), I feel it is important that we, as businesspeople, understand Facebook’s position when it comes to how they handle “brands” (i.e. the “Politically Correct” term for businesses on social networking sites).

Logic should dictate to most of us that if we’re spending money to advertise on Facebook, then we are their “customers” and everyone else who DOESN’T spend money is simply a “user” of the platform. However, Facebook does not see it this way.

To Facebook, the User is actually the customer, and us advertisers are simply another form of content their platform can serve to the User. So even though we are the ones paying Facebook’s bills by buying advertising from them, they do not see us as their actual “customer.” After all, if all their Users decided to move over to Google+ tomorrow, Facebook would be out of business.

So the changes Facebook makes are geared toward pleasing their Users, not their advertisers.

Now, keep in mind, “advertisers” does not simply mean people who buy ads on Facebook. It actually encompasses ALL forms of advertisement on Facebook, from the free kind, to the paid kind. The vast majority of Facebook users do not like to be marketed to (even if they do respond well to it). They don’t like seeing their news feeds filled with irrelevant stuff. They don’t like being asked to buy stuff constantly or “sign up for” whatever.

Thus, Facebook makes decisions not only based on what is most profitable to them, but what is most beneficial to their Users who just use Facebook casually, as opposed to using it to promote something.

Now that we understand Facebook’s position, let’s get down to how it affects authors…

Author Marketing

So here is pretty much how author marketing works (or… worked?) on Facebook:

Create a Fan Page based around you as an author
Update your page about your personality, interests, works, or anything you wanted.
Drive traffic to the page to get people to like it. This was done by participation in groups, commenting on other people’s pages/posts, buying ads, linking to it from other platforms like Twitter, etc.
Exchanging shares with other related pages.
Teaming up for “tours” and “parties” where other fan pages sent traffic to your page for a special event, such as a book release.
“Taking over” a well-established fan page for a day to do Q&A and cover reveals to promote an upcoming book.
Running social contests for giveaways.
Growing your Fans so that you could post to your Page and reach out to them directly.
Wash, rinse, repeat

This type of style worked very well for lots of authors. They could get thousands of fans, interact with them directly, and drive sales for their books, all in one place. After all, Facebook has some 400 million users (or something ridiculous like that), so it would make sense to take advantage of the platform since it’s so widely used.

Problems With Marketing On Facebook For Authors

Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder for authors to utilize Facebook’s platform to promote themselves or their work.

(Insert *sad trombone* noise)

Here are the problems authors have run into, time and time again, with Facebook’s platform:

Fan Pages aren’t customizable enough and often have funky layouts that are not conducive to promotional efforts.
Facebook doesn’t give Page owners good support for incorporating Apps into the page, making what should be relatively simple things extremely complicated.
Facebook ads are expensive, and selling books on Facebook through ads is usually a money-loser.
Page updates do not reach as many fans as they should.
“Like Farms” and “Bots” are a huge problem on Facebook that drives down engagement and costs advertisers money through fraudulent clicks, artificially inflating Like counts for legitimate pages.
Lack of customizable landing pages for Page visitors.
Too much of a time requirement to generate content on Facebook.
Lack of long-term searchable content within the Pages users create.
Lack of helpful and intuitive analytics.
Facebook blocks search spiders from crawling it, which makes it hard for users outside of Facebook to find your Page content through Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Inability to link a blog to a Fan Page for cross-posting purposes. (i.e. Have your blog posts automatically show up as Fan Page posts.)
Inability to link a Fan Page to a blog for cross-posting purposes. (i.e. Have your Fan Page updates auto-post to a blog.)
A piss-poor Notes system. (Seriously, why even have this feature anymore?)
Lack of mobile support for Page apps.
A lack of message boards on Pages.

I’m sure there are a bevy of other problems authors run into, but these seem to be the most prevalent and/or consistent.

Time To Pay The Piper (Or, In This Case, Facebook)

Despite its many problems, Facebook has traditionally been a boon to “small authors” because it allowed them to reach out to fan bases, find people who were interested in their work, and build relationships with them – all for free.

But it’s becoming clear Facebook is pulling the rug out from under the “brands” that are using their platform to promote themselves. They want you to pay to get your content in front of others, and if you insist on going the free route, they are going to make it hard for you to get results from doing so.

So let’s talk about the different options authors have available to them for marketing to Facebook currently…

1. Buying Ads: Facebook has long tried to figure out how to incorporate advertising with their platform, and to be honest, in all my tests with it, it has been extremely hit or miss. In order to make advertising work, you have to have a good ROI (return on investment), which essentially means you must make back in sales more than what you spend on advertising.

For authors, books have a very low return on sales. For instance, a $0.99 book on Amazon gives you 35% royalties, which means you make roughly $0.35 a sale for every $0.99 book that is sold. Take into account that Facebook’s default cost per click on ads is anywhere from $0.35 – $0.60, and you’re already in the red with little hope of turning a profit. Even if you can get a 70% royalty on a book that you charge anywhere from $2.99-$9.99 on, it can be hard to make Facebook ads profitable. This is compounded by the fact that you can’t properly track conversions to Amazon or another platform, nor do you have the ability to optimize your Amazon landing page.

Also, ads in the right-hand column of Facebook are pretty worthless, because most users either ignore them, block them, or never bother to click on them. They’re more for “decoration” than anything else, so any author who spends money on those right-column ads is basically just flushing those ad dollars down the crapper.

News feed ads are far more effective, but they are also more expensive and have more competition. But the big-daddy for Facebook advertising is the mobile space. Most of the highly successful Facebook marketers never buy ads on anything other than Facebook’s mobile platform, because Facebook has one of the largest mobile user-bases out there. How many people do you know who only surf Facebook on their phones? Yet most authors miss this market entirely. Why? Because ebook readers don’t typically purchase books on their phones! They purchase them through the store apps on their e-readers, then possibly access the books they’ve purchased via their phones.

In addition to all this, Facebook makes their “custom audience” feature harder and harder to use. This means the targeting that’s available to advertisers can never truly be “laser focused” unless you spend a lot of money to get leads off Facebook. Scraping a Facebook group and then using that data to target an ad campaign will get you banned from the ad platform (scraping, or “harvesting information,” off Facebook is against the Terms of Service). So instead, you have to use more general targeting, which can (and will) waste money for you.

Not only that, but click-fraud is rife on Facebook. You have lots of “Like Farms” which will click on ads and Like your page, just for the sake of having “realistic” looking profiles they can then turn around and sell Likes from (this video explains the issue better than I ever could). This naturally costs you money and drops your engagement score dramatically. And worse yet, Facebook knows about the problem and does nothing to fix it.

