Social Media is for Making Connections
Posted: December 17, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, Copywriting, marketing, Promotion, Western | Tags: book marketing, Book Promotion, Social media, Social Media Events, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Promotion 4 Comments
My husband always accused me of spending too much time ‘playing’ on Facebook, and although I do spend a lot of time on social media, what I’m really doing is promoting my writing and interacting with other authors and potential readers. The truth is, social media can be a valuable tool for authors, if they go about it with the right expectations.
Although I hear paid Facebook ads can drum up a few sales, but if we don’t want to spend a lot of money, we shouldn’t expect to sell a lot of books through social media. I know it doesn’t sound like it’s really very beneficial when you look at it from a sales perspective. But social media can be benificial if we use it to connect. Social media connects me with other authors and potential readers via several channels.
On Halloween, I co-hosted the Dead Man’s Party event, together with DL Mullen of Sonoran Dawn Studios. Though I had participated in several such events, this was my first experience with the organization of one. It was also the first audio event I had ever heard of. We mixed things up a bit by having the participating authors provided readings of their works of paranormal and horror, intermixed with the regular promotional posts, silly party games and giveaways. I had recently reviewed Dark Visions, a horror anthology compiled and edited by Dan Alatorre, which had just been released, and with his help, I was able to recruit many of the authors of the stories from the anthology. It was a learning experience, as many of these authors had never published anything before, or done an event such as this. I did many of the recordings and put together one video reading, as well as creating promotional posts for many of them. The whole thing was a lot of fun, drawing in over 1000 visitors I’m told. Overall, it was a success and a lot of fun, and I made many new friends and followers.
But, it was also a lot of work. The recordings took a lot of time to get them right, their were a few audio problems with the video presentation, and I made their promos like I do for my own work, with loving care. However, it was worth it all to get the experience and improve on my promotional skills, as well as in watching my number of followers grow. And one of my new author friends from the event will be joining the WtbR team as a contributing blogger to start the new year. The work I did also gave me some much needed samples of my promotional work, which I used to start my new Copywriting and PA Services page.
So you can see how this event benefited me greatly. Although I didn’t sell a single book, (the ones I gave away don’t count here), I did prosper from the event in many other ways. The message here is to social media to your advantage, but use it in the right ways and for the right reasons in order to avoid having your expectations left unfulfilled. But that’s how you have to approach social media promotion. The first word in social media is ‘social’. It’s there to make connections. That’s what we can expect to get from promotions on social media platforms. Promotion on social media can bring you authors to network with, or readers to build your platform. Any real book sales that you do get are just a nice bonus, but they cannot be expected.
I also gain followers through my Facebook pages. I currently have four pages. The primary page is my Kaye Lynne Booth – Author and Screenwriter page. I also have a page for Delilah – Kaye Lynne Booth, for news concerning both my published western and for book 2, Delilah the Homecoming which is still in the draft stages, as well as pages for two WIPs: my scince fantasy series, Playground for the Gods – Kaye Lynne Booth, and my memoir, His Name Was Michael – Kaye Lynne Booth. Through these pages I hope to gain followers who are interested in my writings. By building my platform, I hopefully gain readers who will buy my book.
I’m a member of a large number of author and book groups that allow promotional posts, as well as discussions. We should realize that most of the participants in these events like the one I spoke about above are other authors and the ‘book sales’ you get will be from giveaways. I use this to my advantage by making these connections my goal, instead of going about it with expectations of increased book sales. I spend my time on social media sharing promotions for my blog posts, responding to comments on my posts, sending out friend requests, and interacting. Through the new author friends that I make at these events, I’m able to find authors in need of interviews or book reviews for Writing to be Read, and my followers are growing through my efforts, as well.
So, I say that social media can be a useful tool if we set the right expectations and use social media the way it is meant to be used. Connections can be valuable to an author, especially a new author. We just have to see it’s value and find ways to use it to our benefit.
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Yuletide Jingle Book Event: Come Join in the Fun!
