Authors and Social Media: It's Like Furniture @KayelleAllen #MFRWauthor #Authors

If you decided to open a store selling furniture, you would want windows on the store so people could see inside, right? You'd want a phone so they could call and ask about products, delivery, and so on. You'd want a sign posted so people would know when you have something new to sell. Having an online presence with social media is like all those things combined into one -- but for authors. Our furniture is books.

Authors need:

1. website
2. newsletter
3. social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)

Why have a website?

Because it will be yours and no one can take it away from you. It is your home on the net. It's where anyone anytime can find out about you, your characters, and your books.

Why a newsletter?

Because again, this is yours. It's like real estate. You could send everyone to amazon to buy, and perhaps they will. But when you release the next book, wouldn't it be nice if you could just contact the buyers of book 1 and say, hey -- here's the sequel? With a newsletter, you can. It's the #1 thing you should have after a website. The purpose of your website is to get people to sign up for your newsletter, and to learn about your books.

Why social media?

Facebook is where adult women gather. They are usually our audience. But don't pass up Twitter. It's the #2 source for book sales, behind Facebook and ahead of Pinterest. It's EASY. You can only write a sentence or two at a time, so it's not time consuming. Pinterest is HUGE for sales. Make boards where you share pictures from online of things that inspire you, places you'd love characters to go in a story, material from sites where you gathered research, books you love, fancy quotes, funny animals, anything that catches your fancy.
On all these, get an account with your author name. Don't get cutesy with "mom2aboy" or "justawriter" or anything like that. Use your author name, because when someone wants to mention you, they would write your name and expect that would work. So you don't want something weird. Your author name IS your brand. It should be on everything.
Then start following other writers, and follow the people they follow. On Twitter, you'll see things set up where someone has to fill in a code to follow. Don't do that. You are a public figure as an author. You need to be found by fans. So make your account public and use an avatar for your brand or your book. Fill in the bio about yourself with something that says writer or author.
Don't follow people who offer for you to buy followers (in fact, block them). They come out of the wordwork, and blocking them alerts Twitter to remove these people. They are annoying spammers, and they are violating the TOS for Twitter, so don't go near them. But be aware, you will see them every week the rest of the time you're on the site. They try, and they get newbies who don't know any better, so if they make a sale before they're axed, they just get a new name and try again. >_< It's part of online life so just deal with them and move on. I wish it wasn't so, but I will not give up a great source for sharing my books and talking to fans because of spammers. Besides, these people are just so obvious. Look for people with a string of numbers behind their names (i.e., jason97349857). You will spot them even without trying. You'll see. They can't seem to help themselves.
But oh my goodness, yes yes yes get Twitter! It's so much fun. It's so easy. It's so great for boosting sales. When people guest on my Romance Lives Forever book blog, I put their Twitter handle in the post title. It gets shared dozens and dozens of times. That boosts sales. Those authors get followers.

What are you waiting for?

Go get Twitter and other social media and move forward. Let's do this.

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Kayelle Allen writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She is the author of seven books, three novellas, and multiple short stories. She's also a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured. She is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers.
https://kayelleallen.com

Good Keywords for Author SEO by Kayelle Allen @KayelleAllen #author #tips

Authors need good keywords for blog posts, books, marketing, even writing newsletters. SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization, is all about writing and content searchable by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. After all, if no one can find you, what good will it do to write material anyway? To be found, authors need good keywords and good SEO.
Included in this post is a shot of the Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin used on my personal site. I use this plugin on each post. This is one I used for a post called How to Leave A Review (which I'll mention again below).

A focus keyword.

For ex, a phrase that includes the genre, book or character name, or a descriptive phrase. On one of my posts, titled "How to Leave a Review" I used "leave a review" and repeated it in the title, url, H2 heading, and the body. By the time I'd finished it was there 13 times total. Anyone searching for info on how to leave one, when to leave one, where to leave one, etc. would be likely to find it.

Slug

The slug is what the words at the end of the url are called. Mine was leave-a-review (after the kayelleallen.com/ ) Making it the same as the focus word strengthens the SEO.