2. Boosting Posts: This is another form of advertising, but instead of having a static ad, you pay to have a specific unique post on your Page appear in people’s news streams. Essentially, if you want a post of yours to be seen by more than 2% of your fans, you have to pay to make it happen. This can work very well in terms of getting people to see a post, but again, ROI is a factor. Let’s say you pay $30 to have 5,000 fans of yours see a post about your newly released book. First of all, these people are already fans, so you’re not paying to acquire new ones from this. Secondly, how many of those 5,000 fans will actually buy the book? If your book is selling for $0.99, that means you’d need about 86 sales just to break even from that one post. That means your boosted post would need to convert at around 2% just to make your money back. When you factor in that an average conversion rate for “good” sales material is 0.5%, the prospects for a 2% conversion rate look dim indeed.

But even if you sold your book for, say, $4.99, that means you’d be making around $3.50 per sale with Amazon’s 70% royalty rate. This brings the break-even point down to about 9 sales. Out of 5,000 views, this would mean you’d only need a 0.2% conversion rate, which is 0.3% less than the average of 0.5% (yay math!). However, how many people do you know who actually buy things off posts they see in Facebook? My tests with ads and boosted posts can easily see a 0.5% CLICK THROUGH RATE (i.e. number of clicks vs. number of times the ad is shown), but in terms of actual sales conversions, I’ve never seen anything that didn’t have 0.000 in front of it. So to me, a 0.0005% sales conversion rate off Facebook ads is shockingly good. (Yes, you read that right.)

3. Sharing Posts: This is where you get out of the “Pay to Play” category and into the “Free” category for Facebook marketing. Sharing your Facebook updates in active (and relevant) Facebook Groups still works really well, even if it is time consuming and hard to manage or automate. There are also “Sharing Groups” you can join that share each other’s posts and expose their fans to other people’s pages. However, with the downthrottle of Facebook’s organic reach, these groups are less effective than they used to be. And in order to do them effectively in the first place, you have to be willing to share other people’s content with your fans and followers. This can be a time consuming endeavor, and it takes a long time to pay off, but if you’re willing to put in the work, it can be a good alternative to buying ads.

4. Incentivizing: Getting people to your Fan Page is only half the battle. Getting them to Like and interact with the Page is a whole other matter. There are many ways to incentivize users to interact with Fan Pages, but as mentioned earlier, Facebook is taking away the big one – Like Gating. Some Facebook “experts” are saying this isn’t a big deal because you can just replace a “Like Gate” with something like a “Form Gate” or some other type of gate which gets you more valuable info, like a user’s name and email address.

Excuse me while I chuckle to myself sarcastically.

Frankly, any expert who promotes this point of view is either selling something or an idiot. Bar none. The reason I say this is because the “Like Gate” ban is just the first salvo from Facebook. They are going to eventually ban ALL types of gates to content. The reason I say this is because Google did the EXACT SAME THING back in 2006 with their Adwords platform, where they essentially banned opt-in pages from being advertised on their network because their users didn’t like it.

Facebook sees the User as their real customers, and if they think “Like Gating” delivers a poor user experience, then they’re certainly going to think any type of gated system of content delivery is bad. Thus, it’s only a matter of time before all the content gating on the site is against their terms of service.

Now, Page Admins can still use things like contests to incentivize Likes from visitors, but you can’t run contests in perpetuity. Those are one-off activities, so it’s hard to incentivize people to become fans of your page in the long-term because you’ll have to keep running new contests as incentives.

As an unintended consequence to this “Like Gate” ban, Facebook is also making their ad platform less effective. After all, who wants to buy ads just to send people to a Fan Page timeline? Landing pages are necessary to maximize ROI, and Facebook doesn’t allow you to set landing pages on your Facebook Page. Essentially, this ban makes buying Facebook Ads for Fan Pages an even bigger waste of money than it usually is.

5. Group Participation: This seems to be the only real free tactic that is still working like gangbusters, so I’m sure Facebook will find a way to screw over Groups in the near future. If you have the time to participate in groups and do “personality marketing,” then you’ll still be able to get value out of Facebook. Groups are a goldmine for traffic, fans, and book sales. However, they are EXTREMELY hard to scale. After all, you can only realistically be involved in so many groups. If you are active in 10 groups on Facebook, you probably don’t have much time to participate in other groups regularly. The key to maximizing ROI – whether it be with ad dollars or time investment – is to be able to scale up your marketing endeavors to hit a larger audience. In this sense, Facebook Groups, while effective, are limited in that effectiveness.

Not only that, but you can’t be blatantly promotional in groups, at least not without the permission of the moderators. So even if you are effective in group participation and personality marketing, that all might just be time wasted because the people running the group want to keep it free from promotions, no matter how good of a contributor you are.

6. Buying Likes: This is yet another waste of money. There are services out there that will sell Likes to a page, inflating the number of people who follow that page. Some of them even have the testicular fortitude to tout that all their Likes are from “Real People.”

While there may be an actual “real person” who likes your page, you can bet your bottom dollar that their profile isn’t real, and that its owned by the company that’s paying them to like your page, and that real person can be replaced with another, cheaper, real person at the drop of a hat.

Artificially inflating Likes will tank your Engagement stats, and ensure your posts reach even less people than the 1-2% they do currently. And the worst part is, Page Admins have no way of eliminating un-engaged fans, so you could conceivably tank your Fan Page permanently by doing this.

Big Facebook numbers are only good for PR purposes, so if you have 100k+ fans, you can point to that to your local newspaper when you’re trying to finagle an interview to convince them that people want to hear about you. But beyond that, for actual book sales and promotion, buying Likes is shooting yourself in the foot. Be smart and don’t do it.

7. Free Giveaways: Doing giveaways is always a winner. Who doesn’t like free stuff, right? Doing parties and hosted Page tours on Facebook can indeed get you some good exposure and get people interested in checking out your work. The problem, once again, is scalability. It’s hard to scale such a thing to a high enough ratio where it becomes a profitable long-term endeavor.

There are lots of groups on Facebook where authors can post about “free days” on Amazon or sales for Kindle books, Nook books, etc. Many authors will post to 30-100 of these groups when they have a book promotion going on. But guess what? No actual real readers ever even look at a fraction of these groups.

