Showing posts with label Advertising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advertising. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

#WWoW Building an Author Platform @GingerMonette #MFRWauthor #marketing

Your manuscript is in the hands of your editor, and you've got the big release day circled on your calendar...
What now? Should you start advertising? Tweeting?

It's little early to alert the media, but there are a host of pre-launch “foundations” new authors need to put into place before they release their baby to the world. Let's get right to the checklist.

-Create a new email address to use exclusively for your writing/marketing correspondence. It will keep your emails from bloggers and fans separate from your emails from Aunt Eleanor and Old Navy. With all of your author emails in a separate mailbox, you can see at a glance any unopened correspondence and remind you of emails needing immediate attention.

I suggest using a form of your name or something that identifies your brand. For example, my author email name is SperoBooks. Keep it short, professional, and preferably something that has nothing odd like an underscore. Don't make the mistake of using the title of your book as your email name. It will be passe' when you publish your second book.

-Create a signature line and maybe a ‘one-liner’ that describes in a nutshell what type of romance you write (“Romance with a touch of mystery,” “Broken hearts finding love,” “Romance for the modern girl,” etc). Begin using it on all your emails so your friends, business associates, and writing contacts will know you're an author.

-Research web hosts and build a website. If you're not sure you want to make a long-term financial commitment, choose a free hosting service that has the option to upgrade later. I chose Wix.com as their customer service is pretty good and their site building tools are mostly intuitive.

Before you start designing, look at other authors' websites and take advice from experts like Tim Grahl and Jane Friedman. Make a list of what you like, then make a plan.

-Research which social media platforms will best reach your target audience and start getting active there.

-Develop a bio—a short, middle length, and long one.


-Create an author page on Goodreads and post your bio and headshot there. (When your book goes live, add your bio to your Amazon author pages in ALL the countries where you will be selling.)

-Get a headshot. Add it to your website and to your Amazon and Goodreads author pages. Use it as part of the header of any newsletters as well. Readers are more likely to remember your name if they can attach a face to it.

-Decide if you want to make a video or audio trailer for your book. If so, start working on it. I have one here.

-Will you do a blog tour? If so, research blogs that could be a good fit. Don’t contact yet, just make a spreadsheet that includes blog address, contact email, number of followers, and a few sentences about why it made your list.

-Subscribe to book marketing experts like Nick Stephenson, Tim Grahl, and Chandler Bolt. Take notes from what you read/watch.

-Subscribe to Yahoo groups that focus on marketing for your genre. Two excellent Yahoo groups for romance authors are Marketing for Romance Writers and Indie Romance. (If you simply don't have the time to learn from the experts previously noted, the topics covered on these e-loops will give you an excellent education.)

-Make a list of potential people to be on your launch team who will be willing to leave a review of your book on launch day and share it on their social media. Friends and family are fine if that's all you have, but readers who love your genre are MUCH better.

-Start formulating a long-term (written) marketing plan: Who specifically is your audience? How will you reach them? Will you offer your book for pre-order? What pricing strategies/sales might work well? What book marketing services/promotors look like good fits? What’s your marketing budget? What are good places to advertise?

-Will you need a book cover? If so, what ideas do you have how it should look? Browse stock image sites to find appropriate images. If you are self-publishing, research designers, or choose a service like 99Designs, Upwork.com, Reedsy, or even Fiverr.com if your budget is bare-bones.

-Will you offer some sort of freebie to entice people to sign up for your newsletter or pre-order your book? If so, create it now. For my novel written in an unfamiliar era (WW1), I offer access to an online scrapbook to those who subscribe to my newsletter. (If you have a look, give it a minute or two to load.) Other authors commonly offer a short story, additional chapters, or some other exclusive bonus.

-Will you offer some sort of give-away in conjunction with your book launch? If so, research items that are a good fit (i.e. a tin of Scottish shortbread if you write Scottish Romance)

-Search for images that you could use to create graphic teasers for your book. These sites have free public domain images: Pixabay, Pexels, Unsplash, and Wiki Commons. (Not all Wiki Commons images are licensed for commercial use, but they have oddball stuff you may not find anywhere else.)

