Marketing True Magics 16 – What do You Mean, Start Over?

As much as I’d love to say, “New Year, New Ideas!” that is not the case here.  The reality of the part-time marketer is that the best-laid plans go awry.

Three things led my marketing plan astray:

1. Took longer than I expected to finish the last edit of the book, which meant time way from marketing (We’re still good for our April launch though!).

2. Facebook changed its algorithm again, which means I have to rethink (read: ditch and do something different) all the Facebook stuff I was planning.

3. And then I got sick.  Dammit.

But on the bright side, this mean you all get to follow me on a desperate journey to figure out how to market the book without much time! How exciting is that? I’m thrilled to go on this adventure! Thrilled!  Like Bilbo Baggins with a dining room full of dwarves! Like Alice falling down the rabbit hole!  Like Sir Gawain awaiting the strike from the Green Knight’s axe!

All right, maybe “thrilled” is not the word I’m looking for….

But stay tuned!  In two weeks I’ll be putting up my first new marketing post of the year: Cutting to the Chase or Biggest Bang for the Buck!

Meanwhile, buy Small Magics and Cold Magics, because you want to know what all the fuss is about, don’t you?

Next Week: This Writing Life 20: My Many Methods of Outlining

Marketing True Magics 15: 10,000 Twitter Followers! Now What?

I now have 10,000 twitter followers!  Joy! Excitement! Thrills!

Sort of…

Why 10,000?

Because it’s big shiny number and it looks impressive!

No, seriously.

I wrote here why I used follow-backs to gain followers. In short, it allows me to find people with similar interests and market to them. Cold blooded? Yes. Effective? Time will tell.

What Does Having 10,000 Followers Get Me?

1. ReTweeters!

If you talk about interesting things, people re-tweet you. Last week, I got 21.9K views of what I tweeted, and 177 link visits. Not bad at all. Because more views lead to…

2. More Followers!

 10,000 followers sufficiently large enough that anyone who sees one of my tweets or re-tweets and clicks on my profile might say, “Hey, this guy has a lot of followers. Maybe he’s interesting…” and read through some of my posts, which should (if I’m doing my job right) make them decide that yes, I am worth following, which then turns them into…

3. Potential Customers

I need people to buy my books so I can eat.  And every person who follows me on Twitter is a person who may buy my book. And in the end, that’s what this is all about.

What Having 10,000 Followers Doesn’t Get Me

1. Fans

Followers are not fans. Fans buy your books, read your stories, come see you when you are in town, and promote your work to other people. Followers follow you on Twitter.

The good news is you can convert followers into fans with work. Not all of them, but enough to make a difference which is why I don’t have…

2. Time to Relax

Must keep the information flowing.  Must keep the fun and exciting tweets going out. Must start the Christmas “Buy my Books” Campaign.  Must begin developing contests and twitter talks and other exciting things so people will keep paying attention.  But doing all that on Twitter does not give me…

3. An Excuse Not to Use Other Marketing 

Twitter is nice, and I started with it because it’s the easiest. But email lists work far, far better and that’s an area I haven’t even started figuring out yet. I still need to develop my Google+ presence, and my Facebook page for those who are already fans. Then there’s planning next year’s convention and promotion circuit to go with my new book (True Magics, out in April).  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

And speaking of that…

Next week: Marketing Plans 2: Why do I need all this background stuff?

Marketing True Magics 11: Time To Build My Facebook Followers or Why Facebook Sucks

It’s that time. I’ve got the twitter piece down to an art, if not a science, and it’s time to turn my attention to Facebook. And here is my confession: I don’t want to do it.

Frippin’ Facebook.

Facebook used to be THE place to be for free social media marketing. Bands, authors, artists and marketing companies built their fortunes on Facebook marketing. Then it all went bad.

Before we go on

This is my Facebook Page. Please like it. And tell your friends because, hey, why shouldn't your friends get to meet me, too?

What Went Wrong With Facebook?

Facebook is notorious for mucking about with it’s display feed, as it searches for the way to display information that will make them the most money.

Instead of seeing your friends who last posted and what they’re up to, for example, now you see a feed based on who’s posts are popular and whose aren’t, even if you set it to show “most recent posts.” It’s like Facebook decided that the high school model of “everyone wants to be like the cool kids” was a good one.  It isn’t. It sucks, especially if you’ve never been one of the cool kids.

