Category Archives: Marketing

Marketing, promoting and selling your books, especially on the Internet

Marketing

Facebook for Authors!

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This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Marketing: social media

Facebook! It’s so shiny! Okay, perhaps less so after that IPO debacle, but when you’ve got hundreds of millions of active monthly users, you’ve got the attention of a lot of marketers. Which includes, of course, authors.

There are many, many step by step guides out there to help you set up and prettify your Facebook page. This isn’t one of them. Here, we’ll cover the basics of why you want a Facebook Page, and what to do with it.

The most important tip: Get an eyepatch a Page

Odds are pretty dang good you already have a Facebook account. However, your personal Facebook profile is NOT your best option to connect with your blog- and book readers. Nope, nope, nope. I don’t post a lot of pictures on Facebook, but the simple fact that strangers I don’t actually know who are only friends with me because of my blog might see them does give me pause. Now imagine how it would be with hundreds or thousands of fans as your friends.

Facebook offers a great alternative—and it’s not setting up an account for your pseudonym (that’s against the ToS, as I understand it).

Nope, Facebook offers a feature called Pages for authors, artists, blogs, businesses, public figures, etc. etc. etc. And this is absolutely the safer option to connect with fans of your blog or work on Facebook, and to help them connect with one another.

So, it comes to how. To quote Nathan Bransford’s fantastic guide, Facebook for Authors – How to Get Started,

How to create [a Facebook Page]? It’s a piece of cake. Go here, click “Artist, Band, Public Figure,” choose Author and follow the easy instructions. There you have it.

Degree of difficulty: Extremely easy

When to do this: You know, I feel like there’s no time like the present. The earlier you start building up those likes the bigger your head start when prime time arrives.

If you’re given an option—and you should be, though occasionally they make you wait until you have 25 fans (that’s the rule, but I didn’t need no steenking rules when I made mine)—be sure to pick a “username” that is as easy to remember and short as possible. It will be part of your URL. Mine is JordanMcCollumAuthor, for example.

So, uh, on that note, I kind of have a Facebook Page, and I totally wouldn’t object to a Like.

Okay . . . now what?

Once you’ve created your Page and prettified it with pictures and perhaps linked it to your blog with a Facebook app like Networked Blogs, you’re reading to start using it to connect with your fans.

The question is, of course, how?

First of all, you need to get fans. Kind of the point, right? You can use Facebook’s provided widgets or buttons to create links in your sidebar to your Page and promote it on your blog or website. It wouldn’t hurt to post—maybe once—to ask your loyal readers to Like.

Ah, but here’s the catch: often, the best way to get fans is to build the community with fans on your page. It’s a little like money: sometimes, you have to have some to make some.

How am I supposed to use a Facebook Page?

The best uses of a Facebook page are not, in my opinion, constant self-promotion. They’re a great place to mention things like contests, sales and events, but they’re not an excuse to turn your page into a 24/7 infomercial about your book.

Instead, as with all marketing, observe what others do well (and not so well) and think about what your audience wants. It’s highly likely that your audience wants more than just seeing your blog posts echoed, especially if they already subscribe to your blog. So what do you do?

A few ideas:

  • Run Facebook-only contests—pages where entries are on your Facebook Page wall, adding photos, etc.
  • Post content of interest to your readers. What do your readers like? Books! Gemma Halliday, for example, posts links to free ebooks every Friday—not books that she wrote, but books she thinks her readers will like. I love this idea!

  • Connect with your author friends by liking their pages from your author page.
  • Ask your fans questions and engage with their answers. Again, the most likely questions that will engage your audience are probably reading- and writing-related. What are you reading now, how is Nano going, read any good books lately—all good examples. But the key is to interact with your readers and encourage them to interact with one another, too.
  • Feel free to share successes, progress updates, research, fun facts, promotions, events, sales and the like about your writing—but again, this isn’t a 24-hour infomercial channel. Keep it fresh and interesting.
  • Be sure to post regularly. Nothing else boosts your reach like regularly updating your Facebook page.

And a couple pet peeves

Facebook can be a great way to connect with your readers and perhaps find new ones. However, remember that gimmicks and tricks are NOT long term marketing strategies.

Personally, I’m very turned off by author Pages that require you to like the Page before you get to see the juicy information, such as a cover reveal, etc. If I feel like my Like is being coerced, I’ll either browse away to go FB stalk someone or Like you only long enough to see that precious content, then unLike you.

Like I mentioned above, a Facebook page that’s only echoing your blog isn’t much of a Facebook page. I’m still struggling with what to put on there, but I know for certain I don’t want to echo my Twitter feed, either. Twitter is a different medium and a different audience, but the biggest drawback is that there’s no incentive for people who follow you on Twitter to Like your Page, and vice versa.

It seems like even professional marketers are still feeling Facebook out, so it might be the perfect time to jump in and try it yourself.

