Tweetaholic? More on Book Promotion

I promised last week that I would write this week about Twitter, so I’m doing it even though I really want to tell you about my new DOG!!!! Well, I’ll tell you a little because she is sitting on my lap right now. She is a papillon, butterfly in French, and has the giant butterfly ears to prove it. She is A-dorable. No name selected yet, but we’re considering Jolie which means pretty in French or Poppy.

Okay, on to social media. As I said last week, I’m not a social media expert. I’m just sharing my personal experience, both as an author and a PR person. Last week we talked about Facebook and said it is a very personal platform. Twitter is a different animal. I am a Tweetaholic and use Twitter more than Facebook (although I appreciate Facebook more all the time). Twitter is far more a “broadcast” medium.  Much of the world’s news – earthquakes, fires, floods, divorces-- appears first on Twitter. On Twitter, you have “followers” and you want to have a lot of them because every one is a potential reader or friend of a reader. Start by following other writers – there are tons of them on Twitter. Not only do writers read a lot, they also have people who read them who might also want to read you. Yes, you only have 140 characters, but you get used to packing a lot into that short form, plus a link to something like your blog, your book buy link, a YouTube video, etc. (This post, for example, will be tweeted several times today.) 

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is ephemeral. You Tweet, it goes out, maybe it gets “retweeted” if people are interested, and it goes away. So you can come back later and tweet about the same thing. But, like on Facebook, you can’t be too pushy. People will unfollow you if you try to sell all the time. Only about a third of your tweets should be salesy. The rest should offer useful information, be retweets of other people, and comments on their tweets. While not as personal as Facebook, Twitter is still social, and the way you treat people matters.

People freak out over Twitter wondering how on earth they can read all those tweets, especially when you get over 1,000 followers. The answer is “you can’t”. You get an organizational tool like TweetDeck or Seesmic and use it to organize your tweets. You soon start to get a sense of who you want to follow most closely. When you come onto Twitter, you read the tweets you see and maybe comment on some. That might develop a new friend from somewhere in the world. One day I saw a tweet about a movie someone liked. I asked where she saw it. She said “the city”. I said Los Angeles? She said, no, Vienna!  A very international  platform.

Mostly, on Twitter, you comment on the people who have mentioned you. It sounds hard, but you’ll get the hang of it. There are regular events like Follow Friday when you can recognize people and they may recognize you and perhaps follow you in return. Regularly, you should follow people who interest you (Twitter will make suggestions or you can look at the lists of people you follow) and they may follow you back. Some people hate the relentless nature of Twitter. But it’s a fabulous place to promote your blog, your book, your book tour. You’ll find new people that you may want to friend on Facebook or Goodreads. It’s a must for self promotion by an author. Set aside a few minutes a couple or three times a day to participate. Just always remember that book promotion is more about the book than the promotion.  Which one do you like better?  Twitter or Facebook?  Why?

Also, if you pop over to my Book BLOG and follow and/or leave a comment, you may WIN a copy of Genetic Attraction, my M/M/F menage now available from Loose Id. 

Book Promotion: Facebook Fanatic?

Have you noticed that people tend to be huge fans of either Twitter or Facebook and will use one a lot and the other very little or not at all? Actually, while you may prefer one, you have to do both because they are very different in the way they reach people and even the people they reach. I started out trying to cover both in one discussion and was heading toward a 900 word post. I figured that would try your patience, so this week I’ll talk about Facebook which I think is the easiest to grasp. Next week we’ll cover Twitter (my personal fave). Please note, I’m not a social media expert. This is my experience over the last six months introducing myself and my first novel, Genetic Attraction, plus some of my PR training.

So, let’s discuss Facebook, the most popular social media tool and subject of the film, The Social Network (great movie, by the way.) I am active on Facebook, but don’t begin to use all its tools. I don’t have a fan page and don’t think I’ll need one for a long while (fan pages are great when you want to exceed your 5000 friend limit. I should be so fortunate! LOL). So, for beginning purposes, here are some things to remember.

