Category Archives: Articles

Marketing tips for writers, opinion pieces, and other tutorials and articles. Some of my articles appear on Yahoo!

8 Ways to Promote Your Ebook on Twitter

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I’ve come to realize none of us has a clue as to what we’re doing when it comes to selling ebooks; it’s all trial and error, and no one really knows the secret formula. We just know that, when you find something that works, you need to repeat it. Here are some things I’ve found that work on Twitter.

Tweet links to your ebooks. Create landing pages on your website*, then tweet a synopsis of your ebook and link to the landing page. I also like to add two hashtags: the ebook’s primary genre, and whether it’s a short story, novel, or whatever.

Tweet excerpts of people’s reviews. This isn’t always easy to do, especially if you’re just starting out or people are only leaving quick reviews saying, “I liked it.” You can, however, tweet the number of stars your ebook has so far on, say, Amazon, so even if people are being short and sweet, potential readers see that you still have a rating of 4.5 or whatever.

Tweets excerpts of your ebook. If the first sentence of your story is particularly good, you can use that. Sometimes the first sentence is too long for 140 characters, though, so you can go with something within the first page (so you don’t give anything major away).

Post pictures of your cover art. There’s nothing that will garner more interest (if your cover image is good). Link to that landing page you’ve created, and add a couple of hashtags.

Tweet free coupon codes. While you want to make sales and make money, sometimes you need to give stuff away in order to do that. Smashwords allows you to generate coupon codes. Create one for just a few days and make it a Twitter-only promotion. Hopefully, it will get you more followers who will be interested in your other stuff (or your future projects, if you only have one ebook out).

Ask people to review your ebook. Every time someone tweets you and gives you good feedback on one of your ebooks, reply to them and ask them to leave a review. You don’t want to just post tweet after tweet saying, “Please review my story!” Most people will ignore those tweets, anyway. But those who already appreciate your work will be happy to help you out, if you ask nicely.

Retweet positive feedback. Even if they’ve agreed to leave a review for you, make sure you retweet their original tweet praising your ebook! If possible, add a link to the landing page for your ebook (and don’t forget to give the person credit for their tweet).

Make all of your ebook related tweets retweetable. Twitter added a nice retweet button a while back, but some people still retweet the old-fashioned way. It’s not always possible to leave a few extra characters, but the more you leave, the more likely people will be to retweet you.

You should also switch up your tweets; don’t keep tweeting the same thing, or people will be less likely to retweet them, and may even unfollow you. I do tweet the same links almost every day, but I try to change the wording. Sometimes I use excerpts, sometimes I use the synopsis, and sometimes I tweet a related question.

I see a lot of indie authors tweeting the same exact thing over and over, and while it’s important to promote the face off of your stuff, it’s also very annoying to your followers. You have to put yourself in your followers’ shoes and ask yourself, “Is this too similar to what I tweeted yesterday? Is this fun? Is this going to annoy people?”

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How do you use Twitter to promote your ebooks? Is there a tweeting service you like to use? What would you recommend to new indie authors, or to those who are struggling?

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*If you don’t have a website, you need to get one — and I don’t mean on WordPress.com or Tumblr. You need to buy your own domain, like deannaknippling.com, and set up a home base. If you’re using WordPress.com or Tumblr or something like that, you’re not serious — or at least, people aren’t going to take you seriously.

How to Make Sales… and Piss Off Your Readers

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Angry reader is not amused.

Angry reader is not amused.

I came across a post today by Kirkus MacGowan that really bothered me. I tried leaving a comment several times, but Disqus is evil and I eventually gave up. (I hate, hate Disqus. It needs to die a fiery death.)

In MacGowan’s post, “Sexy & I Know It — Garnering Attention,” he gives a couple of tips on how indie authors can gain attention for their books. I know just as well as the next indie author that selling ebooks and POD is hard. There are thousands of other indie authors out there, all clamoring for the reader’s dollar, and it’s tough to stand out. So I get how frustrating it can be. I also don’t mean any disrespect toward MacGowan; we’re all on the same team here. However, I think his post is a shining example of what not to do.

Think about what’s big in the news right now. Here in the United States, President Obama is on most of our minds at some point or another. Imagine this… Are you ready?

Flight of the Obama.

What do you think? There’s a bit of a ring to it. Okay, not really. But can you imagine how much attention you’d get? You’d be better off stating first in the book description that your book had nothing to do with the president of the United States. By that point, it wouldn’t even matter. Think of how many people would check it out based simply on such a title.

This is false advertising, no matter how you look at it. It’s shabby to tell readers they are getting one thing, but when they open the cover, they are actually getting something completely different. (Disclaimer: I’m not calling MacGowan shabby. I’m calling the act itself shabby.) Using something current and relevant to garner attention is only going to piss off your readers in the long run. People really do not take it well when they buy a book because the title said one thing and they find something completely different between the covers.

