by Laura L.
on March 6, 2013
in Authors, Blogs, Book, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Author Jennifer L. Jacobson shares an excerpt from her book “42 Rules of Social Media for Small Business” that is great advice for authors who blog:
While blog types vary, here are a few points to remember when writing a blog for your business:
- Keep your entries short. Generally, a blog entry is no more than a couple of paragraphs in length.
- Keep your entries focused. Find one subject and stick to it.
- Keep it consistent. Blog readers expect consistent content, so I suggest blogging anywhere from once a week to once a month.
- This way your readers keep coming back, and they generally know when you’re going to add a new blog entry.
- Keep it personal. Blog entries are a “behind the scenes” look at your business. Find a way to let blog readers and potential customers see the inside of your business, without giving away trade secrets, and you will find a balance that is worth treading.
A blog is a very personal thing and, if you have one, I suggest keeping in mind the persona from which your blog is written. Is your company a snowboard manufacturer, that has an edgy, super-cool blog voice, designed to glamour teens into thrashing the slopes through a wave of pure white powder? Or, perhaps your organic wine company is looking for the Über-Neo-Foodie voice entrenched in pagan culture, and opposed to anything that may block the very karma that holds all life forces together. Regardless, write your blog for your audience and expect that it will be read.
You can purchase the book “42 Rules of Social Media for Small Business” by clicking the link!
by Laura L.
on March 4, 2013
in Book, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Here is another great article about marketing your book by Melissa Breau. Melissa is a copywriter and editor and clearly has a lot of experience working with authors. Read “How To Market A Book In 3 Minutes Or Less” here.
by Laura L.
on March 1, 2013
in Book, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Examiner.com has a great article about marketing your book in 2013. It really is a marketing plan that you can use to promote your books. You can read the entire article here.
by Laura L.
on February 25, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Book Marketing Buzz is another site for authors who need help marketing their books. They offer articles, blog tours, book excerpts, book giveaways and book promotion tips. This site has lots of great articles that can be a valuable resource. You can check it out here.
by Laura L.
on February 22, 2013
in Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy, Twitter
John Kremer has created a collection of Twitter tips that can help both newcomers and old timer authors who want to leverage the power of Twitter to market their book. You can download the e-book version or read the online version here!
by Laura L.
on February 18, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Vincent van Leeuwen shares the lessons he learned at Startup Weekend in September 2010. Our favorite lesson? “Treat The Media As Your Friend.” Apply these lessons to writing a book or marketing your company. Read the entire article here.
by Laura L.
on February 7, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
If you have an excerpt of your book you can offer it on sites that publish free offers to readers. Make sure that you include more than just your introduction. Most freebie sites require the excerpt to include one chapter from within the book. You can find these types of sites by searching Google.
by Laura L.
on February 5, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Another marketing idea for your book is to find blogs on the topic of your book and offer to write a guest post. You might be asked to provide an original piece that won’t be published anywhere else. Only offer that kind of exclusivity to a blog with a large readership that may be interested in your book and include a link back to the book in your biography. Many authors have done well using this method.
by Laura L.
on January 31, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Smashwords is a site that works with authors and publishers to help them get e-books published by online bookstores. On this site you’ll find many excellent free resources to help you publish and market your book. Our favorite is the newly updated Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. Some of the information in the guide you may already know but we think you’ll learn a thing or two that you hadn’t thought of on your own. Read the guide and let us know which marketing tactic you liked the best!
by Laura L.
on January 24, 2013
in Book, Book Marketing, E-Books, GoodReads, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
We love GoodReads. It is a great resource for both authors and for readers. We regularly run giveaways for our new books and we always get a good response so we are happy to see that Goodreads doubled in size in 2012. To learn all the good news from Goodreads click here and let us know how you use the site to promote your books.
by Laura L.
on January 17, 2013
in Book, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Amanda Hocking is a fiction writer who had her books rejected dozens of times before she went into self publishing. She is a bestselling author now and has chronicled her story in this blog post. Whether you want to write a book or if you are already published this is a story you don’t want to miss.
by Laura L.
on January 4, 2013
in Authors, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
So many authors get discouraged and decide they “can’t” market their books. We understand that marketing isn’t easy and it is time consuming but you can do it. Read “Take Responsibility For Your Book Marketing” and get a grip on how you “can” market your book!
by Laura L.
on October 8, 2012
in Book Marketing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
We just stumbled on a great article from 2011 about how to build your brand (platform) and promote your book in 50 simple ways. Read “50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes a Day” at Writers Digest.
by Laura L.
on September 18, 2012
in Amazon.com, Kindle, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Copyblogger decided to experiment with the KDP Select Program to give away an e-book for a 48 hour period. At the end of the giveaway, which requires that you stop selling your book elsewhere, Copyblogger discovered numerous benefits from the giveaway including increased sales! To read about the experiment and the results visit Copyblogger.