Your Facebook page is a part of your persona as a writer. Whether you write under your own name or not, do NOT mix your personal friends and chats with them with your professional friends. Create two different Facebook accounts and keep them separate. But, with that said, remember Facebook is a personal medium. This means you communicate with the people on Facebook as you would a friend. You share semi-personal information, things about your life, something fun you see on YouTube or television. You chat and, above all, you comment on other people’s posts, share their triumphs and mourn their losses. On Facebook, you may post an announcement about your blog or your new release once. But it stays, so you can’t push it. Facebook is not a pushy platform and people get really mad if you try to sell them. Fecebook is about friends. Be friendly! My friend, Sloan Parker is, IMO, the master of Facebook interaction, and if you want to know how to use it well, watch her.

Who do you follow? I’d start with other writers, publishers, agents, people whose information you really want to know. As you grow your list, Facebook will suggest other friends like the ones you have. You can see your friends’ lists and perhaps ask to friend some of those people. Because of the nature of Facebook, most people (even your number one author idol!) will agree to be friends with you. It’s a kick! You can have real conversations on Facebook, but mostly you want to “be a friend” to the people who you follow. Do that, and when you ask for support, like for a blog tour or book advice, chances are they will give it. And it gives your growing number of fans a place to find you and interact with you personally. I have people who like my books who see me online and come and chat.

Like all social media, Facebook can be addictive. Resist. You need time to write. But it is a marvelous way to meet people and cement relationships. If you’re not using it, go over and sign up. It’s easy. If you have an account but don’t use it, start looking for friends and vow to visit the page once a day to comment on their posts. You’ll be delighted with the results.

What is your favorite social media tool? Why do you like it best?

Do You Know Me? 5 Things You Can Do To Promote Yourself for Free

Let me whip out the old American Express card. I'm Josh Lanyon. If you read m/m fiction the name is probably vaguely familiar to you. Your response to "Josh Lanyon" may be positive or negative or merely oh yeah, I think I've heard of him, but generally if you know this genre, you know of me.

And that, of course, is the goal of each and every new writer.

You want name recognition. It would be delightful if, with that name recognition, came an automatic fuzzy, warm feeling, but it doesn't work that way. And it's not the topic of today's post. Today's post is one dear to the hearts of writers both old and new, because we're all constantly scrabbling for a better foothold on the precarious slope that is our writing career. Today's post contains five quick and easy things you can to promote yourself for free.


1 - Become a regular reader and commenter on popular blogs. It doesn't get much easier than this. Show up and participate. Interact with readers and other authors. This has the added benefit of keeping you abreast of what's happening in your community, which is a good and useful thing. When your name pops up on a regular basis and people come to associate it with smart, insightful comments, it becomes a little advertisement for your work.

You can start this strategy long before your book is actually published. There are a number of writers I became interested in simply because they commented regularly enough on places I frequented and I began to get a sense of "knowing" them.

Caution: the internet -- and this genre in particular -- are prone to sweeps of ill-thought self-righteous hysteria on any given topic. Avoid that stuff. Very rarely do the people yelling the loudest have all the facts. And everyone looks foolish after the confetti has settled.

2 - Write an article for a webzine or popular blog on a topic you know well. And for God's sake DON'T write about writing or self-promotion. You heard me right. Try and avoid writing about writing. Why? Because this is the absolute first idea that leaps to everyone's mind. It's safe, it's harmless, and it's invisible.

I know what you're thinking. Establish yourself as an expert was one of those pieces of advice they dished out when the internet was new and still wet behind the ears. And that was -- and is -- good advice, but on what topic do all writers imagine themselves experts? Writing. So everyone is out there blabbing about writing. And they're mostly blabbing to other writers.

Do I honestly need to tell you why this is a mistake?

What else are you an expert on? How can you take that expertise and apply it to writing -- even apply it in such a way that other writers might conceivably turn to you for advice? Do you have medical know-how? Are you fluent in a language? Do you have a degree in a particular historical period? How are you unique from everyone else in this genre?

Your uniqueness is the selling point.




3 - Use an email address that matches your pen name. This is a no brainer, surely? All your communication should be under the name you're promoting, your "brand," as it were. It's confusing to see Betty Johnson railing away on a list about this, that, and the other and get to the bottom of her post and find out that she's actually the author of nine erotic romances under the nom de plume of Jackson Hole.

You want all the indicators leading to your author identity. And if you don't have an email address for your author identity it's like you don't expect to be in business very long. I mean, you can get these email addresses at hotmail. They're free. Why wouldn't you do this?