Posted: December 5, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, Books, Cover Art, Social Media Promotion, Writing Event | Tags: Book Event, Book Promotion, Social Media Promotion, Sonoran Dawn Studios, Writing to be Read, Yuletide Jingle Leave a comment
If you’re looking for Jeff’s Pep Talk, you’ll find his post next Wednesday. This week I wanted to let all my readers know about the Yuletide Jingle event on December 8th, hosted by Sonoran Dawn Studios. It’s going to be an audio event, with Christmas songs and stories intermixed with author promos. Of course, there will be games and giveaways, as well. Three authors will win cover art by Sonoran Dawn Studios. There will also be free books and other great prizes offered by the individual participants. It’s going to be a lot of fun. So click on the link below to reserve your spot and join in. Author Take Over slots are still available. I do hope I’ll see you all there.
https://www.facebook.com/events/348391889231178/https://www.facebook.com/events/348391889231178/
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“How I Sold 80,000 Books”: Advice Every Author Should Know
Posted: November 2, 2018 Filed under: Books, marketing, Nonfiction, Promotion, Writing, Writing Tips | Tags: Alinka Rudowska, book marketing, Book Promotion, Book Review, How I Sold 80000 Books, marketing 1 Comment
How I Sold 80,000 Books: Book Marketing for Authors (Self Publishing Through Amazon and Other Retailers), by Alinka Rutkowska offers authors valuable marketing tips coming from the business end of writing. Coming from a marketing background, Rutkowska shares tips on the art of successful book marketing, which might be applied to increase book sales and push the author’s name up on the bestseller’s listings.
Although the advice in How I Sold 80,000 Books is aimed mostly toward nonfiction works, Rutkowska claims it can easily be applied to works of fiction, too. The book takes readers through the author’s step-by-step marketing system, which she uses to sell her own books. She shares her secrets for producing a quality product that sells, talks about the best outlets through which to offer your books, discusses how to put the best price on your books, and effective ways to promote your books. Although every step may not be applicable by every author, they are all good, solid book marketing advice.
The valuable book marketing advice contained within may be why this book was a Readers’ Favorite Book Award winner, and why every author should add How I Sold 80,000 Books to their must read list. I will use much of the advice received from this book and I give it five quills.
Kaye Lynne Booth does honest book reviews on Writing to be Read in exchange for ARCs. Have a book you’d like reviewed? Contact Kaye at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
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Social Media: What’s it good for?
Posted: September 3, 2018 Filed under: Books, marketing, Promotion | Tags: author platform, book marketing, Book Promotion, promotion, Reader Platform, Social media Leave a comment
I posted a link in my Writing to be Read Facebook group a couple of weeks ago. The article discussed the new changes made by Facebook which do not allow us to post promotional materials on personal Timelines. Under the new guidelines promotional posts are only allowed to be made on our Facebook Pages, which are designed to be set up for businesses. If you break the rules and make promotional posts on your Timeline, Facebook can ban you. This information caused quite a stir in my group, and I admit it caused me quite a bit of concern, as well. I came to the conclusion that, as with everything in life, we must learn to be flexible and accoodate change. I changed the title of my Kaye Lynne Booth Screenwriter page to Kaye Lynne Booth Author and Screenwriter and set my automatic posts from WordPress to post there instead of on my Timeline and hoped for the best.
One of the comments I received was a question toward one of the group members who was upset, viewing this as a ploy to force us to purchase paid advertising. The second member asked how using Facebook’s free advertising was going and asked if she had sold many books from it. While I don’t think this change prohibits making promotional posts as long as you make them through allowable channels, the conversation made me stop and think about what we authors are expecting to achieve through such posts.
Free promotion through social media is great. It offers us, as authors, an avenue to get the word out about our writing, without putting a dent on our wallets. For aspiring authors, who haven’t made it to fame and fortune yet, like myself, that’s great. But what results are we expecting?
If you’re thinking your book will rise to the top of the best seller lists, you’re dreaming. That’s not the way it works. The best seller lists, at least those on Amazon, work on algorithms, and if you’re only one of a smattering of books in a category, it may not take many book sales to place your book at the top of the list. Authors who write romance have it a lot tougher, because there are a whole slew of romances out there, a lot of competition, so even if your book is making sales, it may not be enough to launch you to the top because it’s based on the books which sell the most in that particular category.