What do you think? What kind of things do you like to see on an author’s page? Come join the conversation!

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Marketing

Marketing a book on Goodreads

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This entry is part 6 of 7 in the series Marketing: social media

Goodreads is a great place to find readers where they’re hanging out online. It’s been one of my favorite sites as a reader to scope out books, compare reviews with friends and keep track of what I’ve read (though I’ve seriously slacked on that part this year!).

But in addition to being a fun place as a reader—and a good place to find new readers by becoming a genuine part of the community—Goodreads also offers several ways for authors to market directly to readers.

Marketing on Goodreads

Naturally, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the site if you’re not already a member. As an author, you can “claim” your books and have a centralized profile page for readers to learn more about you and your books, and possibly connect with you. You can connect your blog also, so that you have fresh content on your GR page. (However, I’m totally gun-shy about reviews, positive or negative, so if you’re the same way, remember that as you set up your author page. I wonder if there’s an option to hide the reviews from yourself. . . .)

As with all reader communities, behave well. Goodreads has active forums, but spamming them definitely won’t win you any friends, let alone sales. (We covered more about this last week.)

Use the excerpt feature

Author Elana Johnson blogged earlier this year that Goodreads had added the ability to upload an excerpt from your book, like a free preview for readers. She advises:

I’ve found that a PDF works/looks best, and you can upload the entire book and then choose to only show a certain percentage of it, so it’s probably a 5-minute job to do this.

Then, what I do, is advertise using the word “free” in my ad. Like, “Fans of The Hunger Games and Matched, read the first two chapters of POSSESSION, a dystopian novel, for free.” (Or something more eloquent… But I definitely reference the best-sellers!)

I’ve had over 40,000 views in a single day on an ad like that. And all I did was upload the first two chapters of POSSESSION–which has been free on my website for over a year anyway. But it’s getting it into the hands of READERS in a place where READERS hang out.

Exactly.

Goodreads gives instructions on how to upload your excerpt here.

Goodreads advertising

Goodreads also runs targeted advertising in the right-hand sidebar. I tend to notice the ads most when they’re more dynamic, as opposed to static images. Here’s a static image of a typical dynamic ad in action (the text was moving when I did the screencap):

Personally, I believe these ads are most effective if your “call to action” at the end of the ad is something like “Add [Book] to your To-Read List!” or “Enter the Goodreads giveaway for a free copy” (more on that below)—i.e. they’re fully integrated with Goodreads, and you know that call to action isn’t going to dump you on the Amazon sales page. Plus, adding a book to your digital TBR pile or entering a drawing fora free copy is a lot less of a commitment than even a $0.99 purchase. Finally, when people add books to their To Read list, it shows up in their friends’ news feeds and perhaps email digests of friend activity—more publicity for you.

However, it does seem that few people see a real increase in sales from Goodreads advertising. If you do decide to use their advertising system, I advise making your ads as targeted as possible. Consider targeting people who’ve added (or are currently looking at) books by a similar author, or the like, to truly reach your audience. With such narrow targeting, you’ll reach a smaller audience, but that audience will be more likely to be interested in your book.

Goodreads giveaways

The final aspect of Goodreads that I want to cover is their giveaways. Through Goodreads, you can offer free copies of your book, hard copy or e-book, and people sign up for the giveaway. You set when the contest starts and ends, and all people have to do is click a button in the interim to win one of your free copies. (Want to enter a giveaway? Go to Explore > Giveaways to find the current listings.)

Novel Publicity President Emlyn Chad offers some great advice on maximizing your Goodreads giveaway. Among other points, she says to

  • Offer giveaways in multiple countries
  • Schedule future giveaways
  • Keep the entry period short

She expands on these and eight other interesting tips for more effective giveaways on Goodreads. It seems to be working for her, so if you’re interested in using Goodreads for marketing, definitely check out that article!

What do you think? Are you a member of Goodreads? How do you see it used for marketing, either in a good way or . . . not? Come join in the conversation!

Coming up this week: more last-minute Nano prep, and the starting gun!

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Marketing

Marketing: finding new readers online

This entry is part 2 of 7 in the series Marketing: social media

The Internet has become a great place to find new readers and potential book customers. A lot of the time, we think about marketing messages that we get to send out on our own platforms: our blogs, our Twitter accounts, our Facebook pages. And that’s a great way to interact with your readers and keep them engaged, but it probably won’t do much to help you find new readers.

Say what? Aren’t new readers supposed to see how awesome we are on the Interwebz and then come to us?

When is the last time that you, as a reader, came to an author’s books through his/her website, blog, Facebook or Twitter? It happens, but it’s extremely rare. So how do you go hunting for these elusive new readers?

Well, the answer is, sort of, you don’t. You have to approach it from a different mindset. You’re not hunting for victims to wrest away their dollars on your book—you’d probably have more luck picking pockets! Instead, we’re building relationships with people who love the same kinds of books we do. If you’re going to go into a community of readers with the attitude of burn and conquer, you’ll crash and burn, and quick.