In my tests with giveaway groups, I averaged 4 clicks to my promotion across 140 Facebook “free/bargain book” groups. That’s CLICKS, mind you. Total downloads: zero. This was the case with multiple tests. I think I did get the odd download here and there, but on average, there were zero conversions from the giveaway groups.

My tests with giveaways directly to users fared the same. The net benefit of doing a giveaway is essentially zero. Very rarely do the winners write a review (or even read the book, I suspect), and the return on followers and exposure is barely worth the time and effort involved in doing a giveaway to begin with.

Now, if you’re doing a giveaway of a yet-to-be-released book to an already rabid fan base who knows you and likes your work, the results will be different. However, in terms of acquiring new readers/fans, it’s pretty much a waste of time in my opinion. At least on Facebook. On other platforms, it might fare better.

8. Personal Page Growth: Some authors/marketers think they can by-pass the “organic reach” issues of Fan Pages by growing personal profiles like they would with Fan Pages. The idea here is that because personal posts still appear in people’s feeds, they are a better way to reach your users than an actual Fan Page is.

And you know what? This is correct – up to a point. Once you reach 1,000 friends on a personal profile, guess what? Your posts start to get throttled just like the Fan Page posts are. This is because Facebook (correctly) assumes that no one has 1,000 or more actual friends. Also, personal profiles are limited to a maximum of 5,000 friends, before the “followers” feature kicks in. And honestly, at that point, you might as well just be focusing your marketing efforts on Twitter.

The only way to really make this tactic work is to have multiple personal profiles with a couple hundred friends each. But this is a HUGE pain to do and maintain. Sure, there’s software out there that would allow you to manage multiple profiles at once, but it’s still more work than it should be just to get your posts seen by people – something that should be free and easy to begin with.

Add to this the fact that Facebook will literally suspend your account for inviting people to be your friend, and you can see why this is a losing proposition long term. Seriously, all personal friend requests are now preceded by a warning and the possibility of landing your profile in Facebook Jail. At which point, it’s basically worthless and you have to scrap it just to start all over again. Heaven forbid you try and friend 10 people in one day in the span of 10 minutes. In Facebook’s eyes, you’re now a SPAMer, guilty until proven innocent.

It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn – Unless Your Facebook, In Which Case, Its Permanent Midnight

I recently had some interesting chats with hard-core Facebook marketers at one of the comic cons I attended, and the information I gleaned from them was pretty dire concerning the future of Facebook. Essentially, Facebook is going to be getting more and more strict in how it delivers content to their users, and it is going to start costing advertisers more and more money for less effective forms of marketing.

And these are guys who are in niches that are wildly SUCCESSFUL on Facebook (i.e. hot girls, weight loss, etc.). For authors, a bad situation is going to get even worse and stay that way. Convincing people to buy a book is hard enough as it is, and Facebook is just going to keep making it harder.

How are they going to do this? By…

Further throttling organic reach for Fan Pages
Putting more restrictions on advertising
Making it harder to get ads approved.
Requiring more boosting of posts.
Making more policy updates forbidding certain marketing tactics.
Being stricter about flagging and suspending profiles that look like they are mass-“friending” people.
Making Fan Pages harder to customize

And I’m sure the ad wizards at Facebook will think of even more things to make those of us trying to market our wares miserable. After all, we’re not really their customers, are we? They have no incentive to keep us happy! They want to make sure their Users are happy, so any and all changes are meant to benefit THEM. This means it will ultimately be harder and more expensive to reach our audiences on the Facebook platform.

So What Should Authors Do?

I know I’ve painted a pretty dire picture of the state of Facebook Marketing for authors in this post, but that’s really just because… well, I think it IS pretty dire. And I’m not alone. Lots of marketers have gotten hit by the changes in Facebook’s policies, and frankly, this isn’t just bad for marketers, its also bad for end users. There are some pages out there on Facebook that I actually WANT to get updates from, that don’t show up in my stream. How many other users are there like me who want the Fan Page content but don’t get it? And worse yet, how many of them don’t even KNOW they’re not getting it? It’s not like Facebook tells you how many post they are filtering from you.

All this being said, if you are a masochist and prefer to work 3 times as hard for far less results than you’d get elsewhere, there are still ways to make Facebook work for you a marketing tool.

1. Educate your users on how to see your posts. You can actually sticky a post or image which explains to Fans of your page how to adjust the settings to ensure your posts show up in their stream.

2. Make frequent, high-quality updates. Give people a reason to visit your page directly by updating every 2 hours or so and having interesting content.

3. Don’t buy ads. Seriously, you may be tempted to, but I’m telling you right now, they are a total waste of money at the moment. Don’t buy ads, don’t boost posts, don’t give Facebook ANY money, because not only is it equivalent to flushing your cash down the toilet, it’s also rewarding Facebook for bad behavior.

4. If you feel you MUST buy ads, be smart about it. Don’t buy right column ads. Bid far below the “recommended price” and continue dropping your bid to as low as it can possibly go and still have your ads appear. Take advantage of Facebook’s targeting features and narrow your ad displays to the most highly targeted groups you can find. And don’t ever buy ads to send traffic to a Fan Page. Send them to a landing page you control that is outside of Facebook, and try to collect visitor contact information when you do.

5. Try to incorporate a mobile strategy. Cell phones are where Facebook really shines, so be sure to plan all your efforts around “mobile friendly” methods, whether they be free or paid. If it’s not mobile friendly, you’re going to be missing out on 70% of Facebook’s potential.

6. Only pay to boost posts that are designed for sales conversion. Boosting posts just to get them seen is a waste of cash. You might as well be lighting your oven with $100 bills. If you write a post to convince people to buy your book, then and only then might it be worth it to boost the post. Just remember that you should be linking to a pre-sell landing page on your own website, as opposed to direct linking to Amazon or whatever. If you’re doing a free promotion, then direct linking to Amazon is okay, but if you’re paying for a post, you want to get a return on your investment, and the only way to do that is to make SALES. Remember, boosted posts only go out to people already following you, so anything other than a conversion strategy for boosted posts is a bit of a waste, unless you’re promoting an appearance or event. But regardless, only pay money to boost a post if there is a good reason for wanting people to see it! Otherwise, don’t’ waste your money.

7. Participate in multiple Facebook groups and share your posts there. Interact with group discussions and add friends to your PERSONAL profile who regularly comment and engage with you. Get to know the moderators and ask them about upcoming promotions you have in mind. Some of them may be willing to help you and allow you to post promotional stuff to the group. And if you have interesting blog or Fan Page posts, share them on the groups you belong to.