Likewise, most of the folks who those promotional posts reach are other authors, not the people in your target audience. Authors may buy books, but basically they want the the same thing you do. They are out there to promote their own work. Social media isn’t designed to sell books, although their paid promotions may be quite effective, and anyone who is using free promotions to try and sell books, or anything else, may be sorely disappointed. Social media, my friends, is designed to promote connections, some of which may be quite valuable, but it’s not designed to sell merchandise, hence the word ‘social’. And that is what I get from my promotional efforts on Facebook and any other social media site I use. I grow my blog following and my email list. I find a few people who are willing to review my book. I meet people who can include me in their author services as an editor. I connect with artists who can create the book covers I need. While many are fellow authors, I tap into that as well, offering them interviews or reviews here on Writing to be Read. They get some free exposure and I great content for my blog. It works out great.
That being said, I’ve come to the sobering realization that nothing is free, and I’m going to have to invest some of my hard earned money if I want to boost my book sales. While I can’t afford paid promotion on Facebook or Amazon right now, there are affordable promotions out there.
- There are some affordable avenues of promotion out there. Most recently, I found a promotional site called I Like E Books, which has promotional packeages which range from free up to twenty dollars, which seems promising. They provide promotion on social media channels and other cool stuff, depending on which level od promotion you pay for.
- Although not a promotional site, per se, Book Bub is great for featuring your books under your favorites, so folks can see that they are available. You can follow your favorite authors and hopefully gain some followers of your own. It doesn’t cost anything to join.
- On All Author, you can have your book featured on their site for six months, with twitter promos, weekly mock-up banners, and review posting for a flat fee of $24.
- It’s also free to sign up for PromoCave, which is a site for ongoing promotion via social media sites. It helps on this site to post content fairly regularly, since it will bring readers to your profile.
- BMI Books is a global book marketing site where you can place and manage a book ad for free, although I’m unsure how this one works as yet.
- You may also sign up for free on Write Globe, which has a nice book promotion platform as well as supporting other types of creativity. This site was listed as number one in a list of “Top 7 Websites for Book and Author Promotion” by Alwin Gnanaraj on LinkedIn.
- Creative Designers & Writers is a free international classified site, where you can create and post an ad. It is supportive of other creatives as well and can serve as a platform for collaborative works with graphic designers and artists.
- Books Online Best also allows you to post a free ad in addition to other author services, such as book trailers and author interviews. You can also create a freelance site here.
One day, I’ll be able to afford to play with the big boys. For now, I will be grateful for the benefits I can get from social media, but I will approach it with reasonable expectations, being grateful for every follower I gain and counting any book sales that comes from it as an extra added bonus.
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An Adventure in Digital Book Marketing
Posted: May 14, 2018 Filed under: Advertising, Books, marketing, Promotion, Writing | Tags: Advertising, book marketing, Book Promotion, Book trailer, Delilah, newsletters, Paid Promotions, Writing, Writing the Rockies Conference 1 Comment
Since February, I’ve been giving myself a crash course in book marketing and promotion, especially in regards to social media marketing, because it’s the cheapest route for getting your books out there that I’ve found. Which is not to say that it is the most effective, or that paid promotions aren’t more effective. Those are things I cannot yet say. Ask me when I’m a successful and wealthy author. Perhaps I will know the answer by then.
While educating myself in areas beyond my own expertise, (I’m a writer, not a marketer), I launched a marketing campaign and created promotions of my own to get a feel for what works for me and what doesn’t. Since that time, I’ve dipped my toes into the pool of paid promotions, as well. Among the methods and techneques tried: I now have a slowly growing mailing list for my new monthly newsletter. I’ve sent out two so far, and have so far met with medicore success, and I launched a media campaign for Delilah which included a few modest paid promotions, social network promotions of new advertisement photos, sending out press releases to select Colorado newspapers pushing the local author angle, and my very first book trailer which I created myself.
It’s hard to determine the success of any of my efforts as yet, although the press releases resulted in runs in two newspapers that I know of. What that adds up to in sales, I don’t yet know. Although there was a small increase in sales April, there doesn’t seem to be a correlation with any of my promotional efforts. Sales come slow, and often, only after great effort on the author’s part, I think. Only time will show the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of my first marketing campaign.
The newsletter email list is growing slowly, but it is growing. The weird thing is, when you sign up in the sidebar pop-up, you get a link to a free e-copy of my paranormal mystery novelette, Hidden Secrets, but only a handful have been claimed. I even sent out the link in the newsletter for April, and still subscribers are not claiming their thank you gift. Of course, only a little over thirty percent are opening the newsletter, so I don’t know how much help it will be. I’m asking all who read this post to subscribe to my monthly newsletter using the sidebar pop-up, and then claim your free gift. The newsletter is monthly, so it won’t clutter up your inbox, and Hidden Secrets is not available on any other platform.