4 - Give away books. I know. It seems counterintuitive. You're not earning that much to start with. And now I'm advising you to cut into your profits. Consider those pennies lost as money invested in advertising. Send books to reviewers, sure, but give books to regular readers too.

Why? Because you're trying to establish something called Word of Mouth. Word of mouth is what happens when readers like your stories and, all unsolicited, talk you up to other readers. And so on and so on. There is no single better promotional thing that can happen to you. Period. All the banner ads, all the glowing reviews, all the authors blurbing each other, NONE of that can compare to the effectiveness of a handful of readers who love your work and share that love with their friends.

Give books away.

5 - Post excerpts. This can be tricky, I admit it. Readers sometimes buy books based on reviews, but the number one decider in whether a reader reads a book will be her feeling as she skims the first few paragraphs. And while you may think all you need is for the reader to buy your book, what you really need is a reader to buy all your books -- and that only happens if they like your books.

When you post excerpts, a reader gets to sample your work and one of three things happens: the book doesn't sound like her kind of thing, the book sounds like something he wants to read right now, and -- most commonly -- the book sounds like something she or he wants to read eventually.

And how you get that reader to move you from the "eventually" pile to the Must Have Right Now pile has to do with repeated exposure to the work and to you -- which is where all those other little seemingly invisible efforts start to pay off.

Readers, what kinds of promotional efforts appeal to you? What kinds of things turn you off?

Authors, what's your biggest challenge in getting the word out there?

Book Promotion: Start Before You Need To

I have a dear friend who is a NYT best-selling author who retired recently, partly due to the need to promote her own books. Back in the glory days, publishers did most all the promotion, and authors just had to show up. Not so today. Even the best are expected to promote themselves.

I’m new to fiction writing, so I don’t know any better. Plus, I differ from many authors in that I have a background in public relations, so I take to the promotion stuff pretty easily. I don’t yet know how my promotional activities will pay off in sales, if at all. After all, I’m brand new. But I have had writer friends ask me to talk about what I do for promotion. So over the next few posts, if people want, I’ll talk about various aspects of book promotion from my very newbie viewpoint.

First, start before you need to. I put up my author blog, http://taralain.blogspot.com, back last June before I had even submitted my books to Loose Id. I created the blog to support what I wanted my “brand identity” to be. (Please forgive these over used words. You get the idea.) I wrote about other people’s books in my genre. I did special reports on kissing, on androgyny, and lots of pictures of beautiful men. I developed a small following, and have continued to post to the blog about twice a week. I monitor it daily on Google Analytics to see how it falls off between posts, and which posts are most popular. Most important, the blog helped make some people aware of me. I promote the blog continuously on Twitter and Facebook, and developed more awareness there. (The use of Twitter and FB are subjects for another post.)

After my first book was accepted for publication, I took Christy Lockhart’s suggestion and started posting on craft topics – where the ideas come from, writing your passion, etc I still did racy and funny videos and pictures to keep up the image. These posts built my following further.

Also upon acceptance of the novel, I developed my website. I figured people would now start to check it out, and I needed an authoritative platform to show I was a serious author. Please note, I developed both my blog and my website myself. I have very limited technical skills, and they don’t look very slick or professional, but I know how to change them myself without relying on a webmaster. Updating your site is the key to ongoing traffic building, so, for now, I’m trading the look for the ease-of-use – and the low cost.

Well in advance of publication, I also started blogging at Savvy Authors and collecting friends on Goodreads. Some of LI’s authors were kind enough to invite me to participate in their Yahoo chats. The bottom line is that before my book came out, there were people waiting for it and people who knew my name. Now, whether they bought it, THAT’S another story I won’t know for weeks and months to come. LOL!!

What do you do well in advance of a release to “prime the pump”? : )

Genetic Attraction is NOW AVAILABLE: http://www.loose-id.com/Genetic-Attraction.aspx

Want to see some of my promotional activities? I'll discuss different tools in future posts:

E-mail: tara@taralain.com

Website: http://www.taralain.com

Author blog: http://taralain.blogspot.com

Book blog: http://beautifulboysbooks.blogspot.com

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4541791.Tara_Lain

Savvy Authors: http://www.savvyauthors.com/vb/member.php?2398-Tara-Lain

Twitter: http://twitter.com/taralain

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/Tara-Lain/100001514105686