It’s that darn sincerity thing again

People can see a shill a mile off, and they won’t stand for it. If we come into a reader community looking to take advantage of the people there, it will come through in every post you make, and you’ll be making the opposite of friends.

Please say it with me: don’t join a readers’ community to push your books. Don’t join a readers’ community to push your books. Don’t join a readers’ community to push your books.

But . . . you said . . .

Yes, I know, I said you can find new readers in readers’ communities. But that doesn’t mean you should respond to every “What should I read next?” post with “MY BOOK HEREAREEIGHTY-SEVENPURCHASELINKSHAVEACOUPON!!!!”

Social media—like readers’ communities—is about being social. It’s built on relationships—and not the buyer/seller relationship. Like I also said before, when we approach a readers’ community, it’s with the attitude of building relationships with people who love the same kinds of books we do.

You do read in your genre, don’t you? Your genre is one of your favorites, right? Then you’ve got all the credentials you need to hang out with other people who read in your genre.

Not. Being. Pushy.

In case I haven’t hammered this home yet, let me reiterate that aggressively pushing your book will not sell it. This is true in all media—just like constantly blogging or Tweeting or Facebooking “BUY MY BOOK HEREAREEIGHTY-SEVENPURCHASELINKSHAVEACOUPON!!!!“, attacking a readers’ community and carpetbombing it with coupons is not an effective marketing strategy.

So, then, what can you do?

  • Look around to see how other authors interact. Figure out if you want to mimic their styles, see what works for them, figure out the best way to interact with people here.
  • Mention your book in your post signature—but again, don’t be pushy. The title, the tagline, the cover image, and genre, maybe.
  • Do reply to and acknowledge people who ask you about your book directly.

You might also consider offering a coupon to members of the community (if you have that capability, such as via self-publishing on Smashwords) or other incentive—but only after you’ve made a good, consistent effort to build those genuine relationships and get to know the community.

Reader Community Etiquette

Again, the best first step is to observe the community first. If there are any other authors there, pay special attention to them, how they mention their books, how they approach relationships there. They might not be good examples, but you might learn even more effectively from bad examples.

A few blanket caveats:

  • Do not engage with trolls (belligerent and abusive people) at any time or any place.
  • Choose your battles—and better yet, walk away.
  • Do NOT argue with people who didn’t like your book. Publishing is subjective. You haven’t loved everything you’ve ever read, have you?
  • Even if they get the facts wrong, DO NOT ARGUE WITH PEOPLE ABOUT YOUR BOOK.
  • Never, never, never attack someone for disagreeing with you—especially not about your book.
  • In fact, if there’s a discussion on your book, unless you’re invited to join, it might be best to stay away.

I’ve had this post written for over a month, but I’ve been sick and tired. Sorry about the delay! I hope we’ll be getting back to a more regular posting schedule as I pull out my “gearing up for NaNoWriMo” posts, as well as inspirational posts to help us through everyone’s favorite month!

So, what do you think? Where do you hang out as a reader? What kind of online behaviors from an author have you seen that you like or don’t like? Are you doing Nano?

Photo credits: salesman—Pete Simon; Salesmen seen by appointment only—John

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Marketing

Marketing and networking, networking, networking

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This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Marketing: social media

Building a Tribe

Which would you sooner believe: Jimmy shouting about how great his book is, or John shouting about how great Jimmy’s book is? I think we’d all value the opinion of someone other than the author of a book or a blog. That’s why we read book reviews, right?

There’s something we can do to help start this buzz or word of mouth. It can be genuine and real and most of all effective—with a little help from your friends.

I hope you already have writing friends. That’s the best part of the online writing community, right? Making friends, finding people who feel like you do. So how do you take those friendships and build a “tribe”?

And wait, what’s a tribe?

A tribe, a clan, a team, a rose

(You know, by any other name . . . ?)

No matter what you call it, a group of like-minded bloggers or Tweeters or Facebookers (or all of the above) can become a valuable resource for all of you. Odds are 100:1 that if you get 4-5 author-bloggers together, even if they write the same genre, their blog audiences won’t overlap.

So what does that mean? If you’re in this group and you write something truly fantastic—a book, a book review, a blog post, etc.—the other members of the group can share that with their audiences.

Looking at it from a mercenary point of view, building a tribe is a great way to increase your audience! But it isn’t purely mercenary: your fellow bloggers (and you!) are always looking for great content and good books to satisfy their audiences.

So, this group you speak of?

Your tribe might be totally informal—just a group of bloggers who happen to hang out together—or you might go so far as to “formalize” your relationship, sending out invitations, setting up ground rules, or even using some sort of social networking site to set yourselves up.