I don’t know if the book trailer had any effect on sales, but I sure did have fun creating it once I figured out what program I could use to get the job done. After looking at numerous free programs that claim to make book trailers, it turns out I had the program to do the job already installed on my computer in my Microsoft Office 2013 Power Point. A little more self-education on what can be done with Power Point and how to do it, and I had myself a book trailer, which I absolutely love. It’s amazing what can be done with software I already own. Made me happy. Even if it doesn’t bring one sale, I think it’s cool. I’d post it here to show you, but the free plans on WordPress don’t include video capabilities, so if you’re interested, you can see it on my Delilah Facebook page. I hope you’ll check it out.
I’ve learned a lot from my search for knowledge in book marketing and promotion. While SEO is still important, it’s valued different than it used to be, because search engines now operate differently, according to Hubspot’s 20 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2018. Technical terms like bounce rate may be beyond my limited understanding, but I understand enough to realize I need to give SEO more thought when designing my content. It would be a lot easier if my books would just shoot up to the top of the best sellers charts overnight and rode there for awhile. Maybe then I could afford to hire somebody to do all this brain numbing stuff for me. I always try to write using keywords. Isn’t that enough? I only had a very basic understanding of SEO to begin with, and if I try to take in too much SEO talk at one time it gives me a headache, but I’m determined to give it my best shot.
So, that’s my first big marketing adventure. I may not be able to tell how effective it was at this time, but I know I’m learning a lot as I go. The adventure isn’t over yet. In July, I’ll be at my first face to face event, when I sit on the alumni panel for Western State at the Writing the Rockies Conference and print copies of Delilah will be available. I’m both excited and nervous, but I know it’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it. Be sure and catch next Monday’s post to learn more about the conference
As to the effectiveness of any of it? I’ll let you know.
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Join Me In My Protest Against Facebook
Posted: February 5, 2018 Filed under: Books, marketing, Promotion | Tags: Book Promotion, Facebook, Protest, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Promotion 7 Comments
There are changes for Facebook on the horizon, and they aren’t beneficial to struggling authors or small business owners. Many are already going into effect. I’ve already seen an impact on my Facebook activities and I’m not liking it at all.
Some of the expected changes are explained in the K-lytics article, How the New Facebook Algorithms Affect Authors, by Alex Newton,
“In other words, if you write a post promoting your most recent book, only a fraction of your page fans or friends will see it. If your fans do not follow your page, your post is going to end up in the alternative news feed, not the main feed, if it shows up at all….”
Social Media Examiner founder Michael Stelzner claims these changes are already occuring, including video getting less watch time and links to external pages getting less visibility, and he claims these changes will impact all people and pages. And I think he’s right. Just because someone follows you, doesn’t mean that they are seeing your posts in their news feed.
In the K-lytics article, Alex Newton claims Facebook is really after your money, trying to push you to pay for your promotions because starving artists and start-up businesses are taking advantage of their free promotion features and they aren’t making any money off of you,
“Remember, organic reach is the total number of unique people who were shown your post through unpaid distribution. If you had 3,000 fans on your page and you reached 300 (10%) with a post, you could consider yourself lucky. And these days, the percentage is so much lower.
The fact is, Facebook wants you to pay for your reach. Facebook wants you to run ads and “boost” your posts.”
This algorithm and Facebook’s effort to bully people into paying for what we used to get on their site for free has already had an impact. I have made a practice of being a member of many writing, author, and book groups, where I post each time I publish a new blog post and promote my books, short stories and poetry. I try to keep track of which groups allow promotional posts and the ones that allow them only on certain days, and I try to follow all of the rules. But because I share my posts in so many different groups, the Facebook algorithm has been known to tag my posts as spam, especially if I’m short on time and rushing through my promotional tasks. Facebook has cut me off for going too fast or for making too many shares. It’s not people reporting me, it’s their algorithms deciding that I’ve been a bad girl.