No one really like the cool kids anyway, they just suck up to be popular and when high school is over those cool kids will be the losers sitting in their parents’ basements reminiscing about the good old days and wondering why they can’t find work because they were too busy being popular to study…

But I digress. And possibly project.

Pay to Show, Because Money

So the continuous change of the feed was bad enough, but then things got worse, especially for Pages. As of the Facebook going public, if I want more than 4% of my followers to see my Erik Buchanan Writer Page at any given time, I have to pay for the privilege. And the more followers I have, the more it’s going to cost.

Now, I can remind all my followers to hit the “Get Notifications” tab, but not everyone will do that, especially if they happen to see a friend say “hey, this guy is neat, like his page!” Which means that most of the people who are following me to hear my words of wisdom don’t have a clue what it is I am doing.

And even if you have hit the “Get Notifications” tab, it doesn’t mean you’ll see me, especially if you cousin Sadie releases her latest set of pictures of her Pug dressed up a Cersie Lannister in a dozen separate posts and she gets put at the top of your feed because everyone loves her pug pictures and she’s popular despite living in her parents basement and constantly talking about her cheerleader days fifteen year ago.

Sorry, still projecting… and how does she get that dog into that costume anyway?

Back to the Point

The reality for Facebook is that, like all other popular social media, there is a lot of noise. Check out this infographic to see what goes on there (and on other social media) in a day. It’s staggering.  So the problem here is the same problem with Twitter. How do you cut through the noise and get people to notice you.

And more important, is it worth the effort?

It Is

Because reasons, which I’ll talk about next week.

Next Week: Time To Build My Facebook Followers or Why Facebook Rocks

Marketing True Magics 9: Twitter Ad Copy

Marketing True Magics 9: Twitter Ad Copy

So, last week was all about my “please be my follower” strategy on twitter (and if you aren’t my follower, I’m @erik_buchanan, and don’t you want to be my friend?). This week is all about getting folks to buy my book from twitter, and that means it's all about ad copy.

Ad copy is HARD.

It needs to be clean, concise, interesting and not irritating.  Remember the big three of marketing: think, feel, do? It all needs to be in there:

Good copy has:
1. Something to get your attention (Think: This sounds really interesting!)
2. Something to make you want the book (Feel: I want to know what happens!)
3. A way for you to buy the book (Do: I’m buying this book!)
And because this is Twitter, it has to be done in 140 characters. Ideally in 100 characters so other people can comment and re-tweet.

(Joke: Why isn’t George R.R. Martin on Twitter anymore?  He killed all 140 characters. HA!)

So how do we do it?

1. Getting your attention

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so putting in the book cover is good (I have good covers). Also, pictures are more likely to get re-tweets. So I should either use my book covers or find cool photos related to the books and use them to get your attention.

2. Making you want more

I find my elevator pitches very useful here. The purpose of an elevator pitch is to make the person listening to it want to hear more. Observe:

Small Magics: A young man discovers magic in a world where no one believes in it anymore, except one person who is willing to kill to possess it all.

Cold Magics: A young magician must find a way to end a war before the church finds an excuse to hang him for witchcraft.

(Don’t you just want to go buy them both now?  You really should. The link is in the book titles)

Just like your elevator pitch, your ad copy should make folks interested enough to click through to decide if they want to buy the book.

The next step is to take my elevator pitches and shrink them to less than 100 characters. They have to be less than 100 characters because I also need:

3. A Way for You to Buy the Book

I need to link to to my publisher’s website or to Amazon, and since my publisher’s website is under construction right now, it’s going to be Amazon.

Remember: most book purchases are impulse buys. If the person reading my ad has the impulse to buy, I don’t want to make them wait.

How Often Should I Tweet?

Some authors send out twenty tweets a day about their books, most of them the same. I tend to tune them out and suspect you do, too. So how many tweets should I send out to get maximum effect with minimum irritation?

I had the good fortune to talk with Tee Morris [link] recently. He knows a great deal more about social media than I do, so I asked him what, in his opinion, was the maximum number of times a day one should advertise so as not to annoy one’s followers?

His answer? Three times a day. Enough to get attention and reach people at different times of the day, not so much as will drive them away.

That said, people don’t like seeing the same ad day in and day out. It becomes boring, so in addition to creating the ad above, I should probably create at least 4 others.

For each book.

And I should put them in a rotating schedule so my followers aren’t being bombarded by the same ads at the same time of day every time.

So Where Are They?

I’m working on it!

Really, I am!