Meta Title / Meta Description

I use Wordpress, and a plugin called Yoast SEO allows me to choose the meta title and description. When you Google something, you know the words in bold that come up and show you a title? That's the meta title. The words beneath it are the meta description. If you can't specify, then Google (and other search engines) pick up the post title and about 150 characters of the first paragraph.

Yoast SEO shows a green line (meaning good) when a title is more than 54 characters but no more than 94 characters. For the meta description, use a minimum 120 characters but no more than 156 characters. Remember, if you don't have a program that will provide this info for search engines, write posts with this type of information right up front.

More SEO for Authors

Title and hashtags

I try to match the focus keyword and then research the best hashtags on https://ritetag.com/

H2 Header

Match your focus keyword somewhere on the page in an H2 heading.

Video

Because it owns YouTube, Google loves videos from there. Use the focus word in the description and/or header of that.

Call to action

Generally, I plan my call to action first, and then write the post to showcase that. I want people to leave a review of my book, so I pulled it in as examples in the entire post about how to leave a review. Then I asked if they had left one no matter who's or where, to share the link. It got a ton of views, but no comments. Typically, I get far more views than comments, so it wasn't a surprise.

Image alt tags

On my personal site, I highlight the title of the post and paste that into the alt tag line of each image in the post.

Featured Image

In Blogger, you usually see the first image when you post a url on Facebook or Twitter. With Wordpress, you can pick the exact image you want, even if it isn't in your actual post. When the meta title and description go up on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., that is the image that goes with it.

Other minor things to watch:

Use one category only. This is like the folder in the filing cabinet. It can only go in one at a time. Exception: On RLFblog, I use two categories when the author does an interview. One for the type of interview, and one for the type of book. This lets readers search for both.

Use keywords that are genre specific, book specific, topic oriented. Keep keywords simple so readers can easily click the tag and find everything in the topic. For ex, don't use the word book plus the word books. One or the other.

That's pretty much what I do. It's working very well.

If you use Wordpress, get the Yoast SEO for Wordpress plugin. It will teach you these very things. If you do them, your article is going to be much more findable by search engines. Use the checklist, and write good content that contains information people want to find. It's that simple.

About Kayelle Allen

Kayelle Allen is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers. She writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She's a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured.

https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
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Piracy: Do the math, and then Blast it @kayelleallen #MFRWauthor #authors

Piracy is the act of plagiarizing; taking someone's words or ideas as if they were your own. When you sell someone else's property as if you had the legal rights to do so, that's piracy too.

There's a difference between giving away a paperback versus an eBook. When you give away a paperback, you can only give it to one person at a time, and you no longer have it. You can give away an eBook indefinitely and still keep your copy. With each download, the author, publisher, cover artist, and editor each lose a percentage of the value of the book, known as royalties.

Yeah, but it's good advertising, right?

Go into a department store at the mall, take a few things without paying for them, and if you get caught, just tell the store owners it's good advertising. After all, you liked their products better than anyone else's. You took the best. They should be proud they were chosen instead of the store next to them.

They wouldn't have you arrested then, would they? Yeah, right.

Or how about "It's just part of doing business" as a reason to ignore the problem?

Theft might happen and there might be work involved in stopping it, but mall security is still in place. There are locks on the doors. There are cameras watching. Thieves get prosecuted. Authors who think "You can't stop online pirates; shut one down and another pops up" are fooling no one but themselves.

Things have changed.

Because I lead Marketing for Romance Writers, I'm privy to inside information from author-victims. In the beginning, most small presses simply did not see the danger of piracy, or understand how serious the loss of business was not only to their authors but also to them. That's changed. Why?

They did the math of piracy.

Let's say a small press has 50 authors in its stable. For the sake of argument, let's suppose in each quarter, each author has only one eBook pirated, at an average loss of $1.75 per unit. That loss seems like little. However, on the pirate site, suppose 100 units per author are downloaded without payment. Here's the math:

$1.75 (royalty) X 100 (units) X 50 (authors) = $8, 750 (loss of royalties per quarter, or $175 per author, average)

Consider the average royalty is 30-45% (depending on contracts). That means each pirated book represents a 55-70% loss of sales for the publisher. Assuming the eBook sells at the publisher's site for $5, and the author's royalty is 35% there is a loss for the publisher of $3.25 per unit pirated. The math for that is even more alarming.