In my opinion, one of the ground rules of a successful tribe is to be sincere. If your friend’s content isn’t right for your audience, no matter how great it is, then you shouldn’t feel pressured to share it. That’s why I don’t particularly care for a program or ground rules that require group members to Tweet/blog/share absolutely everything the other people in the group write.

Because above all, you must be sincere.

It must be sincere!

If a tribe just turns into a retweet machine, and all you ever do is regurgitate and promote one another’s material in an echo chamber, it starts to lose value for the audience—and it starts to ring hollow.

Personally, I would be very careful about what I want to promote through my tribe. Because all blog audiences are different, you have to know what would suit yours. My friend Julie Coulter Bellon has created a fantastic blog and community, and one of her big features (during the season) is responses and reviews of her favorite crime TV shows (and she writes romantic suspense, so that fits well too). Many members of her blog audience also watch the shows, and it attracts new eyes all the time.

But I don’t watch the same shows as Julie, and I don’t really know if you guys would enjoy that. (Want to see me blog about old Law & Orders?!) It doesn’t turn me off her blog at all, but it’s also not the kind of thing that I would envision sharing in a tribe.

On the other hand, I do think another of her weekly features, First Page Fridays, is totally right for my blog audience. She has high-caliber professional editors—Angela Eschler and “Ms Shreditor,” an editor at a publishers—take a look at volunteer submission of the first page. The feedback there is always something to learn from!

Okay, in this context, this endorsement might not sound as true as I really do intend it to be (because FPF truly is great), but I think First Page Fridays is something that would add value to my blog readers, so I’m sharing it here. Sometimes I tweet about it. Because: 1. I like Julie AND 2. I think my readers would like to see things like FPF AND 3. I can be sincere (maybe?) in what I say about FPF.

It’s all about supporting one another

A tribe doesn’t have to just be about retweeting one another’s posts. It’s about supporting one another in whatever way you can: commenting on blog posts, attending or promoting book signings, helping with book launches, brainstorming, answering questions—whatever the group decides you want to cover.

It may not be easy

I kinda made this up as I went along, and I find it hard. Writers are legendarily introverted, and even putting ourselves out there to make friends online can be hard, let alone the subsequent efforts inside a tribe.

One thing I’ve tried from time to time is to set goals for myself in the area of interaction. “Comment on X number of new blogs this week” or “Check on my tribe’s blogs at 2 PM each day” work well, because they give you something concrete to strive for.

What do you think? How do you reach out? Would you use a tribe, or interaction goals? How would you show your support?

Photo credits: Team Spirit—JF Schmitz; Sincere Bank—Chris; Sincere sign—Sam Howzit

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Marketing

Book trailers: 19 ways to make them effective

This entry is part 3 of 7 in the series Marketing: social media

So, you’ve decided you want to do a book trailer. Awesome! Here are nineteen ways to make your book trailer the best it can be.

Watch other trailers first

Yes, yes, yes. You can go straight to YouTube to search, or you can just Google [book trailers] to find sites that showcase them.

See what you like, and what you don’t like, what works and doesn’t. See what professional-level book trailers look like, and decide what you want to do.

It probably won’t hurt to watch some movie trailers, too, to see how the big folks do it.

Learn how to do it yourself or hire it out

Most computers come with a movie making program these days, whether it’s iMovie or Windows Live Movie Maker. Surprisingly, these free programs are fairly adept, with dozens of included transitions and shot effects. If you have a free afternoon and aren’t totally tech backwards, I think you should be able to figure them out for a short book trailer.

And on that note:

Keep it short

Please, please. Remember that attention spans on the Internet—even for readers!—are very short. The absolute maximum I would recommend for a book trailer would be 90 seconds. Personally, I’ll spend all day reading a book but I won’t click on a 60 second video unless I already want to buy the book. A lot. But 30 seconds? Sure, why not?

Make it professional

This doesn’t mean you have to hire a book trailer company to make yours, but it does mean you need to put a high level of polish on anything you do. You can make a professional looking trailer yourself, absolutely—and see that you do. This goes double on hiring it out, whether that’s to your best friend’s second cousin or a book trailer company.

The professionalism of your book trailer should be reflected in all aspects: the images, the video, the shots and the sound. Yes, the sound. If you’re doing voiceovers, spring for a decent mic and test multiple “studios,” okay??

Use visual storytelling

Film/video gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “show, don’t tell.” It’s a totally different medium than the written word. I loved this analysis of visual storytelling by Miriam Paschal on Mystery Man on Film. It retells the opening shots of Back to the Future, showing just how deeply the images—no dialogue!—characterize Doc Brown and begin to set up his problem.

It starts with clocks: hundreds of clocks. There are vintage clocks and modern clocks. There is a Harold Lloyd clock with the man hanging off the arms of the clock, so we get some foreshadowing right away. We see the newspaper articles of how the old Brown mansion was destroyed, which we will learn later happened when Doc sank all his money into building the time machine.

We see the pictures of Thomas Edison and Ben Franklin, Doc's heroes.