-Compile a media kit to have all the necessary advertising elements in one place: Blurb, bio, excerpt, book info, images, etc. Mine is here.

-Choose quotes and excerpts from your book that would make good teasers. Maybe even play around with Canva.com to learn how to make the teasers, Twitter banners, FB headers, etc. (All the graphics in my media kit were created at Canva.com.)

Feeling overwhelmed?
It is a LOT of work, and most of these tasks take an ENORMOUS amount of time. If you have deep pockets, you can hire experts to do many of these tasks for you, but they will still require your input. So start early and give yourself plenty of time. I spent nearly three months just educating myself on current trends in book marketing. (Yeah, I believe in being thorough.) But when I launched my book with a 23-day blog tour, I was able to do it with confidence as I had my marketing foundation firmly in place.

How long did these tasks take you? Did I leave anything out?
I’d love to hear your comments.

THIS POST SUBMITTED BY Ginger Monette
Winner of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library's 2015 “Picture This” grand prize, Ginger currently writes romances set in the era of Downton Abbey and WW1. She lives with her family in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she enjoys dancing on the treadmill, watching period dramas, public speaking, and reading—a full-length novel every Sunday afternoon.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Use a Press Release to Promote your Book! @JimDaddio #MFRWauthor

When MFRW author Jim Daddio released his book The Choice, he knew he needed to get the word out. Jim is the author of six fiction books. He lives in Palm City, Florida with his wife, Jill. His books are available on amazon.com (search Jim Daddio). You can also find out more about him at www.jimdaddio.com. He share how he publicized his book here.

As authors we want to sell as many books as possible. We must be our own self-promoter. We need to tell everyone we meet we are writers and have excellent books available. I recently contacted a local newspaper for the city of Palm City. The paper is printed once a week and placed in over twenty-five thousand mailboxes. They printed my press release. The response has been wonderful. 
Local resident pens his sixth fiction novel.
Jim Daddio, a resident of Palm City, is the author of five fiction novels. Readers who enjoy well-written, gripping mystery novels will welcome the newest offering from Jim. The Privileged, published by Wings ePress, Inc., completes a trilogy featuring private detective, Art Decco
Art is the main character in Las Vegas Dead and Heaven or Hell-A Story of Human Trafficking, also published by Wings. The history of Art's unusual surname is revealed in the stories: his family name, Deccolangelo, was shortened by his grandfather when he emigrated to America from Italy.
The Privileged is an old fashioned ‘who done it.’ When Michelle Thorne Johnston, a wealthy socialite living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is murdered, the police have enough evidence and motive to arrest and charge her husband, Clay.
He immediately proclaims his innocence and hires Art to find the real killer. The reader rides along with Art as he discovers there are several persons of interest who had reason to murder Michelle. But there is something bothering Art: Clay doesn't seem too concerned. He insists that, even if he has to go to trial, he will never be found guilty. He is rich and powerful and one of the privileged.
“Even though this is my sixth published fiction novel I have to say I am very excited about The Privileged. It is my first 'who done it mystery.' My publisher, Wings epress, is also excited about the story line. The reader will have to wait until the end to find out who committed the crime,” Jim said.
Originally from Meadville, Pennsylvania, Jim has been a resident of Palm City for seven years. He's lived in Florida for over forty years. Thirty-seven years in Fort Lauderdale, three in Clearwater and two years in Orlando.
He added, “My wife, Jill, and I really love Palm City and living in Whispering Sound. We travel to Lauderdale to visit our daughter, Jennifer, and spend several months each year in Richmond, Virginia with our son, Jim, and his family.”
His books can be found on amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. (Search Jim Daddio)
“The Choice” was also featured in The Stuart News.”

Friday, July 15, 2016

#MFRWAuthor-to-Author: Breaking into Social Media @Jill_Blake_

Social…what?