8. Keep planning Fan Page tours and Contests. These can be great fun and also get people excited about your product. They may be hard to scale and don’t work in perpetuity, but for one-off events to get an initial boost in publicity and sales, they can be effective.

9. Most important: Try to convince everyone you interact with on Facebook to follow you on a DIFFERENT, non-Facebook controlled platform. Be it an email list, your own blog, or a rival social network like Twitter or Google+. The fact is, Facebook is going to be getting much harder, so its beneficial to migrate your fans somewhere that you have more control of. In this respect, I’d recommend getting people to your own personal blog or a landing page with an email sign-up form of some type on it. At the very least, get them onto Twitter or Google+ so you have alternative ways of reaching them when Facebook throttles your posts.

Bottom Line: Is Facebook Worth It For Authors?

1-2 years ago, my answer to the above question would have undoubtedly been “YES.” However, now that both free and paid methods for marketing are in the crapper, my answer is an unequivocal “NO.”

I’m not saying to abandon Facebook entirely. If you have a good social circle on there and take joy from participating in the site, then by all means, continue to use it as much as you like. However, keep in mind that in terms of time and effort, you are limited to what you – as an individual author – are capable of in a given day.

Thus, I feel as though Facebook, in its current state, is both a time and money sink for authors with little to no return on the investment.

In my tests, at least for me, I’ve found building a fan page, buying ads, and pretty much all other marketing efforts on Facebook is a poor investment. That’s not to say I still don’t enjoy interacting with the fans on the site and using it to stay in touch with people. I’m simply saying that if you want to maximize the return on your marketing efforts, your time is better spent on platforms OTHER than Facebook.

The days in which authors could easily use Facebook to connect with readers and get their work noticed have come and gone. And I don’t see it getting better in the future. This means that Facebook is also a poor long-term investment, and probably will be until they get their business model sorted out and refined. (i.e. when they finally pull their head out of their ass.)

If you are currently, or are thinking about, using Facebook as a marketing tool, I would recommend you move over to Twitter or another social network instead. Also, avoid the ones owned by Facebook as well (I’m looking at you, Instagram), because they will no doubt eventually be brought into line with Facebook’s policies.

However, all that being said, you SHOULD have a Fan Page on Facebook, and you SHOULD post there and interact with those who follow you. Facebook is too big not to have a presence on, and it’s good for publicity purposes. I simply would not recommend you put too much time or energy into your Facebook Fan Page until Facebook makes changes to their platform so that it’s actually worth it to do so.

Anyway, I feel like I’ve ranted enough for one post. (Is it any wonder my books are so freakin’ long? LoL) But I’d be interested in hearing other authors’ experiences and thoughts about Facebook. Do your tests differ from mine? Have you found a marketing system that works on the platform? Are you way smarter than me and can disprove everything I just wrote about? If so, please feel free to comment in this post because I’d love to hear someone else’s thoughts on this matter.

Until then, don’t expect to see me on Facebook much. At least, not until they stop trying to be Google and actually care about the people who are giving them money.

/rant

The post Author Marketing 101: Facebook Marketing For Authors appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

Author Marketing 101: The Verdict On Kindle Unlimited

To all my fellow writers and self-publishers out there…

Some of you may be aware that Amazon launched its “All you can read for one low monthly fee” program in July of this year (2014). Essentially, you can now download and read as many ebooks as you like from Amazon’s Kindle platform for only $9.99 a month.

While this is great for readers, many Kindle-based authors were on the fence about this new program. After all, for those of us who rely on sales of our books to do pesky things like pay the rent, what would a program like this do to our bottom line?

Well, after about a month and a half of KU (that’s shorthand for Kindle Unlimited, to those of you not hip to my jive), I can certainly see some patterns emerging when it comes to my own work. But before I get into this any further, here are the basics of the KU program:

Only books enrolled in the KDP Select program are offered to KU users. All books outside of KDP Select must still be purchased, even if you subscribe to KU.
Authors get paid from the Kindle Online Lending Library (KOLL) fund. Essentially, all books downloaded by KU customers are treated like “rentals.”
Authors only get paid from KU downloads if the end user reads 10% of the book. (Apparently, Kindle has a way of tracking this.)

Since its inception, many authors have noticed there has been a definite change in their KDP stats. Personally, I’ve noticed sales have gone down slightly, while rentals have gone WAY up. Like, way, WAY up. As in, I barely got any rentals before KU, and ever since KU launched, I’m getting a butt-ton (it’s a word) of rentals on a daily basis.

So, that’s good, right? More rentals equals more money!

Um… not so fast. Remember, those KU rentals only count if 10% of the book is read. It’s still too early to have statistically significant data on how much of the rentals hit that magic 10% mark to bring daddy home the bacon. But there are a few interesting tidbits I’ve been able to discern as I’ve kept a close eye on my Amazon sales over the past month or so.

Being the smarty pants that I am, I decided to share this info with others so that they might be able to use my data to compare with their own. I’m not as prolific as some other authors out there, but I have enough books bandying about the interwebz where I can get somewhat of a complete picture of how KU might be affecting other authors, and what trends are emerging. Here’s what I found…

Finding #1: Most of the “hard core” readers are using Kindle Unlimited. When I say “hard core” readers, I mean people who I’d label as “hyper-responsives.” This is a marketing term which basically means people who buy a LOT of stuff. In this case, its people who love to read and see Kindle Unlimited as a way to read more books for less money. In this sense, many of the “whales” in the market have been lost, since they are now paying a single monthly fee instead of buying individual books. This is a relatively small subsection of the Kindle consumer base, but it is also one of the most active. If you’re familiar with the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers, this means that the 20% of the kindle user-base who are “hyper-responsive” are in the process of migrating to Kindle Unlimited.

Finding #2: Kindle Unlimited offers greater exposure to hyper-responsive readers. Since those enrolled in KU don’t have to pay for a large number of books, they’re more likely to take changes on unknown authors. This means being a part of the Kindle Unlimited program offers greater exposure to the hyper-responsive readers who are a part of Amazon’s customer base. Thus, you may get lots of “unpaid” rentals out of being part of the program, but your chance to be discovered by potential hard core fans has increased.

Finding #3: Kindle Unlimited affects some genres more than others. What I mean by this is that there are certain genres which attract rabid readers who don’t really care about the name of an author, they just love the genre and want to read as much of it as they can. What I’ve noticed is that rentals of books in genres such as Erotica and Romance have dramatically increased. The same can be said of the Mystery/Thriller genre as well. It’s no coincidence that these are the largest markets for self-published works, and tend to have the biggest and most rabid reader-base. Other genres, such as self-help, how-to, sic-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. don’t seem as affected. The jury is still out on Children’s books.

