Book Marketing 101—Part II

Remember WANA from Kristen Lamb’s book on social media marketing? We Are Not Alone. Together we can figure out how to market our books and build readership. On February 8, 2011, I published the first half of what were, to me, the best of the sites for building platform and book promotion. Here is Part II of the sites I scoured the Internet for.

“14 Platform-Building Tips” by Daniel Decker

Decker assures us that a platform is a structure consisting of many planks, not just a single big board. He provides 14 ways to build your platform solidly. Some familiar, some not so much so. A specific and concise read.

Read more at http://bit.ly/bhxUP7

“Author Website Design” by Morris Rosenthal (an excerpt from his book, Internet Book Marketing)

Rosenthal thinks we have been given a lot of bum advice, and that neither authors nor those in the business end of publishing have got it right about what a website needs to have and do. He is really encouraging about what we can do our our chances of being successful. And he ought to know. His site gets ~8K unique hits daily.

Read more at http://bit.ly/ZoMpe

“Learn How to Promote and Market Books Online” (an excerpt from his book, Internet Book Marketing)

Same guy, Morris Rosenthal, talks about some issues around on-line book sales such as don’t give it away for free (take those sample chapters down) and the value of making it easy to pay for books ordered. A short, but practical and specific article.

Read more at http://bit.ly/cBj8G

Blog vs Website for Draft Manuscript by Morris Rosenthal (an excerpt from his book, Internet Book Marketing)

Contrarian Rosenthal is back again exhorting us not to write stand alone blogs if we even do blogs at all as part of our marketing plan. We waste time doing this that could be spent elsewhere with a bigger pay off. But if you blog, he gives some suggestions that might be helpful to implement.

Read more at http://bit.ly/3ClbnR

“Writers Create a Marketing Platform” by Rebecca Sebek

Some old stuff in this short article (do book signings at your local book store), but Sebek also suggests ideas I haven’t come across before. She says you should conduct a 60-90 minute webinar information session related to your book and create your own BlogTalk Radio show.

Read more at http://bit.ly/fd8DjQ

“R.I.P. Twitter as a Marketing Platform” by Dan Schawbel

A really, really different take on Twitter. He makes the argument it is no longer an effective marketing tool for sales. Rather it is best used for brand awareness. Whether you agree or disagree, his stats and his take on the evidence is unique.

Read more at http://bit.ly/bf37ZG

“Creating an Elevator Pitch for Your Author Platform” by Tony Eldridge

Just as you have your elevator pitch for your book, Eldridge argues you should be able to present your author platform similarly. An intriguing little article.

Read more at http://bit.ly/5Kpz7

We are on this journey together. I will continue to provide resources. Please share what you are trying as well. WANA!

Book Marketing 101—Part I

You are the center of my life, Dear Reader, except of course for all my family and real friends. Still, you are important. So in your best interests and mine, of course, I scoured the web for book platform and marketing plan ideas.

There are bazillions of commercial opportunities on the web. Lots of people want to help you achieve your publishing—and marketing—dreams. I have mostly avoided that here in favor of free stuff. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to pay someone to do something I should be able to do for myself. Also, there were some articles on e-mail as part of the platform, but I hate spam, so I didn’t include them.

I can learn this stuff. I can do it, too. And I care more about successful marketing than anybody I can pay.

My criterion for inclusion? Did I learn anything? You may already know all this stuff. I didn’t.

Certain terms kept coming up: form a relationship, on-going/long-term, brand/identity, diversified approach. I get it. A marketing plan and author platform is not just about selling this book to the public, but it is about making the public clamor for more from me.

So, here in Part I, I am listing some of these sites I found helpful. Part II will appear in “WriteAway” on Feb. 10. With a guest blogger in between! Read more at the end of this post.

“How to Build a Marketing Platform” by Christina Katz (she of Get Known Before the Book Deal) published in Writer’s Digest, May/June, 2010.