My kids are growing up in a brave new world dominated by social media.

Me, I’m still trying to figure out what this whole hash-tag thing is about. Until recently I didn’t have a Twitter account. And when I first opened a Facebook account at the urging of friends and family, it was simply to post: ""If you want to communicate with me, pick up the phone or stop by. Because I don't do Facebook.""

But the virtual world just wouldn’t go away.  Friends kept bugging me to check out their Pinterest pages. Or Instagram posts. Email is passé, they said.  IM—what’s that?  You can still text, but what you really need is photos, videos, check-ins.  Right.  Do these people not know about all the criminals out there, monitoring FB and Tumblr and Meetup to know when you’re not at home so they can burglarize your empty house?!?

Alas, I am alone in my paranoia.  And truth to tell, some of my reluctance to join the digital revolution is fueled by the fact that I am an idiot when it comes to computers.  I never quite got over the trauma of having to learn how to program in FORTRAN.  (For those of you who were born into a world of smartphones and swipe-screens, FORTRAN is a long-dead computer language from post-IBM, pre-Apple days.  It’s what Latin is to the Romance languages that grew out of it.  Do they even teach Latin in public school anymore?)

What’s more, I actually like communicating the old fashioned way.  I enjoy talking with people face to face.  And I especially love writing letters long-hand, putting them in an envelope, sticking on a stamp, and dropping them off at the corner post-office.   I grew up reading volumes of correspondence between Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (sigh!), Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, Shelby Foote and Walker Percy.  Really, how can Twitter or Facebook compare with that?

In quantum physics, there is the law: “like attracts like.”  This principle applies to relationships, too.

We self-select our social network—both online and in the real world.  As a result, I am marooned on an island of similar-minded Luddites.  In our world, “going viral” still refers to a constellation of symptoms including fever, cough, and congestion.

So, until my kids are old enough to clue me in, I will likely remain a social networking illiterate.  I will not be plugging my books on a bazillion-and-one online sites.  I will continue writing slowly, laboriously, in longhand (at least sometimes). And I hope that the content of what I write will be interesting enough to sell a few books.

How do you use social media in promoting your books?

Contributed by MFRW author Jill Blake.
A native of Philadelphia, Jill Blake now lives in southern California with her husband and three children. By day, she works as a physician in a busy medical practice. By night, she pens steamy romances.
blog ~ http://jillblake.blogspot.com/
twitter ~ https://twitter.com/Jill_Blake_
Google+ ~ https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JillBlake/posts
FB ~ https://www.facebook.com/jill.blake.3386
Amazon ~ http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00B1ZIHKS
Goodreads ~ https://goodreads.com/author/show/6899971.Jill_Blake

Jill Blake's newest release is Sweet Indulgence (The Silicon Beach Trilogy, Book 2).
BUY LINK - Free on Kindle Unlimited!
Becca Markham spent the last six years trying to please everyone else. Now it’s her turn. She ditches her cheating boyfriend, quits her high-stress job as a software engineer, and decides to transform her life-long love of baking from a part-time hobby into a full-time business.

Leo Kogan spent years scrambling to escape a life of poverty. Now a successful surgeon, he needs just one thing to complete his American dream: the perfect woman. But making the leap from casual friends to lovers proves harder than he expects.

Despite a sizzling attraction, Becca and Leo don’t have much in common. Especially when it comes to love and money. She’s looking for sex without strings; he wants a partner for life. She stakes her future on a risky new business; he’s obsessed with financial security.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Triberr: to Share or Not to Share #Triberr

I’m taking a break from my editing/writing blog as I try to figure out what everyone would be interested in.

I do love triberr. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure about it in the beginning, but I have seen my blog hits grow as well as my followers.

Like others I was afraid it would take too much time. I wondered if it would be worth it and to be honest I’m still learning about the program.