Stop looking at me like that…

I am developing 10 twitter ads which will run in staggered rotation through the day and week so as not to bore or drive away followers. You’ll be seeing them soon and, if I do it right, the copy will be spread far and wide across the twitterverse, and all of you will buy my book and my publisher will do little happy dances in the street.

…Here’s hoping.

Next Week: Things I still need to learn about Twitter.

Marketing True Magics 8: Wait a minute! What about Promoting Your Books on Twitter?

All right, you caught me. I haven’t been doing much marketing of my books on Twitter yet. Which begs the question: Why not?

The Marketing Process: Think, Feel, Do

Marketing has three steps: I need to get you thinking about my book, which will lead to you feeling something about my book, which will lead you to doing something (buying my book).

Example: my Twitter feed. (are you following @erik_buchanan? You should. I’m fascinating).  I follow people to try to get them to follow me back. Here’s what happens, how it goes right, and how it can go wrong:

Step 1. I follow a person. The person:

Step	Right Result	Wrong Result
Thinks	Who is this guy?	Who is this guy?
Feels	I’m Curious.	I’m Disturbed
Does	Look at my twitter feed/profile	Blocks me

Step 2. On reading my profile, the person:

Step	Right Result	Wrong Result
Thinks	He does a bunch of neat stuff	He does stuff I don’t care about
Feels	I’d like to learn more	Bored
Does	Follows me	Not follow me

Step 3. On receiving my direct message:

Step	Right Result	Wrong Result
Thinks	Now I know the stuff he talks about	Now I know the stuff he talks about
Feels	That’s cool!	Boring!
Does	Reads my posts	Unfollows

At the end of the process I have a new follower who is likely to read my posts. Three different steps just to do that much. And now I want to advertise to them?

Better make the ads good, hadn’t I?

Next Week: Writing Twitter Ad Copy

Marketing True Magics 7: Twittering To The Masses, My Journey So Far

The delay on True Magics, final book in my Magics Trilogy, has given me extra time to build my social media presence and following, and take my time in planning out the rest of my marketing campaign. So far, my main focus has been on Twitter.

(Buy Small Magics and Cold Magics so you'll be ready when True Magics comes out and yes, I am getting the sales pitch out of the way early)

Why Twitter?

It’s the easiest to use and the fastest to build a following on. Twitter has lots of writers, readers, fantasy fans, horror fans, historical fiction fans, YA fans, etc., etc., etc.

And most important of all, it is very, very easy to be found and followed.

I’m still learning Twitter. There’s a lot about it I don’t know, and there’s a steep learning curve ahead as I work on turning my followers into my fans, but here’s what I’ve got so far.

Getting More Followers

I’ve gone from approximately 150 followers to 4,761 at the time of typing this. I expect to break 5,000 by the end of the week. And it’s all because I am, in fact, stunningly interesting.

Right?

Right…?

Little love here, folks…

All right. It’s not because I’m stunningly interesting (though I do try). The truth is that if you’re not already famous (or notorious), rich or stunningly good looking, you aren’t going to be building followers at any great speed just by being present and tweeting regularly.

So I’m doing it differently.

After some research I decided to gain new followers as described in this article by C.S. Larkin. The gist of it is this: I follow people who are interested in the same things I am, and the ones that follow me back, I keep. The ones that don’t follow back, I unfollow, usually in 24 to 48 hours.

It sounds fairly heartless, doesn’t it?

I think of it like cold calling in sales. I follow someone. They look over my tweets and decide if they want me to follow back. When they do I send them a direct message. Once they read that, they decide if they want to keep me. If they don't, I unfollow them to make room for those who will.

A Word About that Direct Message

There is debate over direct messages in Twitter. They’re used for advertising and for spam, they’re impersonal (if you write them badly) and they can annoy people.

That said, a properly written direct message is a polite way to tell a new follower that you are glad to have them. Here’s mine:

Welcome! I tweet about writing, books, TV, movies, web series, science, stage combat, and stuff that’s just neat. Thanks for following!

No sales pitch. No requests for friends on Facebook. No requests to visit my website. No demand for retweets.

Of the 4500 followers I have gained in the last few months, I have had exactly one complaint. So I’d say it’s working just fine.

So How Do I Find Followers?

I use JustUnfollow to find people to follow because it allows me to search by hashtag or keyword (such as #amwriting #amreading #fantasy #scifi #horror #YA). It also allows me to find people who write similar things and follow their followers. That’s the one that works best for me so far.