Finding #4: If you’re worried about sales, leave KDP Select. Some authors might see an increase in rentals of their work, but no money, since many KU readers will download books (which counts as a lend) but then not read them or not even crack them open. Since KU lends only trigger if 10% of the book is read, many authors may see a dip in revenue, particularly if they are in the KU-friendly genres. If KU lending is dramatically affecting your sales in a negative way, then you may want to consider leaving KDP Select so your work is removed from the Kindle Unlimited library.

Finding #5: If you write shorter books, Kindle Unlimited is really awesome. If you’re an author looking to take advantage of Kindle Unlimited, particularly if you are in erotica/romance/mystery/thriller, then it is actually more beneficial for you to publish shorter works. The reason is because of that 10% payout criteria that must be met. It’s easier to get paid from KU if the reader hits that 10% mark quicker. Thus, a 10 page ebook means you get paid after the reader sees 1 page. A 30 page ebook means it only takes 3 pages to get paid. In contrast, a 500 page novel requires the reader go through 50 pages before the author gets paid. Thus, authors looking to take advantage of KU will want to keep their books as short as possible. 10-30 pages at the most, with word counts in the 6k range. This could be a big boost to more serialized content from authors, but it also means that longer works will need to be broken up if the author wants to maximize lending revenue.

Finding #6: Kindle Unlimited changes the way you have to market your work. Enrolling in KDP select gives you 5 free days and countdown deals in exchange for 90 days of exclusivity. Of course, free days don’t really matter to KU customers because in a way, all your books that are enrolled in KDP Select are already free. Thus, if you wish to encourage sales, you must strategically use KDP Select as opposed to dumping all your books into it. If you have a series of books, keeping the first book in the series enrolled in KDP Select, but offering the other books outside of it, is the way to go. This way, KU readers can get exposed to the work, but then have to pay money for the rest of the books in the series. This means that you can’t take advantage of some of the KDP Select marketing tools for these other books, but you can always drop them to $0.99 for a limited time to make up for that. ($0.99 sales are better than free giveaways IMHO. But then again, what do I know?) If your book is a one-off, you’ll need to consider breaking it up into multiple works, or simply biting the bullet on the KU rentals until you have more books in your backlist.

NOTE: There could be an argument for keeping all your books from a series in KDP Select because a KU user who likes the first will “download and read all of them.” But let’s face it, that’s the ideal scenario. Most of the time, you’ll get people who just download the whole series and never read it. Or, they read the first book, download the sequel, but then never crack it open. If a reader likes your work, have them pay for future novels. It’s a safer bet.

Over-all, I’m seeing Kindle Unlimited as a net positive from a writer’s standpoint. It gives you more of a chance to reach hyper-responsive Amazon customers, and if you know what you’re doing from a marketing perspective, it won’t cost you any sales.

I think the problem most authors are running into concerning Kindle Unlimited is that before KU came along, people would just dump all their work into the KDP Select Program and keep it there for the free day promotions. With the advent of KU, some authors are going to have to start using KDP Select more… um… selectively. Authors are now required to think through their selling strategy with Amazon whereas before it was merely a braindead proposition.

So here are my recommendations for taking advantage of Kindle Unlimited, from what I know so far…

Use extended enrollment in KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited for all Erotica, Romance, Mystery/Thriller, Short Stories, & Children’s Books.
Keep books short – 10-20 pages (or roughly 4k-8k words).
Break books up into serialized content if they are in KU-heavy niches.
Use KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited for book series, but consider keeping one-offs or stand-alone novels outside of the Select program if you are in KU friendly genres.
Use KDP Select/Kindle Unlimited for the first book in a series, with the rest of the series outside the Select program and sold around $2.99-$4.99, using $0.99 sales to entice readers to buy.

I’m sure over time other trends and strategies will emerge where it concerns Kindle Unlimited. For now, this is what I’ve garnered through my own book sales and experiences. Right now, KU is still in its infancy, and as far as I know, it is mostly comprised of self-published books since major publishers are not participating for the most part.

Should this change, and we see more “big name” books become part of the program, we may see more general shoppers from Amazon migrate to the program. But for now, KU is a niche purchase for hyper-responsive customers who tend to be voracious readers and see KU as a bargain given how much they already read. Should KU ever go more mainstream, then I’m sure we’d need to take our marketing tactics for it more seriously. But as of now, I’d say it’s such a small user-base associated with KU, that most authors don’t even have to concern themselves with it.

However, if you are a writer in a genre that is affected by KU readership, then it may benefit you to start planning your marketing around it.

The post Author Marketing 101: The Verdict On Kindle Unlimited appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

#50Shades Of Grey Official Trailer – Funniest Youtube Comments

So the official 50 Shades of Grey trailer hit the internet last week, and surprisingly, it’s pretty darn good in my humble opinion.  Chiggity-check-it…

Above the fangirl rage about whether or not Jamie Dorian is hot enough to be Christian Grey, I actually took a bit of time to sift through the YouTube comments on the various uploads of the trailer, just to get an over-all sense of fan reaction.  To my surprise, there were actually some pretty funny and humorous comments out there.  So I did what any normal grown-ass man with no life would do…

I collected the funniest ones to put on my blog.

So without further ado, I give to you The Funniest YouTube Comments About The Official 50 Shades Of Grey Trailer.

I want to see how they translate my favorite line from the book:  “His eyebrows widened in surprise.”

Waiting for the weird ass girls to go crazy about how great this movie is…

So this is pretty much a porn?

>This is not a porn, it has a story.

>>Porn has stories too.

This trailer makes me so horny!  Ever since I turned 13 I’ve been enjoying these things more.

Just one question:  How is this being shown in theaters?!?!?!?!?!?  It’s like why watch porn alone when you can watch it with a bunch of strangers in a public setting… awkward.

Take away Christian’s good looks and money, this changes from a “romantic love-story” to a manipulative psycho abusing a poor, innocent girl.

I hope this is rated PG.

Is this what women get off on?  No wonder I’m single.

Why do I feel like Don Draper should be the leading man in this movie?

Girlie bait ahoy!

I never knew they showed porn in cinemas..

>Haven’t you seen Taxi Driver?  Porn used to be in Theaters.

So as a guy is it worth me reading 50 shades to better understand women or is this again like most movies where the psyche is not quite there?