Then we see the Rube Goldberg machine that Doc has built to streamline his morning routine. Well, it's not a classic Rube Goldberg machine, but it's inspired by one. However, something is wrong. The coffee pot pours hot water onto the hot plate in the absence of the pot…and coffee. Strange. . . . [Read the rest]

Writers work very hard to tell their stories in words, but trailers’ real strength is to tell the story in images. Play to the strengths of the medium—and still tell a story!

Write a script

You may be a pantser for your books, but you need to be a plotter when it comes to your book trailer. Think about those images and scenes from the visual story. (Before you run off and write it, keep reading, please.) You can absolutely use words, but you need to think about how you’ll handle those words in a primarily visual medium: live action dialogue? Floating text? Disembodied space voice?

Edit!

You wouldn’t send your first draft out to agents and publishers (I hope). Why do that with your book trailer script? Look for places where you can tighten the wording, focus on the visual storytelling, and create other effects. Polish it until it gleams—before you start shooting.

Remember, video is like decorating in that much of the time, it’s more about what you take away that makes the story strong.

Focus on the emotion

People read for emotions, and each genre has a different basket of expected emotions. You probably already know what those emotions are, especially if you read in your genre (which you do, right?). For example, in romance, we read to experience the heady feeling of falling in love, the uncertainty of the relationship in peril, and the happily ever after. Or we read thrillers to be, well, thrilled, to feel the uncertainty of the world tumbling down around us, and to execute justice in the end.

You don’t have to give away the ending, of course, but brainstorm some emotions that your readers want to feel, and will feel when reading your book.

Focus on the hook: attention grabber

Just like you open your book with a hook, open your trailer with a hook (possibly the same, maybe not). Grab the viewer’s attention right off the bat, whether that’s through something unexpected, or focusing on a major problem, or displaying the inciting incident.

Play to the audience

Like with the emotions, remember that your audience has certain expectations when they pick up a book. You genre has conventions, whether that’s a hard-boiled detective or magic or a plucky heroine. If your book has those, play them up (in an original way, of course, just like you do in your novel!)

Match it to the book

Your book itself sets expectations, with its cover (you really need to use the cover in the video), back cover copy, and even where it’s shelved. Try to dovetail your trailer with those elements, so that people can easily make the connection between your trailer and your book. Can you imagine watching a book trailer, then reading the back cover of what sounds like a totally different book?

Make it interesting

I hope this goes without saying, but a book trailer really, really, really needs to be interesting. One way to do this is to showcase what sets your book apart. You have magic, but it’s different because of X. You have a plucky heroine, but she stands out from the 10,000 plucky heroines out there because she’s Y. (And remember, show don’t tell!)

Short blurbs

If you have endorsements that will be used on your cover, your back cover, your inner material, or your website, include one to three of the most compelling examples—but make them very short and punchy. One word might not be bad. (Include attribution1)

Call to action

End with a call to action. The best book trailer in the world won’t be nearly as effective if you don’t end by telling the audience you’ve hooked what to do next. You might put a link at the end of the video, but be sure to include some text saying, “Go here to buy my book” or “Add my book on Goodreads” or “Like me on Facebook for deleted scenes.” Feature the cover prominently, too.

Use Creative Commons-commercial or public domain material, or buy the commercial license

If you use video, images or music made by someone else, this is an absolute must. You can find Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr, for example, but be sure they are cleared for commercial use (yes, this is) AND derivative works (yep again). Alternatively, you can often buy the license for a photo, through Getty Images on Flickr, or through a stock photography site.

A book trailer is a direct piece of promotion for your book, and as such, is commercial. (I mean, hey, it’s a commercial for your book.) If you use someone else’s copyrighted work in your video, you could be construed as misrepresenting their work as an endorsement of yours. Let’s just say, “Big lawsuit,” mmkay?

Get feedback first

Before you throw your trailer up on the Internet, just like you would with your book, bring it to people whose judgment you trust—both people who’ve read your book, and those who haven’t. If they’re not used to giving feedback, be sure to prepare some pointed questions, especially “When did it confuse you?” (or “When did it lose you?”) and “When did it bore you?” You can also ask for positive feedback, too, of course 😉 .

Gather analytics

Just like I recommend using analytics on your blog or website, I think it’s vital to gather data on your video. If you use YouTube, for example, they automatically collect a good amount and variety of data on your video, including:

  • Number of views
  • Location of viewers
  • New YouTube subscriptions from the video
  • Viewer gender (no joke)
  • Sharing events, and the views that each of these generated!

This last one is incredibly valuable. You can see where your video was posted, and how many people watched it there.

Do you want other people posting your video? Um, yes. More on that now:

Make it shareable

Another reason I really like YouTube for book trailers is that it has some pretty easy-to-use embedding capabilities. People who like your trailer enough—or people who will be part of your book tour, or writing friends—can add YouTube’s automatically generated code to their blog and automatically increase your trailer’s potential audience.