Most recently, Facebook has banned me for twenty-four hours and then as soon as I did three shares the next day, all to the “Writing Contacts” group that I started, they banned me again. And they don’t just ban me from sharing posts, they ban me from all group activities. I couldn’t even comment on someone else’s posts or contribute to the group in any way, so it looks like all I do there is promote. I try to be a contributing member to most of the groups I belong to and not just promote my work, but my time is often limited and I have to combine the two activities in order to get them both done. I have been doing things this way for at least eight years, but now they are slapping my hands for it.
Michael Stelzner suggests measures to increase the chances of getting your posts seen, such as posting less often, create content that promotes people to talk to each other instead of just you, increase your live video use, avoid posts that encourage people to comment (engagement bait), and pay for your ads and use Messenger chatbots. (If you are interested in learning more about this, you won’t want to miss the Social Media Marketing 2018 Conference).
To my thinking, if I play Facebook’s game and change my marketing strategy on their site, or pay for their advertising to make sure my posts are seen, especially when the majority of my posts are for Writing to be Read which I’m not making any money off of, then they win. Why should Facebook decide who gets to see my posts. If I’ve followed someone, I want to see their posts. That’s why I followed them in the first place. Those who have followed me should by rights, be able to see my posts. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, but that’s not the way it does work with these new algorithms.
So, I have a different solution. I created a “Westerns” page here on the Writing to be Read site, to replace my Delilah Facebook page and I hope to drive traffic to it, instead of promoting the Facebook page. I plan to do the same with my Playground for the Gods page. I have a cool idea for marketing of the second book, but you’ll have to check in to my Westerns page to learn what it is. If I’m ever fluid enough to pay for Facebook ads, I’ll use them to drive to my website pages, here, rather than their Facebook counterparts.
So, I am asking for your help. You, dear reader, can help support my Facebook protest by liking my “Westerns” page, subscribing to email, (up below the Red Quill logo and the search box in the top right side of the page), or follow Writing to be Read on WordPress. Remember, authors count on you, not just to buy their books, but to like their posts and write reviews. These days, these are things that matter in the rankings. Also, watch for a new way to sign up for my email list to recieve news and updates on my work, and when you see it, please sign up. I need your support. And if you are an author, I call upon you to move your pages to a different platform and stand in unification against the big conglomerates who believe they have us by the short hairs.
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Book Marketing – What Works? (Part 2): Interview with Co-Authors Kym O’Connell Todd and Mark Todd
Posted: September 11, 2017 Filed under: Books, Cover Art, Fiction, marketing, Promotion, Writing | Tags: Author Interview, book marketing, Book Promotion, Kym O'Connell Todd, Mark Todd 1 Comment
Last week we talked with self-published author, Cynthia Vespia, who shared her thoughts on social media marketing vs. face-to-face marketing opportunities. This week, we’ll take a look at other marketing strategies available to authors today and their effectiveness, when co-authors Mark Todd and Kym O’Connell Todd join us on Writing to be Read.
Mark and Kym are not only co-authors, but husband and wife, who are peculiarly in sync with one another. As the Southern Colorado Literature Examiner, I had the pleasure of reviewing their Silverville Saga books, which are filled with quirky characters who inhabit a small fictional mountain town where crazy antics are in abundance. They even wrote themselves into the first story, Little Greed Men, and as you will learn, they really are as eccentric as their own characters. They also dabble in ghost hunting and bring their experiences to us in their book Wild West Ghosts and on their blog site, Write in the Thick of Things. (They have a website by the same name, but there you’ll find their books, not ghosts.)
Kaye: Would you share the story of your own publishing journey?
Mark-&-Kym: We got the idea for the first book in the Silverville Saga after a trip to the 49th anniversary “pilot” event for the Roswell UFO crash. The town was testing the idea of an annual celebration. It was crazy – researcher seminars, abductee interviews, parade, and alien costume contest. On the way home afterwards, we decided there was a book in the fanfare. We wrote half of the first book for fun and sat on it for ten years. An author friend one day put us in touch with his publisher, who loved the premise and said he was interested if we finished the book. We scrambled, completed the project, and he did publish it. Since then, we made a deal with another press, and all three books in the series now live at Raspberry Creek Books. The same press recently published our nonfiction book Wild West Ghosts, which is about haunted hotels.