But are they “good” followers?

Right now, my followers are made up of:

• fans
• people who think I’m interesting
• people who think I might be interesting
• people who automatically follow back anyone who follows them
• The odd spam-bot (I'm working on wiping those out).  

Now, “good” followers (according to the social media gurus) will read what I tweet, ask me questions, retweet, and buy my books.

Another word for them is “fans.” And turning followers into fans is my job. If they aren't interested, they'll leave.

Tweeting!

I try to live tweet at least tree times a day. I also use find.ly every week to gather together articles I like (see the list in my Direct Message) and Hootsuite to send out scheduled tweets with them. This way the account is always active.

The daily tweets are the hard ones because if I’m not careful they become a variation on “Sitting at #desk. #Amwriting.” Most of the articles I send out get at least 2 retweets. Some get many more, including some of these blog posts. Thanks, folks.

Retweeting and Favoriting

I do as much of this as I can, when I can. I favorite and retweet causes I support and statements I agree with, as well as articles, pictures or tweets that fall into the parameter of my welcome message, or that I find funny or interesting.

If you are advertising your book/play/web series/comic/event with exciting copy and I read it, I will probably re-tweet it (Put “#Retweet” “#RT” or best of all, “Please #Retweet” in your tweets to improve your retweet numbers). If you have boring or nonsensical copy, I will not. My follower’s time (and mine) is valuable. I’m not going to waste it.

I don’t retweet anything political or religious because my twitter feed is for selling books, not debating beliefs. I don’t retweet anything off-colour because of the demographics of my target audiences.

Final Note: Don't Be Creepy

This article went way longer than I expected, both in time to write and length, but I need to say one more thing.

Don’t be creepy.

One of the problems with JustUnfollow is that, if you follow as many as I do, you tend not to look at whom you follow. This can lead to political or religious connections you don’t want, people you don’t like, and some times, it can make you look creepy.

Case in point: My next series is a YA horror series aimed at young adults, with a possible middle grade audience as well. I thought about following Rick Riordan’s followers, figuring they would like what I write. Fortunately I looked them over first.

As would be expected for someone who writes middle-grade fiction, most of Rick Riordan's followers are minors.

I did not follow them.

As a rule, I try not to follow anyone under 18 years old. Because having a guy in his 40s following you when you’re a minor is creepy.

Don’t be creepy.

Next week: Wait a minute! What about Promoting Your Books on Twitter?

Marketing True Magics 6: Reaching Your Target Audience (without being creepy)

Last week we defined Target Audiences. That was the easy part.  In case you forget:

A writer’s target audience is the group of people most likely to buy that writer’s books.

This week we’re talking about the hard part: reachin your target audience. Because unlike the old days when I was that kid getting shouted at instead of the one shouting “get off my lawn!” there are lots and lots and lots of ways to reach an audience. Most of them are electronic, but not all, and not the most successful ones.

Social Media

Yay, Social Media!  I can reach people there because that’s not cluttered at all, right?

Click to see the full-sized image and read the article.

God, there are a lot of us.

But that’s why I chose the five social media that I chose: Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook, Pinterest and Youtube in that order.  Each one of these allows people who are interested in you to follow you and see what it is you have to say.

So how do you get people to notice you? More important, how do you get the right people to notice you?

There are two answers. First, be engaging. Second, seek them out. To be engaging:

Have a full profile on any social media that you are on. Explain who you are and what you do in the most engaging way possible.  Put whatever you want them to be interested in first.  If you are a writer (like me), it should be the first thing people on your profile.  The rest of your profile should show what an interesting and well-rounded person you are, and make the people to whom you want to sell your books, want to follow you after they’ve read it.

Share stuff that is interesting to you. Talk about interesting subjects, post interesting pictures, put up interesting videos, share interesting articles. People who share your interests will follow you and those people are likely to become your target audience.  Talk about yourself in an interesting way, and in what you are selling in an interesting way, but not so often as to make them lose interest through repetition.

Share the things your followers find interesting. Repost the things your followers post, if you find them interesting. People who like what you like are good people; the sort of people who will buy your books.

(Speaking of which, have you bought Small Magics and Cold Magics yet? Because it isn’t a blog post without a sales pitch…).

Yes, all this a lot of work. Yes, it’s a time-suck. Yes, it takes away time you could be writing.  It also gives you a better chance of selling your writing, which is the point of this whole exercise.