WHY ISN’T HE HOTTER????

oh god they are making a movie now…

I expect to see a LOT of nudes in this…

I just don’t get it… I don’t get it.

Humans are weird.

So are we now in a world where women want men who are sexy, have 10 inches, are rich, have a cute face and chain them and slap their asses?

This looks like a f*cking horror film

Just remember folks, this line was from the book:  “The feeling of his Da Vinci load dribbling down my throat got my spaff flowing quicker than a greased weasel shit.”

You all need Jesus.

Well, that wasn’t Twilight. :-/

50 shades of grey… do they mean by hair on an old man’s testicles?

Is your inner goddess ready?

I don’t give a crap about the movie.  I just need that song on my phone.

Dorian Gray + Jay Gatsby + Oversexualization = Christian Grey

I thought I’d never see anything worse than Twilight in my life.  Unfortunately I was horribly, horribly wrong.

Twilight for the grown woman.

f*ck me sideways it’s the hottie from marie antoinette!

Women are such simpletons.

Guys watch porn.  Women read 50 Shades of Grey.  XD

As I psycho, abusive man myself… I approve.

Will there be a baby boom after this movie comes out?

>There might be an increase in emergency room visits.

This whole trailer reminds me of Twilight, but without vampires and with a whole lot more whips and chains.

Kinky f*ckery aside – if a man tracked my phone and turned up on my doorstep at random and made me get a new car and got pissed every time another guy so much as breathes near me… I’m taking me out a restraining order.

GO Feminism!

I will take as many mentally weak women to watch this movie as possible.  It will be better than ruphies.

The elevator scene got me feelin some type of way.

Is it this movie or the next one where Christian gets a sex change?

Wait… this isn’t a comedy?

Christian Grey must be a Scorpio.

Pass…I just can’t watch porn. -_-

>Your life must suck.

THIS GIVES ME PSYCHO MURDER VIBES?

Just when I thought the film industry had a shred of dignity…

I’m expecting lots of babies in November 2015.

50 shades of $$$$

I thought “Heck, all women are crazy about this book.  I gotta get my mom a copy for xmas.”  My sister gave me a crooked look and a recap.  F*ck xmas.

Is it a bad sign the Beyonce song is sexier than either of the two leads?

How could you make a good movie based on a shitty book?

>I take it you’ve never read Forrest Gump.

Forget Christian Grey.  Where’s Sasha Grey???

fap*

I’m going to be disappointed if she doesn’t say “Golly” aloud the first time he pulls out his penis.

#TheGoldDiggingIsReal

The only thing Christian Grey destroyed was her vagina.

Sounds like someone needs to get laid.

Why do women always watch porn all the way to the end?  To see if they get married.

What if Dakota farted in the middle of sex?

Silly, just silly.  Let me fly an average girl around in my chopper AND glider cause I like to whip “Plain Janes” #WHATEVER

it’s all about blowjob.

Women like money and power.  They also apparently like to be abused.

Why does everything now revolve around sex?

>Because that’s what horny old mommas want.

I just want to go to see his body in all honesty.  I could care less about the other sh*t.

I don’t want my mom to see this.

I kind of imagined Christian as Zac Efron as I read the book.  Please forgive me.

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

they have sex several times.

sigh. that was a good movie.

It looked ok (not sexual) until she was strapped to something…. never sleeping again.

My generation is f*cked up.

[Housewife Porn Intensifies]

He’s gonna bang her like a salvation army drum.

I bet a lot of kids are going to see this movie.

It’s the parents’ fault.

oh my goodness i am PISSED!  WHO is that ugly man??????

>Ignore her.  She has no taste in men.

This movie is going to suck d*ck

>Literally…

This guy looks like a goat herder in an expensive suit.

Did anyone hear that!?  It sounded like millions of panties dropping at the same time.

I can’t wait to see this on PornHub.

They should have cast Danny DeVito as Mr Grey.

Am I the only one who’s actually excited about this movie?

>I’m sure there are plenty of rapists and leather vendors who are equally as excited.

The only worldwide “phenomena” is how humanity likes this garbage.

Sexual Abuse:  The Movie

Great, the BDSM community is going to be dealing with idiotic trendy sh*theads and outraged soccer moms for the next year or two.

So its a film about bondage?  I’m disappointed in the world.

The only way I’m ever going to see this movie is if Gilbert Gottfried is the narrator.

Disney plans to make a G-rated version called “One Giant Black Line.”

Enjoy… degenerates.

I can see the signs in movie theaters now – CAUTION:  WET FLOOR

wow women really love being manipulated lol

Women = “I LOVE THE IDEA OF BEING A NAUGHTY WHORE!”

Guys = “Yep, looks like sh*t…”

I bet they split the 3rd book of this trilogy into 2 movies.  Just sayin’.

Why can’t men have porn that’s this socially acceptable?

Where’s Chris Hanson when you need him?

I’ll take my grandma to see this.

I predict this film will sweep the AVN awards!

Wow a movie about rape im so excited!

50 Shades Of GAY

Another movie like The Fault In Our Stars…

>Wait, what?

This never needed to be a thing.

Out of all the books we could bring to cinemas, this is what we went with?

How much you wanna bet the theater is going to be full of teenagers? 

Never judge a book by its movie trailer.

You could probably piece this entire movie together from the Bondage category on PornHub.

This film looks very child friendly, promised my 6 year old brother I’d take him to see it

>You are the best sister ever.

Well… that escalated quickly.

You all should be in church.

My pants got really heavy all of a sudden.

Here’s the movie’s synopsis:  “Over the next 90 minutes, all the world’s problems can be solved by a penis.”

It looks like I better bring some lube to the theater.  Just in case.

…So… a Hollywood porno movie?

There’s the internet for that.

And the Wayans Bros. will release a spoof in 3…2…1…

Magic Mike is better.

This movie is just a porno for middle class women too afraid to watch an actual porno.

Well, at least its not coming out on Mother’s Day.

This movie looks like ass.

>Correction:  dat ass!

I liked this movie the first time I saw it – WHEN IT WAS CALLED “THE SECRETARY.”

The post #50Shades Of Grey Official Trailer – Funniest Youtube Comments appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

Is The #Hulk Getting A Bigger Role In #Avengers 2: #AgeOfUltron?