Be sure to allow embedding of your videos!

Realistic expectations

Finally, after all your wonderful work, keep your expectations realistic. A book trailer probably will not automatically generate a bajillion sales. But if you remember our theory of marketing approach to book trailers, that every time someone is exposed to your book, they get closer and closer to potentially buying it.

Whew! Now you’re either pumped and ready to go, or completely paralyzed by fear.

Sorry.

More resources on book trailers
5 Tips for Making a Good Book Trailer from Abel Keogh
How to Make a Book Trailer, a guest post on Nathan Bransford’s blog
Kate Noble’s How I Made a Book Trailer for $5
Joanna Penn’s 11 Steps to Make Your Own Book Trailer
What key elements make an effective book trailer? from 30 Day Books
Michael Pryor’s 10 tips for book trailer makers
Top 5 book trailer tips from Book Baby
Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner: Should you have a book trailer?
A comprehensive guide to book trailers (list of links)

What do you think? What’s the best book trailer advice you’ve seen?

Photo credits:
watching movies—Q family; editing—Joanna Penn; books—Emily Carlin;
Creative Commons logo—Peter Leth; Sharing YouTube videos—Anne Adrian

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Marketing

Book trailers: Yes or no?

2 Comments

Book trailers are short videos designed to promote your books like a movie trailer does for a movie. But are they effective?


I haven’t read this book, but the obviously professional production and the VERY short run time caught my eye

The Yes Camp

One theory of marketing says that every time a potential customer sees your product (read: book) name increases the likelihood of a future purchase. The tipping point, in this theory, is that it takes seven of these exposures before someone makes a decision to buy.

A book trailer can be one of these exposures. Realistically, odds are low that you can definitively trace any particular purchase back to any particular marketing tactic, but rather the collective total of those exposures. Anything you can do to help get your book out there and gain publicity and most importantly eyes will help your sales in some way.

Although book trailers are used more and more often, they can still be a unique way to catch the eye of a potential readers. Award-winning and bestselling authors use them (well, their publishers do). They’re a fast way to catch someone’s attention and convey a lot of information about your book in an intriguing way.

Possibly the biggest advantage is that a good, interesting book trailer is inherently share-able, or it should be if you manage it right! People who see your book trailer and get excited about your book, or even just the trailer, can post the trailer to their blog, Facebook or Twitter feed, exposing even more people to your book. This can be especially beneficial for mid-list and self-publishing authors.


Teaser trailer for my friend Don Carey’s book. Legos!

The No Camp

Like many people, I don’t think I have ever seen a book trailer and thought even so much as, “Hm. I might like that.” In fact, the only times I’ve purchased a book after watching a trailer, I’d made the decision to buy before I’d seen the trailer.

Additionally, book trailers can be expensive. They’re all too often amateurish, and that will never help your marketing efforts. The “medium mismatch” of the printed word and the visual storytelling of film sometimes doesn’t work out so well, and you have to consider whether book trailer viewers are your target audience at all.

In short, the no camp varies from apathetic to militant opposition to this marketing tactic, which they decry as a useless waste of time and money.

Making the call for you

Whether or not you decide to do a book trailer for your own book is a personal decision. Here are a few factors I think you should consider:

  • Do you have the video software and skills to do it yourself? (There are several free video editors.)
  • Are you willing to learn?
  • Do you know (of) someone who can and will do it cheaply and well?
  • Do you want a book trailer?
  • Do you have realistic expectations of the results?

Have you decided? Great new if you’re in the “yes” camp: next week, we’ll look at how to make an effective book trailer!

What do you think? Do you want a book trailer? Would you make it yourself? What else would you ask yourself before deciding? Join in the discussion!

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Marketing

Blogging: Intro to HTML

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This entry is part 8 of 8 in the series Marketing: blogging

Ever had a blog post do something crazy? Weird highlighting, changing fonts, double spacing? Learning even a little HTML can help you troubleshoot those crazy errors.

On Friday, I gave this presentation at the iWriteNetwork conference, and I thought it would go well with the blogging series we did a little while back, so I’m sharing it here today.

To find the HTML in your blog, above the post window, find the “HTML” button or tab. It will show you the HTML codes that present your document.

Some HTML basics

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language.

When I want to look something up in HTML coding, I usually Google it, and click on any result from http://w3schools.com.

To “turn on” a style or feature, put it inside less than/greater than signs, like this: 

<b>, <em>, <strong>

To “turn off” a style or feature, add a slash after the less than:

</b>, </em>, </strong>

Everything between those two tags (technically elements, but we’ll go with tags) will obey those tags.

A few tags are “self-closing,” and have that slash at the end, right before the greater than sign. Image tags and line breaks are two of these:

<img src="picture.jpg" /> (always use straight quotes!)
<br />

Formatting text for the Internet

Centering—there are two methods to center text. I recommend picking one and memorizing it.