Kaye: Your Silverville Saga books are about the people who live in a small mountain community in Colorado. Their titles are Little Greed Men, All Plucked Up and The Magicke Outhouse. How do you decide the titles for your books? Where does the title come in the process for you?
Mark-&-Kym: For us, finding the right title is tough. Our publisher titled the first one! When we had a chance to republish it with Raspberry, we’d come up with what we thought was a very clever title, Little Greed Men. After that, the titles had a strategy: be clever or punny.
Kaye: Why do you think some authors sell well and others don’t?
Mark-&-Kym: So far as we can tell, it’s a mystery. Marketing is key, of course. And much of it falls to authors these days, regardless of whether you use a large or small press. It’s time-consuming and can take more time than it takes to write the book. There are so many additional factors that lead to success or failure, such as cover design, distribution, quality and voice of writing, distribution opportunities. The list goes on and on. The biggest factor of all might be luck.
Kaye: Is there anything unique or unusual about your writing process?
Mark-&-Kym: Yep. We’re doing it as we answer these questions. We write every sentence together. We’re so in sync that this isn’t difficult for us. One of us starts a sentence and the other finishes it. We massage the words and by the time we’re done, we have no idea who wrote what.
Kaye: For Wild West Ghosts you videotaped your research and then published the videos on your website/blog. Do you think that helped sales, or helped to grow your fan base?
Mark-&-Kym: As far as book sales, maybe or maybe not. It definitely increased the fan base. Over the six months before publication and the year following, we garnered over three-quarters of a million social media impressions for the book, and we have fans on six continents. We’ve even had invitations from ghost investigators to visit the Great Britain, Wales, Scotland, Germany, and France. We generated tens of thousands of followers through Google Plus and YouTube, but these fans were more interested in our ghost investigations than in buying books. Nowadays, we try to spend our marketing time on venues that cater to readers who buy books. Live and learn.
Kaye: You mention YouTube. Are you using YouTube as a marketing tool then?
Mark-&-Kym: Yes, YouTube is one part of our marketing campaign for Wild West Ghosts, right alongside the blog, FB, Twitter, and GoodReads platforms. And I think it does help grow our fan base — but primarily because of the nature of this particular book. Each blog relating to the book ends with a pitch to buy, and we have close to a hundred blogs relating to the ghost adventures, and each blog embeds the YouTube clips as part of the blog article package.
I haven’t figured out an effective analytics to measure YouTube alone so far as it relates to book sales, since the video clips point people to our blog, where we point people to our books. And we’re simultaneously using all the platforms in an integrated way to reach audience.
Kaye: What type of marketing strategies have you tried with your books? What worked and what didn’t?
Mark-&-Kym: We have a Website, Write in the Thick of Things and author pages on Amazon. We use blogging and blog hops, tweets, Facebook pages, Goodreads and, as mentioned, Google Plus communities to spread the word.
We’ve found book readings to be less productive. We’ve had anywhere from a smattering to three-hundred attendees. But that doesn’t mean we sold three-hundred books. And at one event, no one came. A lot depends on the publicity that your host provides. After spending the gas and taking the time to go, it’s often a wash in terms of generated revenue.
Kaye: Which social media is your favorite for promotion and why?
Mark-&-Kym: Mark likes blogging the best. The 400- to 600-word length is about right for explaining a targeted subject. And we’ve created RSS feeds to share those blogs on our Amazon author page as well as on Goodreads. We also have our Facebook author pages linked to Twitter, so we make sure the first 160 characters make sense.
Kaye: Have you tried any free promotions with your books? Did it help to boost your sales?
Mark-&-Kym: After Mark’s SF book Strange Attractors was left at the altar when a small press folded just two months short of street release and then orphaned (twice) at a large press, he decided to Indy-publish the novel using CreateSpace. The free promotions with KPD Select helped create buzz and boosted sales. We also use the Goodreads Giveaway program every time we publish a new book, and that’s also worked for us.
Kaye: You talk about free promotions. How does giving away your work help sales? Or does it?
Mark-&-Kym: The “free” promotion doesn’t count toward sales numbers but does generate interest in a featured book and often additional Amazon reviews, which is always a good thing. It costs us nothing as an ebook download, and KDP Select handles all that. For whatever reason, the new buzz tends to raise awareness about the featured title, so word-of-mouth usually generates legit spin-off sales. So it’s “free” marketing. 🙂
Kaye: How much work do you contract out? Book Covers? Editing? Marketing? Etc…?