Everyone’s favorite mean green machine finally hit his stride in the first Avengers movie, after failing to capture the spirit of the character in two attempts at giving the Hulkster his own movie vehicles (to smash).  Mark Ruffalo’s take on the Bruce Banner/Hulk character seems to have resonated with audiences, and Joss Whedon finally figured out how to incorporate Hulk into a movie where he was actually awesome and fun to watch.  Because of this, it seems as though the Hulk will be getting an expanded role in the upcoming Avengers sequel, Avengers 2: Age Of Ultron.

When a solo Hulk movie wasn’t a part of Marvel Studios’ Phase Two, we all assumed the character would have a bigger role in Avengers: Age of Ultron. That notion was then confirmed by studio president Kevin Feige. It made perfect logical sense, considering the teaser concept art and that fact that Bruce Banner would no longer need to be convinced to be a member of the Avengers. By the time Age of Ultron starts, he’ll be all in.

Ruffalo has been pretty open about filming Avengers: Age of Ultron, which hits theaters next May. In a new interview he talked a bit more about Hulk’s expanded role. His quotes give a tiny hint at how the character will have more to do in the highly-anticipated sequel. Read the Mark Ruffalo Hulk quotes below.

Thanks to Total Film for the quotes. Here’s Ruffalo.

[My role's] even bigger than last time, and it’s more complex and it has more layers and a bit more arc.

He then commented on being more comfortable with the performance capture:

I’m really tripping on the technology of this motion-capture stuff… now I just completely embrace it and see it as this other exciting place we can go as performers.

That makes sense considering Andy Serkis, the foremost performer in the area, is reportedly helping Ruffalo this time around. (Serkis is likely filming his latest film, Star Wars Episode VII, in the near by Pinewood Studios).

Again – this isn’t groundbreaking information. It’s stuff we’ve long since assumed and then had confirmed. But if the Hulk’s role is more complex, I’d imagine he might start to turn on the Avengers a bit in the film. Maybe that’s why there’s a need for the Hulkbuster costume. Or maybe Banner decides he doesn’t want to be part of the Avengers and drops out, only to be called back to action when Ultron goes back. It might even be a hint towards the rumored World War Hulk storyline people have been talking about for a while.

Personally, I’m all for more HULK in the upcoming movie.  Hulk smashing everything in sight at the end of The Avengers was one of the highlight of that movie.  Oh, and then there was this:

(It still makes me laugh, every time.)

I can’t wait to see what Joss Whedon and the Marvel creative team have in store for Hulk in the movie.  I think HULK is much better as a supporting player than he is as a main character, and such a role really suited him in The Avengers.  Are there any Hulk fans out there?  What do you think of him not getting his own movie, only to be featured more prominently as part of the ensemble?

The post Is The #Hulk Getting A Bigger Role In #Avengers 2: #AgeOfUltron? appeared first on MatthewKadish.com.

Has #BatmanVsSuperman Cast Its Joker?

Okay, there’s a BIG rumor floating out there this morning.  Like, a big, BIG rumor.  I must stress, this is a RUMOR, but if its true, it could be the first bit of good casting to come out of the Batman v. Superman camp in a long, long while.  What is this rumor, you ask?  Well, according to the International Business Times, Loki himself, Tom Hiddleston, will be playing The Joker in Zach Snyder’s Justice League Universe.

A Moviepilot report speculates whether Hiddleston could pull off the perfect Joker act in the DC superhero movies.

Hiddleston did an exceptional job playing the God of Mischief Loki in the Marvel films – Thor, The Avengers and Thor 2.

The actor would just need to take his menacing act and knock it up a notch to play The Joker. Hiddleston already enjoys immense popularity and tremendous fan following.

However, it’s difficult to say whether the actor is capable enough to better Heath Ledger’s performance as Batman’s arch nemesis. Also, the actor might not be too keen on jumping from a super-successful Marvel setup to a yet-to-be-established DC superhero film franchise.

Though any actor would (understandibly) be hesitant to take up such a role after Heath Ledger’s brilliant take on the character, I actually think Hiddleston could pull it off.  The guy is actually quite a goofball in real life, so he has the sense of humor for the role.  He also has the right look for a more classical version of Joker, which could set him apart from the gritty one Ledger made so famous.  I’m thinking Hiddleston could do a version closer to what we see from Mark Hamill in the Batman: Arkham series of video games (which have an excellent take on the character).

Not only that, but Hiddleston has a legion of fangirls thanks to his performance in Marvel’s Thor and Avengers movies, who swoon over his portrayal of the God of Mischief.  So having him in BvS would definitely get women to flock to the theaters (as if Henry Cavil wasn’t already enough of an excuse, am I right, ladies?).

Despite the inspired nature of this possible casting, its still a rumor that you should take with multiple (MULTIPLE) grains of sand.  Like, a beach-sized collection of sand grains.  Its unclear if Hiddleston would contractually be able to play a role because of his involvement in the Marvel cinematic universe (who knows what he signed on to back with the first Thor movie).  It’s also not very clear if he would even want to take the role, since any actor who follows in Ledger’s footsteps is sure to face a great deal of fan scrutiny.  One thing is for sure – if Joker WAS to make an appearance in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, then it would be a very small one.

A somewhat related rumor is that Emily Blunt is the frontrunner for Catwoman in the Justice League universe.  And honestly, I think she’d be an excellent choice to play the role.  I somehow doubt Catwoman would make an appearance in Batman v. Superman, rather, she’d probably be in one of the stand-alone Batfleck properties that would come after the Justice League movie, so its probably far too early to lend any credence to these rumors.

If the Joker were to appear in any of the Justice League or Batfleck films, who do you think should play him?  And don’t delude yourself into thinking the filmmakers won’t bring Joker back after Ledger’s performance.  It’s GOING to happen.  The only question is when and how.

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#BenedictCumberbatch To Play #DoctorStrange?

So, just a few days ago, Jared Leto was rumored to be the front-runner for Marvel’s upcoming phase 3 movie Doctor Strange.  But now, two new names have been released as the frontrunners:  Tom Hardy, and Sherlock himself, Benedict Cumberbatch.

There are reports tonight that Peyton Reed and David Wain are being considered for Ant-Man, but man, we are progressing down the comedy director food chain, and this is starting to feel stale. So how about Doctor Strange? Marvel is putting together its cast list, and I’m hearing that Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch are on it. While Marvel has teased this property with mentions in films including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the film solidified and felt urgent when Scott Derrickson tweeted this week that he will direct the script by Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer.

Marvel loves announcing and leaking their stuff on Fridays, don’t they? Two weeks ago, they sent the industry in a tizzy when they announced that Ant-Man was director-less. Now, not only have they leaked two more potential Ant-Man helmers, but they’re also spreading word around the industry that the title role in Doctor Strange is up for grabs. And while it’s probably a big list, it turns out two names sought for the role include Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch.