<p style="text-align: center;">Centered text</p>
<p align="center">Centered text</p>

Bold—again, there are two methods; pick one

<strong>Bold text</strong>
<b>Bold text</b>

Italics—yep, two methods.

<em>Italic text</em>
<i>Italic text</i>

Styling text, from color to line spacing, is done mostly with a p element or a span element. P is for whole paragraphs, Span is for text within paragraphs.

Begins with:

<p style=" or <span style="

Must be STRAIGHT, not curly or “smart” quotes!

Inside those quotation marks, you can change all kinds of things about your text. All of the following “properties” must come INSIDE those marks, and include the semicolon. (Use just ONE of each tag.)

Color

color: red; OR color: #FE7898; [a HEX code] OR color #555;
[For HEX codes that are the same digit/letter]

Size 

font-size: 14px; OR font-size: 14pt; OR font-size: 2em; OR font-size: small;

Background

background-color: yellow; OR other styles for color

Line spacing (all these are about double spaced)

line-height: 200%; OR line-height: 2; OR line-height: 25px;

Font gives several options to browsers to figure out a type of font to display

font: Georgia serif;

Once you have everything you want to change about your text, close the quotes and tag: "> (And remember </p> after the paragraph text!)

For example:

<p style="color: red; font-size: 20pt; background-color: #555;
text-align: center; line-height: 200%;">Here is my sample
paragraph. It's pretty hard to read with the gray background and
red text, so I really can't recommend using this exact color
scheme, but you get the idea.</p>

Gives us:

Here is my sample paragraph. It’s pretty hard to read with the gray background and red text, so I really can’t recommend using this exact color scheme, but you get the idea.

Outline format: headers

HTML comes with an outline format that uses headers, <h1> through <h6>.

The highest level header is for your site name. Typically, there will be only one <h1> element on a page.

<h2> elements are often used for post titles. There can be more than one <h2> on a page.

I use <h3> elements for subheadings inside my blog post. You’ll notice they’re purple here 🙂 .

Images

IMG stands for image and SRC stands for source. That’s where the URL of the image itself will go. The rest of the properties are optional, but I recommend at least using the alt text, and included a search keyword, if you’re looking for a (slight) SEO benefit.

<img src="imageURL.jpg" height="80" width="60" alt="the best
dog in the whole world!" align="right" style="float: right;" />

Note that if you want the top of your image to be inline with the text, you’ll want the code for the image and the text together, without line breaks (hard returns or <br />), and the image must be right or left aligned. Like this:

<img src="imageURL.jpg" height="80" width="60" alt="the best dog
in the whole world!" align="right" style="float:
right;" />This text will line up with the TOP of the image.

Links

Links are the currency of the web! The Link anchor text is the text that shows up colored and underlined when you look at the post. Search engines use the actual anchor text as a vote, so describing your friend’s site with “click here” isn’t as helpful to their SEO as it would be to say “sci-fi author Jane Doe.”

To make a link, you use an “a” (anchor) element, with HREF (hypertext reference)

<a href="URL.html">Link anchor text</a>

You can also use “a” elements to link to a specific part of a document. For example, if I wanted to make a link to the text formatting section of this document, I would insert this HTML code just before the subheading. (“format” is the name I chose; you can use anything you like.) 

<a name="format"></a>

There’s no text required—it makes any text look like a link, but it’s not clickable, so I skip it.

Then, to link directly to that part, use:

<a href="pageURL.html#format">Link anchor text</a>

These anchors also work on the same page. Here’s that link to the text formatting section on this page.

Special characters: HTML Entities

I have a few of these memorized, but I often just Google the name of the character and “html entity” if I need to find it. Include both the ampersand and the semicolon.

  • Straight apostrophe: &apos;
  • Accents, e.g. é: &eacute; [the direction of the accent] OR &#233; [the alt code] — the ‘e’ is case sensitive!
  • Ampersand: &amp;
  • Straight quote: &quot;
  • Less than: <
  • Greater than: >
  • Cent: &cent;
  • Copyright: &copy;
  • Em dash: &mdash;

Two quick cut-and-paste tips

If you look at your HTML code and see that every paragraph has a line-height: 200%; property that you don’t want, I recommend cutting and pasting the code into Notepad (Text Editor on a Mac, I believe) and using Find and Replace to get rid of it.

Pasting text from an email or Word doc? I recommend pasting the text directly into the HTML window or Notepad/Text Editor. Notepad makes it easier to add line breaks between paragraphs, and find and replace any characters that won’t display properly. You will need to add bold or italic formatting manually.

Troubleshooting

Go find a crazy post on your blog and dig into the text to see if you can find out why it’s displaying oddly.

Note: If you’re trying to put two images with captions side by side in Blogger, you will need to use a table. Blogger puts the caption into a table row below the image and won’t display two tables side by side.