$3.25 (pub profit) X 100 (units) X 50 (authors) = $16,250 (loss of profit per quarter) When looking at the black and white numbers, it's obvious that unchecked, pirates would soon drive the very authors they claim to enjoy (and their publishers) out of business. No publisher, large or small, can afford to ignore theft.

Our readers can report piracy.

Major kudos to readers who email authors when they see this type of site. Authors also advise one another in several ways. One way is to join a group formed called Authors Against E-Book Theft http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AuthorsAgainstE-BookTheft/

The Copyright Alliance believes that copyright law promotes creativity and job creation and strengthens the U.S. economy. Those who create, render, and publish copyrighted works rely on the copyright law and its enforcement, for their creative and financial success. Without it, these creators would likely cease to exist, or at the very least, cease to produce these important works that are enjoyed by billions of people around the world. You can join the alliance here: http://copyrightalliance.org/ Every person who considers him or herself a creative should join. We need to stick together. 

Fighting piracy is not a losing battle.

Authors and readers are not the only ones out there with a strong view against this crime. Everyone who has a stake in royalties is a victim and those who understand the seriousness of this attack on our financial standing are becoming involved. This includes Interpol's Anti-Piracy Division founded September 8, 1977 (as you can see -- this has been around awhile). It includes pirated videos/CDs/DVDs and Blu-Ray. The Department of Homeland Security's Cyber Crimes Division is becoming increasingly active. Find out more here.

http://www.dhs.gov/files/programs/defending-against-cybercriminals.shtm

Authors who see repeated offenses should contact the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center). The site encourages members of the public, industry, trade associations, law enforcement, and government agencies to report violations of intellectual property rights through this website. http://www.iprcenter.gov/referral You do not have to own the copyright of an item to report the theft. If you report the crime, they will investigate it. The form is simple to fill out and is found on the site above. 

Good news versus depressing facts: Blasty.

There's a new weapon against pirates, and it's the best I've seen yet. It's called Blasty. Take a look here https://www.blasty.co/invitation/qPFWB2Fh and watch the two-minute video. It explains the simple process. I tried it with one book, and within 10 minutes had already blasted over 30 pirates.

Blasty works like this. You choose your category (authors use books & audiobooks) enter book content information such as title, subtitle, author name, reference URL (legal sale site, such as Amazon or a publisher), and optionally, upload a cover image. Check the box affirming you own the copyright or are an agent of the copyright holder, and click submit.

Blasty goes to work, using the Google search engine to find any sites where your book or books might be hosted.

Whitelist legal sites.

You'll find some right away that are fine to be there, such as a contest where you gave away a copy back when the book first came out. That's no problem. Click "ignore" next to alert, or place the URL in a section for whitelisted -- safe and legal -- sites. You can put your own domain in there and it won't list any of your own pages. Same with your publisher, Amazon, Smashwords, and so on. Once Blasty "learns" what sites are bad, anytime your book pops up, it immediately Blasts them. You don't have to do a thing. You can click a box in a list of pirated sites, select them all, and then click one button to Blast them. You can go to each site if you prefer. An applet installed in your browser lets you report a pirate without doing a single thing except click once.

Blasty is better than a beat cop.

Blasty is in beta right now, so you can only join by invitation. I extended one in the link https://www.blasty.co/invitation/qPFWB2Fh Feel free to share it. Join, give them positive feedback, say what works, point out issues, and give them the kudos they deserve. This site is providing a great service for creatives. Right now, it's free. I hope it stays affordable for all authors. Get in now and get rid of as many pirates as you can. Don't wait.

above. Here it is again.

Complacency is the biggest weapon of piracy.

If pirates keep hammering at you until you are too tired to care, they will win. But hey, if you're a mom or grandmom like I am, you know giving in doesn't solve anything. It just makes the behavior worse. Now, you have an ally who can take pirates off the net by making them impossible to find.

Let's kick pirates out and Blast them out of business. They are stealing our work, and profiting from it. It's time to make them stop.

You've worked too hard and too long to let pirates beat you. Stay strong. Go Blast 'em!

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Kayelle Allen
Author, Founder of Marketing for Romance Writers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MarketingForRomanceWriters/
http://kayelleallen.com/