Cover art for "How Lon Got Screwed by a Terrorist," by Elizabeth BaroneI learned this the hard way, completely accidentally. My short story, “How Lon Got Screwed by a Terrorist,” is about a thug who gets cheated by his terrorist boss. It’s a thriller, not erotica, but a few people have bought it thinking Lon was going to get some action. (I know there is a huge market for erotica on Amazon, so I’m guessing that’s what happened here.) They were pretty disappointed when they found out that Lon doesn’t get any, and I’ve gotten a couple of bad reviews between Amazon and Goodreads. I’m thinking about changing the title*; although the title has driven sales because it’s interesting, it’s also potentially misleading, and pissing people off. I want people to read my stories, but I don’t want to piss them off.

I think a better way to put this concept into action is to put as much effort into your title as you do into writing the piece — if not more. I like making lists of potential titles and seeing which one stands out to me the most. I would have never thought in a million years that people would misconstrue the word “screwed” in my title (and I have a pretty dirty mind, sigh). Admittedly, titles have never been my strong point; I always have a hard time coming up with a good one.

…the cover is just another way to do that. The same things apply here as with the title. Putting a beautiful woman or painting on the front will gain attention. Using a woman or painting people already love and adore would be better.

Have you ever seen one of John Locke’s covers? Most (maybe all) are pasted with a physically attractive woman clad in too-tight clothing. His books certainly have their share of attractive women but they are rarely the focus.

I think that it’s unscrupulous to purposely put something on the cover like a scantily clad woman when the novel’s focus isn’t a sexy woman. As indies, we do have to work harder to have our work read, but we also need to be careful how we are presenting ourselves. If time and time again an indie author is “caught out” for basically falsely advertising their books, he or she is going to lose readers.

I think, as indie authors, we’re a lot more responsible for how our readers perceive us and how we treat them. We have to constantly put ourselves in the readers’ shoes: “How would I feel if a writer did this to me?”

I know it’s not always easy to create strong titles and startling cover images (like I said, I pretty much loathe the titling process), but we’re lucky as indies to have vibrant communities where we can ask our readers what they think before we publish. “Do you like this cover image?” “What do you think of this title?” These are things we can post to our Facebook pages and send out in email newsletters. We’re very lucky.

And I truly don’t mean to attack MacGowan here; it’s all trial and error when you’re an indie author. I just strongly believe that it’s better to have slow sales than to intentionally or even unintentionally trick your readers.

What do you think? Is it ethical to use controversial titles and cover images that aren’t necessarily relevant to your novel to drive sales?

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*Look out for a more in-depth post on this soon; I’ve been really struggling with this.

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How Rebecca Hamilton Created a Marketing Plan for The Forever Girl

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Guest Post by Rebecca Hamilton

Rebecca Hamilton

Rebecca Hamilton

I struggled with my marketing plan, a huge part of the reason being that I wanted people to know my book is out there, but I didn’t want to pressure people into buying it or annoy them with spam. I had to think of what methods put me off and what methods didn’t. For example, I’m very off-put by people contacting me directly when I’ve shown no previous interest and recommending their own book to me. I didn’t want to do that to others. To avoid this, the first thing I did was start a sign up, so I could email people who wanted to know when my novel was released. To promote the list prior to release, I participated in sample Sunday, including the link to sign up if they liked the same. When the novel was release, I offered these people a coupon to get the novel for $0.99 instead of $2.99. At least half of them opted to pay full price anyway.

Other than that, I had a twitter release party on February first, optimizing the opportunity to win prizes for those who RSVP’d for the party in advance. I also scheduled a book blog tour with Dark Mind Book Tours, and they have been AMAZING so far. They’re a passionate bunch, for sure, and know their stuff when it comes to reaching readers.

I also think that connecting with readers is more important than the marketing itself. Connecting with readers, first of all, is fun! They give me book recommendations for other books or tell me about their day or ask me about mine. This provides that much needed human-interaction and friendship. It also provides me with entertainment if I follow up on their book recommendations, which also gives us more to talk about! Not only that, but we can learn more about writing because we’re learning more about people and learning more about what our audience is looking for in a novel.

And of course, that’s the NUMBER ONE thing you can do marketing-wise. Write a good novel, that is. A pretty book cover helps, too. If you do this, no matter how slow you get started, those who read can spread the word for you.

You have to see readers as a chance to learn something and a chance to make a friend. Not a chance to make a sale. The sale will happen on its own. This is why I don’t “target” my target audience by writing them telling them to buy my book. I do, however, share about myself. Same as I want to hear about their passions and the news in their lives, so I find that they want to hear about my passions and the news in mine. Even if they don’t want to buy my book, often they can share my passion enough to pass along the word to someone who might.

In summary: Be human. Focus on your writing. Make friends. Share your passions and goals. The rest will work itself out.

Elizabeth, thank you so much for having me. I hope my thoughts will be helpful.