by Laura L.
on September 3, 2012
in Authors, Book, Book Publishing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
If you need Amazon.com reviews and you want them to come with the “Amazon Verified Purchase” notation then you’ll need to send the review copies via Kindle. The Selling Books blog offers a description of how to do this AND includes a step-by-step video. This is great information, for free that you won’t find anywhere else. Click this link to read more.
by Laura L.
on August 27, 2012
in Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
Read a short but fabulous guest blog by Angela Ackerman on J.C. Martin’s blog. The reason we like this post so much is it is focused on collaboration and generosity. After you read it please leave us a comment and tell us your thoughts about the post.
by Laura L.
on August 22, 2012
in Authors, Book, Marketing
Just like any social network, Facebook has to be used wisely while you are building a community of potential readers. Do the wrong thing and you can undo all of the credibility you’ve worked hard to build.
Here are some things that you definitely want to avoid doing on FaceBook:
1. Do not spam people’s inboxes, walls or Facebook Fan Pages. This will cost you your credibility and it can also get you banned from FaceBook entirely. Facebook is an important tool that needs to remain spam free in order to be a place where people want to gather.
2. Don’t post the link to your website on people’s walls or Fan Pages. This just makes you look desperate and greedy. Don’t drop links anywhere at all. Instead, post interesting comments and people will click your name to learn more about you from your profile.
3. While you want to give yourself and your business a human face don’t get overly personal especially with photos and videos. You aren’t searching for a hot date – you are trying to build an audience of readers.
Use good sense and avoid behavior used by other spammers. In the long run it may take longer to build your audience but the price of your credibility is not something you want to lose.
by Laura L.
on August 15, 2012
in Authors, Book, Marketing, Social Media Success, Social Networking
A popular phrase in marketing is “Return On Investment” or ROI. Everyone wants to know the ROI of their marketing tactics and sometimes this is easy to determine. Social media is where it gets murky. There isn’t a way to monitor social media impact at present because social media is not meant to be a marketing or sales channel. The true value in social media is building relationships with present and future readers, build your brand and create a positive reputation. This can’t be quantified.
In my opinion the best practices in social media include:
1. Building relationships. Posting a tweet or Facebook Fan Page status update a couple of times a week isn’t going to build relationships. You need to monitor your accounts for visitor response at least twice a week if you’re just starting out and more often when you become more experienced. Ask and answer questions, “like” responses and thank people for commenting.
2. Stay out of flame wars. Build your reputation by responding positively and constructively to criticism. Show enthusiasm for suggestions even if they aren’t perfect. Move potentially destructive conversations off social media and on to e-mail or telephone. Remove comments that are spammy or inappropriate and report people who continuously spam you. Building your reputation doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat.
3. Monitor conversations about you or your company. People may be talking about you or your book in a positive or negative manner on their own social media accounts. Setup Google Alerts to monitor this but you can also manually search social media sites on your own. You’ll be surprised at what you learn and much of it will be positive.
4. Use social media to promote but not sell. No one wants to follow someone on Twitter just to hear over and over again “Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my book.” You can provide discreet links to your book excerpts or sample chapters but do it infrequently.
Social media is a great place to meet potential and current readers but be sure to use it wisely.
by Laura L.
on August 13, 2012
in Authors, Book, Book Publishing, Marketing, Marketing And Sales Strategy
The Book Deal blog has a great interview with Jackie Morse Kessler, the author of a four-book Young Adulst series with Houghton/Graphia: Hunger, Rage, Loss and the upcoming Breath. Ms. Kessler just finished a blog book tour and explains how it works and what the benefits are for authors. To read this insightful post at the Book Deal blog and let us know if you’ve ever participated in a book blog tour.
by Laura L.
on August 8, 2012
in Authors, Book, Book Publishing, Marketing
Your book readers are critical to your success as an author. So you better know them inside out or you are not going to be successful. I know this is a bold statement but it’s true!
As a publisher I always ask my potential authors if they know who will buy and read their book. Almost all of them say “I believe that everyone could enjoy reading my book.” Wrong! It would be lovely if everyone would buy and love your book but that doesn’t happen even for a bestselling author. People have very definitive tastes in book topics and writing styles. You can’t possibly appeal to all of them and it would be a waste of your time to try target the entire world.
Defining your target reader is the most important thing you can do before creating your marketing plan. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about social media , PR or advertising – if you don’t know who your target reader is none of this stuff will be effective.
Do some research by looking at books similar to your own and check out the reviews. Start by identifying who your readers are by using standard demographics like:
- Gender
- Age
- Marital Status
- Family Size
- Location
- Language Spoken
Once you come up with a profile of a target reader you will be able to use that information to find out where these people hang out and then take the steps to communicate with them. Without this information you’re really shooting in the dark!