In order to market our books, Katz says we must have an area expertise, find a unique niche, and get a relationship going with the target audience. Her “10 simple steps” are ones we can all take. They are: 1) Find your tribes; 2) Connect, don’t network; 3) Serve to learn; 4) Give public readings; 5) Learn to teach; 6) Speak up; 7) Start something; 8) Pen articles; 9) Offer assistance; and, 10) Create a one-pager.

Read what these all mean at http://bit.ly/QAMhn

“Building a Media Platform for Your New Book—Part I” by Barry Fox

Not so much an article with new stuff as it is a tidy reminder of what you might already have heard but stated succinctly here.

Read more at http://bit.ly/eJP0aC

“Publisher Simon and Schuster Says Authors Should Blog and Social Network” by Joanna Penn

This article is full of links to related articles on blogging and social networking. A really good one-stop shopping source for bloggers. Very useful info here. Plus with the imprimatur of S& S, well . . .

Read more at http://bit.ly/doFddJ

“How to Build Your Author’s Platform from Scratch” by Dvorah Lansky

Practical, pointed suggestions in plain speak. Sort of a put up or shut up article.

Read more at http://bit.ly/h2Yj6P

“Your Author Platform—Branding” by Dana Lynn Smith, The Savvy Book Marketer

Smith makes the case in this short article for getting known by picture and brand. She uses “The Savvy Book Marketer” as her tagline after her name. We all need one, she says, and she offers suggestions.

Read more at http://bit.ly/8ltbIe

“Just Say ‘No!’ to Authors without Healthy Marketing Platforms” by Michael Drew.

Drew believes that editors ought to ask these four questions and like the answers before offering a contract to an author:

1. Does this author have a publishing history?
2. Does he/she have a large fan base to work with?
3. What kind of a marketing platform is in place?
4. How will the marketing plan bring readers into the bookstores?

Read more at http://bit.ly/91zYEv

Part II appears on Feb. 10. So come on back for it. In the meantime, set your alarm to show up here tomorrow for Kris Tualla’s blog tour. She will share info on e-publishing and give away some books to some lucky visitors. See you tomorrow. Right here. Write Away.

Author Platform—Yes, Again!

I know. Here I am again writing about building an author platform. Obsessed, you say? One woman's obsession is another woman’s focus. Call me focused. Really, really, really focused.

I have a sign revealed unto me. Truly. The last two days my “horrorscope” has scared me straight. Straight back to getting more writing done. The whole raison d’etre, eh, for marketing. So, here are they are. What do you think they mean?

“You are in the process of learning, growing, and improving. There’s a limit to how much of this you can do in a day. Go easy.”

Yikes! Did that not sound to you like a warn-off for Twitter/FB/blogging/website-ing? I mean, really, how can there be any other interpretation. “You have learned much about social media networking. Now get back to your writing.” Very clear! Wasn’t it? Or did it mean . . . Never mind, here is #2:

“You might procrastinate. It’s not because you can’t be bothered to take action. It’s because you are busy with important things.”

Okay. Call me crazy. Don’t those two contradict one another?

Tuesday’s horrorscope told me to stop on-lining (a non-drug type of mainlining). Wednesday’s said it’s okay because that stuff is more important than your writing. Or at least as important.

So what do I do with the sign? I mean, the Old Testament is filled with guys who ignored signs. Job was whale food. Noah presided over “the end of the world as we know it.” Eve . . .well, we all know how that turned out. The signs are there for a purpose. So what to do?

I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me Twitter or give me Facebook. Or the other way around.

Excuse me, please. I gotta get stuff posted today so more and more people will be screaming for the book I will write on weekends and during commercial breaks. Author Platform or Bust!

Building Author Platform While Tearing Down Writing (Time)

Members of both my critique groups have asked how I can be spending so much time on building my author platform? “Aren’t you losing writing time?”