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This is a stop on the book tour for Rebecca Hamilton’s The Forever Girl: Sophia’s Journey, available now in print and ebook formats. I am so grateful to Rebecca for stopping by, and look forward to reading the rest of The Forever Girl novels.

 

Want more of Rebecca?

 

PayPal Reverses Fiction Censoring Policies

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I just received an email from Smashwords notifying all authors that PayPal has reversed their fiction censoring policies (policies that mostly affected erotica authors). Smashwords founder Mark Coker writes:

Great news. Yesterday afternoon I met with PayPal at their office in San Jose, where they informed me of their decision to modify their policies to allow legal fiction.

Effective last night, we rolled back the Smashwords Terms of Service to its pre-February 24 state.

It’s been a tumultuous, nerve-wracking few weeks as we worked to protect the right of writers to write and publish legal fiction.

He followed up the email by saying that this move would set the pace for other payment processing companies, such as Google Checkout and Checkout by Amazon.

I’m glad things ended well. I use PayPal to receive almost all of my writing income (my Amazon income is, obviously, paid through their Checkout). Banned Writers has been covering this extensively and unfortunately it’s looking like either PayPal was using credit card companies as an excuse, or credit card companies bailed when things started getting ugly. Regardless, all indie authors are free to publish their stories no matter what the subject material, and all readers — who should be the only ones calling the shots on what they’re paying for to read — can read whatever they want.

Photo Credit: © Freds | Dreamstime.com

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Be a Writer, Part One: Start

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I used to think that I couldn’t be a writer until someone decided I was and told me. I thought, I have to finish this manuscript, send it to an agent, have the agent love it, wait while the agent sells it, wait until a publisher loves it and publishes it, and then I’ll be a writer. I also thought that you couldn’t make a living as a writer unless you were lucky. During the last five months, I’ve discovered two things:

  1. I became a writer when I decided to be one, and
  2. Only hard work will make me successful, not luck.

I had no idea what I was doing in October 2011, but I decided to do it anyway. I made a conscious decision to stop getting in my own way; throughout the last few years, I knew all along that I wanted to be a writer, but I kept telling myself I couldn’t do it, that I had to do something else instead, and maybe someday I would be a writer. The thing is, when you say “someday,” you never put a definite date down. The first thing you need to do if you want to be a writer or be anything else, is stop saying “someday,” and start doing.

In 2010, I sat through the most inspirational speech of my life, given by Jill Blashack Strahan. She said that when she looked back, she discovered that there were three steps to her success:

  • Start.
  • Know where you’re going.
  • Don’t stop.

That quote — Start. Know where you’re going. Don’t stop. — isn’t exact, but I’m going to apply her general advice that she gave during her speech to becoming a writer.

Starting is probably the scariest thing of all, mostly because you don’t know what you’re doing. I wanted to start for months while reading DeAnna Knippling’s posts about self-publishing, but continued to get in my own way: I can’t do that, I thought. My first step to starting was to change that thinking: I can do it. Then I set some goals.

Since you’re starting, set simple action goals for yourself, such as “write one chapter for my novel every day” or “self-publish one short story a month.” These goals should be made up of two parts: the action, and the deadline.

The goals can be changed, but what’s important is that you try to do. For example, one of my goals for 2012 was to write one short story a week. I tried it and discovered that it didn’t work for me because I wanted to focus more on writing my novel and other project. I decided to change my goals and try to self-publish one short story a month. I know myself well enough to know that I’m more of a novelist than a short story artist, and I want to focus my time on those longer works of fiction. However, I love writing short stories because I can write the first draft in one sitting, and within a few weeks have a finished product to release and help get my name out there. You may be the same, or the complete opposite. As you get more into things, you’ll start to recognize these things in yourself, too.

Once you’ve set some goals and started doing, you need to do some research to figure out how to accomplish your goals. Obviously, the “how” for the writing goals is simple: sit down and write. But whether you want to self-publish or traditionally publish, you need to gather some resources.

I got started in self-publishing by reading De’s Indypub posts. She also wrote a checklist for indie authors. One of the best things you can do is look for independent authors on Twitter. Start by finding one indie author on Twitter, then check out their lists. I have a list of writers (not all of them are indie, but you can learn a lot from any one of them). Chances are, they’ll have a blog, and chances are they’ll have some how-to posts on their blog. The self-publishing community is super vibrant and helpful.

Traditionally publishing is a lot different. You need to find a market (or publication) for your piece — Duotrope is a free directory of markets — submit, cross your fingers, write some more, and keep going. Traditional publishing takes a lot of patience because no one sees your story unless the editor thinks it’s a fit for the market.

I’m doing a bit of both, though admittedly I’m focusing more on self-publishing because I hate waiting months after submitting a story to a magazine (but I so love seeing my name in print).

Next: Know Where You’re Going – How to take your goals and turn them into measurable results.

This post is sponsored by Lulu, a full-service self-publishing site that offers ebook and print publishing services. Create your own book today!