Mark-&-Kym: None. We have an advantage: Kym designs book covers commercially, and Mark copyedits as part of his job as a college writing teacher. So those are already are a part of our professional skill sets. We do have trusted, honest beta readers and a good editor in our publisher. But don’t misunderstand the importance of having competent and professional book designers and copyeditors. If you want to be taken seriously as an author, you have to treat writing as a business and hire out what you don’t know or can’t do professionally. As for marketing, we’re about to try out BookBarbarians, which we’ve heard produces promising results. Stay tuned on that one.
Kaye: What is the single “What do you do” for cover art?
Mark-&-Kym: DIY usually looks like DIY. When Kym designs a cover for either a publishing house or an individual author, she first reads a good portion of the book to get a feel for the content and mood. She asks if there are specific elements the writer wants on the cover, and then she creates several mock-ups to show the client. People do judge a book by its cover. If that cover doesn’t look interesting, readers will pass it by.
Kaye: What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Mark-&-Kym: Don’t be disappointed if your first book doesn’t turn out to be the Great American Novel. The market is incredibly competitive, and just because you write it doesn’t mean it will sell. But if writing is your passion, then that should be your goal. That’s why we do it.
I’d like to thank Mark and Kym for sharing a glimpse into their writing and marketing processes. Click on any of the links above to learn more about Mark and Kym and their work. Be sure to drop by next week for Part 3 of Book Marketing – What Works?, with YA author Jordan Elizabeth, who will talk about street teams, and social media marketing.
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An Adventure in Social Media Marketing
Posted: July 24, 2017 Filed under: Books, Cover Art, Fiction, marketing, Promotion, Western, Writing, Writing Event | Tags: Art, Book Cover Contests, book marketing, Book Promotion, Books, Delilah, Social Media Events 6 Comments
In my post, It’s All in the Packaging, I interview cover designer, Dawn Leslie Mullan and I issued a plea for your help and support as the cover art for Delilah made it to the second round in a book cover contest on Facebook. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it into round three, but I want to thank all those who took the time and went to the effort to vote. Delilah has a great cover that fits her story, and I appreciate everyone who jumped in a tried to help us win. I also want to thank DL Mullan for providing such a great cover and Robin Conley for nominating it.
Although I have participated in release parties, it was my first experience with an event like this on social media, so I learned a lot from the experience. I think there are several reasons why we didn’t make it to round three. The promoters of the event were romance authors, and many of the covers we were up against were romance covers, especially the ones which got the most votes, which leads me to believe romance readers were the majority of the audience attending this event, so I considered it lucky that I was able to get the votes I did. Again, all those that voted, whether from my previous blog post, or from my massive marketing campaign to gain votes, you guys are great, and greatly appreciated.
I also learned what not to do when hosting an event like this. The event promoters laid out a set of rules for voting, which had participants clicking and liking various pages, and although the rules were laid out, it seems several of the participants failed to do so, because in later rounds, new “Rules” posts were put up, saying those who failed to follow each step would not be counted. Also, at the end of round two, they announced that hearts did not count as votes, only ‘likes’, but this was not stated at the beginning, so anyone who had someone who loved their cover enough to give it a heart was disqualified.
I think these events should be made as easy as possible to participate in. Think about it. We’re asking people to take time out to go to a page and vote, or play silly games to win prizes in the case of release parties. The games should be fun, or at least funny. The prizes should be something that will be viewed to have some value. And voting should be quick and easy, only taking a few minutes of their time. And for heavens sake, if someone does accept your invitation and attends, or votes for you, show some appreciation and thank them. I know I do, and it keeps readers coming back for more.
I was happy that the cover for Delilah made it to round two, and disappointed that it didn’t go to round three. Maybe next time. Although, I am wondering how effective these social media events really are. A couple of authors I’ve talked said they’ve participated in release parties, but haven’t seen any real increase in sales from them. That could be partly because they are attended mostly by other authors, so we may be playing to the wrong audience there.
I’d be interested in hearing from other authors who participate in these events. I’d like to know how beneficial they really are. Do they bring in sales of your books? Or are they a waste of time? If you’d like to weigh in, leave a comment here, or contact me at kayebooth(at)yahoo(dot)com.
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