Yes, indeed, I am. I try to keep up with two blogs, two Twitter accounts, a website, and two Facebook pages. Social Media Networking, indeed! I hardly ever see real people. Mostly my day is spent with virtual “friends” and “followers”. I am losing big writing time as I prepare blogs, tweet, and FB postings.

I post (mostly) on this, my writing blog, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I post on my foodie blog (www.sharonarthurmoore.blogspot.com). I try to write one or two of these articles a day so I have a storehouse to pick from when it is time to post. Then I must replenish the stock.

Everyday I post on Twitter accounts @RomanceRighter (where I give relationship advice and share links to relationship articles among other things) and @good2tweat (recipes, links to food articles, food quotes, etc.). I keep a tweets page for each account minimized on my desktop so I can post something every hour or so throughout the day. That keeps my name floating around so no matter what time someone signs on, I am there.

On Facebook, I have a personal page and a fan page. Truly, if I could figure out how to do it, I would eliminate the personal page and just do the fan page. That would be more in line with my writing goals, and it would have a sharper focus. Most of my posts there are to drive people to my Twitter accounts or my blogs.

Except for Twitter, I don’t post much, if at all, on weekends. I give myself that time off. Ha! Instead I spend the weekend preparing future postings, trying to get ahead of the daily grind of having meaningful posts.

So why am I spending these hours doing what I never thought I’d be doing? Why don’t I just write, as I saw myself doing when I “transitioned” a few years ago. Because it works! I have seen more traffic at both blogs, and people I don’t follow on Twitter are following me. How they found me, I don’t know or care.

As I have addressed on these pages before, the new reality is that I must market my own materials along with the publisher. When I attend the Southern California Writing Conference in San Diego next month, and meet there with agents and editors one-on-one, I want to be able to say, “I can let 2500 people know instantaneously that I have a book contract. And those 2500 are connected to tens of thousands more people.” So I build my platform, friend by friend, follower by follower.

But the underlying purpose of it all is based in my writing. I’m thinking of buying one of those books on being a weekend novelist, since that seems to be where most of my writing time comes from these days.

“Get Known Before the Book Deal”—That’s What I’m Trying to Do!

I got a great book for Christmas: Christina Katz’s Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Build an Author Platform. You gotta add it to your personal gift-getting-occasions list. If you are a serious author, that is, in search of how to become a published author.

If you already know this stuff (or are Stephen King), apparently you have no need to buy the book. But, I know from conversations with my various critique group members that there are lots of us who are unsure how to navigate the book-marketing waters.

This Brave New World we face is relatively new. Sure, authors have always had to promote their books, thus the 12-cities-in-four-days book tours of the past. But this is different. We must have a clear idea of how to promote our work to selected audiences that we have already developed a connection with/to. These are “fans” who will be delighted to hear that we have something they can buy from us.

So, if like me, you are trying to figure it out, get this book! Christina Katz writes clearly and specifically about what we need to do. She manages to break the whole scary thing down to manageable bites and she does it without talking down to the debut author.

She explains what a platform is and in subsequent sections helps you see yourself doing what she describes. Part One is “Platform Ready” which includes (but is not limited to) chapters on becoming visible, cultivating your expertise, aligning with the audience, thinking productively, and acting from passion. There are more chapters in Part One.

In Part Two, “Platform Set”, she includes chapters on teaching to learn, connecting with others, and offering a service. Again, there are more sections than I have listed.

In Part Three, “Platform Grow”, Katz discusses, among other topics, identity quest, getting testimonials, and broadcasting your blog.

Practical, authentic, realistic. This book holds your hand and leads you through the parts of self-promtion that seem so scary and unfamiliar.

I have bookmarked her website: www.christinakatz.com because she has numerous helpful blog posts, a free monthly newsletter, and workshop offerings. It is a great site to add to your regular rotation of blog sites.

You CAN get known before the book deal. I believe that after reading her book. And you will, too. Welcome, Fellow Debut Author! And a round of applaluse for our guide there, Christina Katz.