Don’t have a crazy post? Cut and paste this code into a new post and preview to see what’s displaying strangely. Then dig into the code to fix it!

<p style="background-color: red; text-align: right;">We use
crutches when we're lame. Gesture crutches? <strong>They're often
a symptom of writing that's limping along.</strong> Don't let your
writing limp! Make it run, jump, dance and sing!</p>
<strong>Describe the laugh</em> to make it pop. Write it fresh!
"A suuuure-you-can laugh" or "Her laughter was bright and thin
 and tinny, like the sound of cheap jingle bells you buy one
year—and the next find inexplicably silent."
Is this hard work? <strong>YES!</strong> Is it worth it? We
can&mdash;well, actually, we probably <em>can't</em> cite
<a href="http://example.com">examples of less-than-engaging
writing in published books: unless they're book-throwing bad, we
tend to gloss over this boring body language just like we do a
lot of other unstellar examples.

Can’t fix your crazy posts? I’m happy to help! Come join in the conversation!

Photo by Jesper Rønn-Jensen

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Marketing

Blog Tours: Finding & Measuring Success

This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Marketing: Blog tours

by Rachelle Christensen

I think the most important key to a successful blog tour is organization. It’s tricky when you’ve scheduled 20-25 stops on your tour. You will need to answer questions, give reminders, and make sure each blogger has the information they need to participate fully. I keep a document or spreadsheet for each blog tour and keep track of things like who I invite to participate and their response, most reliable book reviewers, individual review and interview dates, email and web addresses, etc.

Jordan has covered some great information in this series, but you might be asking yourself, are blog tours really worth it? The answer to that is YES if you coordinate one correctly. If you don’t think the advice that Jordan has posted applies to you and that you can run a successful tour with a handful of unknown blogs, then no, a blog tour won’t benefit your book.

Blog tours are about seed-bedding. Have you heard the marketing phrase that a person needs to be exposed to an item anywhere from three to twenty times before they will purchase? Well, it’s true. So when an author decides to put their book on tour, they should be doing so for the exposure. Great reviews are priceless, but go look up a few books on Amazon. You might be surprised to see some well-known authors who have less than ten reviews, or you might be surprised to see some that have over 100. A blog tour creates buzz and plants seeds in prospective readers’ minds. Does this translate to hard sales? Not usually sales that you can measure, but it translates to many results that you might not even realize.

Here’s an example. Perhaps reader Jane hears about your book, then she sees some glowing reviews on your blog tour. The next time she is at the library, she asks them to order in your book. Reader Jane checks out your book and loves it. Now she is excited for the next book and because she enjoyed your book so much, she wants to buy the next one as soon as it’s available.

In the above example, you can see that I’m trying to share the vision of planting seeds. Sometimes you’ll get to enjoy an early harvest, other times the seeds will grow slowly and turn into a towering oak tree. Exposure is great for any business and the same goes for authors.

Say Thank you! I think it’s important to thank your blog tour participants individually and think about how you can extend that thanks in other ways. On a recent tour that I managed, we offered a special thank you gift to each blogger who posted their review on time and also on Goodreads and Amazon. It was a fun way to continue to get the bloggers invested in the tour and get the results wanted.

Stay positive. Look at each stop on your tour as a potential seed. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising and you never know who might see that post and decide to invest in your book. If you don’t see a huge jump in sales, don’t get discouraged. Remember, that you are offering readers many chances to get to know you and the quality of your writing. Think about other marketing avenues that you might use to piggyback on the blog tour. Giveaways are fun, as well as special “buzz-fests” or “book bombs” or hide-and-seek questions in the first chapter of your book. All of these work to increase visibility.

Have fun! Don’t be a stress-case if one of your reviewers misses their posting date. Life happens, and sometimes we have to pick up the pieces and be flexible. If I see that a reviewer hasn’t posted on their scheduled date, I send out a reminder just checking in and offer another date if they are unable to make it work that day. I certainly appreciate it when people are understanding of my brain cramps, so be courteous and keep things on the up side.

Keep a page on your website, blog, or sidebar with all of the participants and dates of the blog tour. When your blog tour is finished, make sure you have that page somewhere permanent in case you need to reference it.

There are many other benefits to blog tours, such as gathering usable endorsements from reviewers to be used for other marketing purposes and making lasting connections with your audience. Be willing to think outside the box to take advantage of every opportunity to create a successful blog tour—but most of all enjoy!

About the Author

Rachelle J. Christensen is an author who enjoys blogging and learning new marketing strategies. She organizes blog tours for a multi-million dollar worldwide company and has developed secrets for low-cost Internet marketing.
Her first novel, Wrong Number, was awarded Outstanding Book of the Year from the League of Utah Writers and was also a 2010 Whitney Finalist. Her second suspense novel, Caller ID, was released March 2012. She is also the author of a nonfiction book, Lost Children: Coping with Miscarriage for Latter-day Saints.

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