I mentioned that the second way to get people to notice you is to seek them out. The way to do this requires far more space then I have here. So in the weeks ahead, I promise a separate blog post for each of the social media platforms I’m using, explaining my strategy to seek out followers for each one and how well it’s working so far. Meanwhile…

Reviews

Good reviews help you reach your target audience. A review itself may not be enough to make a person buy your book on the spot, but the review puts the idea of your book in a person’s mind, and the more often that happens, the more likely they are to buy your book when they see it, whether that’s on Amazon, a book shelf, or a table at a convention (which I’ll talk about in a moment).

The issue is that most reviewers want a paper copy of your book, and that costs money. My publisher is a small press, and they can only afford to send out so many ARCs (Advance Reading Copies). I can also buy some and have the publisher send them out on my behalf, but that costs money too. So how do I pick which reviewers to send to?

Target professional/semi-professional reviewers who reach your target audience. If you write fantasy (like I do), target fantasy reviewers. If you write romance, target romance reviewers. If you write non-fiction about the erotic life of Kierkegaard as displayed through his philosophic essays… well, good luck.

Target reviewers who like the style of story that you write. There are few things more annoying to book sales than bad reviews, so try to avoid getting them when you can.  Look over a reviewers reviews of books similar to your before you send them a copy. If they don't like them, don't waste your money.

Target the reviewers above in order of the number of people who read their reviews. If you’re going to spend money, you want to reach the maximum number of people, so make sure the reviewers who are getting printed ARCs have enough readers that there’s a good chance to make up for the cost of the ARC in your sales.

Target reviewers who reach your target audience and are willing to take an electronic ARC. After you set it up, electronic copy is essentially free. Send as many as you can to as many reviewers as you think will be interested and will take it. Because these are essentially free, you can give them to reviewers with smaller audience bases.

Remember, the point of a review is to get the attention of people who might buy your book – your target audience.

Events

You didn’t think you could sit at home the whole time, did you? Unless you’re writing stories for your kid(s) and family alone (which I have done), your target audience is not just sitting in your living room.

For me, the places are sci-fi conventions, book fairs, and book stores. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but there are a lot around and they are all over the place.

The question is, is it worth the money?

The answer is yes. And no.

Events aren’t going to be the places you build up huge audience. You won’t get massive sales there. If you’re lucky, you’ll break even.

What events will give you are fans. Real fans. Not just people who like you on twitter, but people who have met you, talked to you, listened to you, and actively liked you. These people are worth a dozen facebook followers and a hundred twitter followers because they’re the ones that are going to say to their friends, “I met him/her. He/she is a really nice person and writes such wonderful books.  You should definitely buy his/her book so that he/she can afford to write more!”

Fans are worth their weight in gold and need to be properly cultivated.  And the more of them you have, the more of them you’re going to get as they tell their friends, “hey, have you read this?”

One Last Thing: Don’t be Creepy

I’ll get into this more when I talk about each social media feed (especially Twitter), but I want to mention it here:

Don’t be creepy.

Don’t get in people’s faces, don’t ask personal questions, and don’t send out material that is racist, sexist or hate-filled.  This makes you a jerk, and very few people like following a jerk.

If part of your demographic is teenagers (and part of mine is) or children (not my demographic, but might be yours) NEVER send out material with explicit sexuality or explicitly violent images. Don’t make sexual jokes or sexual innuendoes, on line or in person, and always be on your best behavior at conventions and events.

As a writer, you are the chief spokesperson for your product.  Be the sort of person that even people who aren’t in your target audience will say, “They seem like good people.”

That’s it for this week.

Next week: Twittering To The Masses, My Journey So Far.

Marketing True Magics 5: Target Audiences or Who Are My Readers?

The single hardest thing in any business is getting people to know you exist. And in this business, it can be very difficult indeed.

 There were (on a researched guess because stats are hard to find) approximately 2,000,000 books published last year world-wide, including self-publishing.

That’s a whole lot of books.

Add to that, that most book purchases are impulse purchases, and without a powerhouse distributor behind you to ensure your book is in every bookstore, drugstore, airport and Walmart in the country, it becomes very easy to be lost in the clutter.

So how do we get noticed?

Your Target Audience
The writer in me always imagines either a group of people sitting in front of a stage wearing t-shirts with a series of coloured, concentric circles on them, or a large group of people staring eagerly at an archery butt.  Both are wrong, though the first one is pretty close:

A writer’s target audience is the group of people most likely to buy that writer’s books.