Marvel likely sees Doctor Strange as a key piece in their post-Avengers: Age Of Ultron Phase Three plans (particularly with no Iron Man 4 on the horizon), so there’s a lot of pressure on the fantasy film to be a major player as far as box office and, in the vitriolic wake of the Ant-Man debacle, positive geek buzz.

Though Tom Hardy is a great actor, I just can’t see him as Doctor Strange.  He’s far too… macho, I think is the word I’m looking for.  Yes, he’s one of those actors who can transform himself to fit a role, but frankly, I think he’d be better suited to a different Marvel Superhero.  That said, I think the notion of Benedict Cumberbatch playing the Sorcerer Supreme is inspired!  Seriously, my pick was Liam Neeson, but now that Cumberbatch’s name has been floated, he just seems so… perfect for the role!

The only downside is that Cumberbatch’s star is on the rise, so he is heavily in-demand, something that should only continue when people get a look at him in the upcoming Imitation Game, a potential Oscar contender. He rose to prominence as a fixture in critically-acclaimed work like 12 Years A Slave and August Osage County, but really hit it big when he headlined BBC’s amazing modern-day adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock. And as if that show weren’t enough for his geek-resume, he also went on to play Kahn in Star Trek Into Darkness. And no offense to Hardy, who would be great simply because he’s a chameleon, but Cumberbatch is a bit more classically regal and would bring a haughty charm to Doctor Strange.  (And who wouldn’t want to see Cumberbatch and Downey on-screen together at some point?)

The only thing I can think of that could keep this from happening is that Cumberbatch is insanely busy.  He’s attached to co-star in Johnny Depp’s Black Mass as well as action movie Blood Mountain and The Lost City Of Z. Oh, and then there’s that pesky fourth season of Sherlock to consider.  Both Cumberbatch and Hardy would be sharp picks by Marvel a year ago, when these actors didn’t have so many balls in the air. At this point, they’d better hope they have a long wishlist, because outside of cloning, it’ll be very difficult to secure the services of either Hardy or Cumberbatch for this role.

What do you think?  Which would you like to see play Doctor Strange – Tom Hardy, or Benedict Cumberbatch?  And if not either of them, then who?  (Liam Neeson.)

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#BatmanVsSuperman Turns LexCorp Into #Google

Batman News is reporting that scenes featuring Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor for the upcoming Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice movie will be filming shortly, and that LexCorp is going to have a very different vibe this time around:

A source close to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice has informed me that production is heading to LexCorp next week. In Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel sequel, LexCorp is described as a young, edgy company. Think of it as a .com or Google type workplace. It’s a smart company with a stylish vibe, a youthful clash of rock and roll, preppy, and nerdy employees. Hipsters!

The LexCorp scene will be shot on June 12th and 13th and it will take place in the fall. Actors will be wearing layers with long sleeves, lightweight jackets, and blazers.

Will “Mr. LexCorp” Lex Luthor (played by Jesse Eisenberg) be in the scene? I’m hearing ‘yes’, but I’ll have an update on exactly what goes down from my source next week. If a bald Jesse Eisenberg is spotted on set, you’ll be the first to know.

In addition to this LexCorp scene, Man of Steel Fan Page reports that a big military scene with extras will be shot next week as well. I’ve heard the same from my sources. Things are about to pick up, stay tuned to Batman News for all the latest on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice!

Wow.  So, Lex Luthor is basically Jesse Eisenberg playing a (slightly more?) evil version of Mark Zuckerberg from The Social Network?  Though I can appreciate the idea behind making LexCorp into Google (Google is Skynet, people.  For realz.) it just seems… wrong to me.  I mean, what is Luthor’s evil plot going to be?  Is he going to manipulate search results to make sure the only news stories that show up about Superman are bad ones?  Will he ensure only SPAM fan page posting appear in Bruce Wayne’s timeline?

Notice the more Google-ish multi-colored LexCorp logo from Man Of Steel?

I’ve always been a big Lex Luthor fan.  I liked the idea that the greatest nemesis to the world’s most powerful man was just a regular human with a massive intellect and zero morals.  But this take on the character… I just can’t wrap my brain around.  To me, Luthor needs to have a gravitas and menace to him, and Hollywood never seems to have gotten him right.  Both Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey never communicated the true nature of Lex Luthor in the films in which they played him.  Oddly enough, the best Lex Luthor wasn’t ever in any Superman-related movie or TV show at all.  Bryan Cranston’s Heisenberg on Breaking Bad was the PERFECT Lex Luthor.  That is how the character should have been portrayed in movies and TV all along.  A good runner-up is actually Michael Rosenbaum’s take from Smallville.

But now we get a Silicon Valley hipster version of the mad scientist evil genius?  Its not that I don’t think Jesse Eisenberg is a bad actor, because he’s actually quite good.  But the guy is 90 pounds soaking wet, and I just don’t see him as menacing.  When he played Zuckerberg in The Social Network, he had this kind of cocky douchbaggery to him that only a super-smart character would possess, and I think that is what we’ll see from his take on Lex Luthor.  But I just don’t think we’ll be able to get the level of menace we need from him.  After all, he’s not just Superman’s nemesis in this film, he’s BATMAN’s as well!  And when you go up against Batman, you gotta be one scary mofo.  And Eisenberg?  he ain’t scary.

I hope that I’m wrong about this. I would love to be as surprised and enthralled by Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor as I was with Heath Ledger’s Joker.  Unfortunately, I just don’t see that happening.

What about you?  What do you think of this Google-ific Facebook-ier take on Lex and LexCorp?  Is it a clever twist?  Or a horrible, horrible idea?

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Life After The End Of An #ActionMovie

Have you ever wondered what happens after the amazing action and adventure of an action movie like Indiana Jones ends?  Lord knows I have.  Like, after the hero and his love interest kiss on the mountain top after saving the world from the evil cult of demon worshippers and the camera fades to black, what do the characters do?  We don’t see their laborious trek back down the mountain or the clean-up of all the destruction they left in their path.  Nor whatever relationship troubles they must endure from that point on, or what happens to the mysterious treasure they fought so hard to acquire.

But in this brilliant little short film appropriately entitled “Epilogue,” we do.  And I gotta say… it is glorious!

How great is that?  I sort-of wish all action/adventure movies had little follow-ups like this.  Ha ha ha.

 

 

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