Each time I go to my tribes – I don’t use the main stream but the drop down box on that stream page and bring up each tribe. It registers with the tribe itself and shows other people on that tribe that I’m sharing and hopefully they will share mine. I know some authors only go to triberr when they have released a blog and that works for them. I try to go to triberr at least three times a week. On a good week I go there every day.

So how do I make the choice of who to share and who not to share?

It depends on how much time I have that day. I have a tendency to do it late at night, just before I got to bed. When I go to the stream I first look for those who have released my blog. I look for the infinity symbol. I have my stream set up to show these people first so I can be sure to release theirs. Sometimes that’s all the time I have.

When I have more time I’ll hover over the image of each tribe mate so I can see if they have released something of mine. Sometimes people will release your blog but it doesn’t put the infinity symbol on their post because it might not have been one of your latest blogs.


Once a week I try to release one of every person who posted on all the tribes I’m on. My goal is to get them to share my blogs like I am sharing theirs.  I have been very happy with the way this has work for me. Will it work for you? The only thing I can suggest is to try it then tweak it until you find a way to make it work for you. 

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Make It Easy...For Everyone #MFRWOrg


MFRW
Marketing For Romance Writers.
Created to help educate and elevate writers of all genres, though often thought of as Marketing for ROMANCE Writers.
Click to join MFRW Yahoo GroupIn full truth, MFRW is also about helping each other. Reaching a hand out to boost fellow writers up, knowing they'll do the same for us.  We all see the requests. ReTweet, click here, support there. And we're happy to take a few seconds from our busy day to do just that.
Except...the petitioner has forgotten to let us know where...when...how. And after far too long spent floundering, looking for answers, we sign off, disgruntled.
Has this happened to you? I know it's happened to me. And all too often if I ask for more information the questions echoes in an empty room. Crickets chirp in the vast nothingness. Being of scattered mind and not near enough time I soon lose the ambition to help out, and turn to my next project.
Make it EASY for us to help you.
If you want someone to read your blog, give a link to the blog, NOT just to the first page of your website.
If you want an opinion on your cover art, link to the art itself.
You want participation in a group event don't just give the link to that event. Explain about the participation, what it means, how to join in. Is it enough to just sign up or will we need to do something else when the magic day arrives? Not everyone is up to date on every promotional opportunity and often we (okay I) get confused with all that can be done.
Even when I sort of know which button to push when, I don't always know why and sometimes not even where. If you set up a reTweet day, take a minute to explain what we're going to be doing once we're on Twitter, finger poised to punch something somewhere. Because we do want to help but we also really do need to know how and what we need to do. Make it easy and it will be fun for everyone, and we can help fulfill the MFRW goals:
Seek, Teach, Share, Learn, SUCCEED

thoughts shared from  Mona Karel
Blog Hop Coordinator

In addition to occasional curmudgeonly outbursts, Mona writes Romance both normal and paranormal as a way to share her daydreams with the rest of the world. When not writing she wraps her world around her Salukis, her home in the New Mexico high desert, and photographing the quirky, the unusual, and the just plain gorgeous.


Saturday, June 7, 2014

New Format for MFRW Newsletter



Big changes are coming to the Newsletter in July. They're laid out clearly in the June issue, but here is a brief summary along with the new submissions form and a mock-up of the new format so you can see how the new featured author pages, book pages and advertising pages will look. Here is the link to the files:




Sorry I couldn't do this as a Bitly link, but for some reason it wouldn't open in a third tab.

Also, with all the new work we'll be doing, we need to expand our staff. My current assistant editors will format the book pages and I will handle the Featured Author, advertising, and final layout, but now I need at least three more proofers, possibly more since the newsletter will likely be more than 100 pages. If you'd like to become a member of the newsletter staff, please contact me at:

I think that's about it. Be sure to read the June Newsletter and check out the mock-up and ad-rate breakdown in the files. Grab the new submissions form if you had a book come out in May, June or if you have one coming out in July and your publisher has a "Coming Soon" page with pre-order links to your books. If you have no buy-links, you may want to wait until August to submit your July releases. Each book runs for three months.