This is one of the reasons many writers stick to one genre.  If you’ve done fairly well with your gritty, realistic detective dramas, chances are your audience isn’t necessarily going to enjoy the fantasy romance with the beautiful magical princess you’ve just written.

 (And vice-versa: never underestimate the selling power of the fantasy romance with a beautiful magical princess).

There are ways around this, of course.  J.K. Rowling writes her detective series under a different name. Other authors who work across genres do the same.  Some write across genres and work hard to make sure each audience knows what they’re getting, which takes some work, but can also yield good results, though it may drive their agent/publisher insane.

“My Book Appeals to Everyone!”
No. It doesn’t.

No book appeals to everyone, and thinking that yours does means that you are going to be wasting your time and your money marketing to the wrong people, and will probably sell a lot fewer copies than you would otherwise.

Take the time to define exactly what genre your books are in.

My first three novels (Small Magics, Cold Magics and in April 2015, True Magics) are Fantasy Genre, and would be considered either New Adult or Young Adult.

By way of comparison, my new series (under development), is Young Adult, Horror, Ghost Stories, Historical (Victorian).

The more specific you can be about what sort of book you have written, the easier it is to find the sort of people who want to read it.

Speaking of which…

Next Week: Reaching Your Target Audience (without being creepy)

Marketing True Magics 2: It’s Not Just the Book

To review: I have finished True Magics, third book in my Magics Trilogy (you can buy Small Magics and Cold Magics here), I have a contract to have them published this fall, and I have time to build a proper marketing campaign.

So what do I do next?

Being a good little Communications Consultant who wants to sell lots books, I researched best practices: who sold how many books doing what when and how?

And the answer that leapt in big bold exciting letters was:

IT’S NOT JUST THE BOOK!!! IT’S ABOUT YOU!!!

Yes, you! The author! You have to be interesting! You have to be exciting! You have to reach out and let the world know about YOU! You have to get on social media! You have to blog! You have to Tweet! You have to Pin! You have to Instagram! You have to do that new exciting fifteen second-video thing! You have to make appearances! You have to go to book fairs! You have to go to conventions! You have to do signings and readings! You need to be in schools! You need to be in universities! You need to be at conferences!

YOU NEED TO SELL YOU!!!

Yeah, right.

No.

Well, yes.... Sort of.... But, no.

Or more correctly: Yes and No.

I'd better explain.

What AreYou Really Marketing?
The first question a good marketer asks is, “What do I want people to think, feel, and do?”

A marketer has to be able to answer all three, because without all three, nothing happens. People need to know about a product (think) and they need to connect with it on an emotional level (feel) before they will purchase that product (do).

So how does that work with selling books?

NON-FICTION writers need to market the author. Whether they’ve written Integrating Lean Sigma Six into Your Home Based Marmalade Business, or Fifty-Five Ways Diaper Cream Can Improve Your Bottom Line, the non-fiction writer’s potential customers need to think that the author is a subject matter expert; they need to feel that the author can be trusted and the author’s idea is a great one, and then they will do the buying of the author’s book.

FICTION writers need to market the writing. We need people to think that our writing is entertaining and to feel our writing is worth their time and money, before they will do (by buying our book).

So does this mean that the fiction writer doesn't have to get on social media and blog or tweet or pin or instagram or do that 15 second video thing? That we can stay home from book fairs and conventions and signings and readings?

We should be so lucky.

Right now most of our potential customers have no idea how good our writing actually is. And unless we are already bestselling authors, no one except for us is going to put in the effort to let people know it.

So yes, we need to do social media, and book tours and conventions and all of that. And we need to promote it to the right people, or we’re wasting our time.

So it's not just the book, it's the writing.

So my job is to convince people that I write well and that they should buy my book.

Now, how shall I reach them?

Next week: Social Media Platforms or What Fresh Hell is This?

Marketing "True Magics" 1: It’s Written! Now What?

I’ve got True Magics written! It’s done! And I have a contract with a Dragon Moon Press to publish it! This is amazing! It’s wonderful! It’s…

… the third time I’ve done this. And yes, it is still cool.

My first published novel was Small Magics (2007), my second was Cold Magics (2010). True Magics (2014?) will be my third.

My name is Erik Buchanan. If you read my last post, you’ll know I’m an author, and you’ll know that I am a professional writer. It’s all I do and it’s how I earn my living.

What you don’t know is that I spent seven years working in corporate communications, which is a not-selling-you-something way of saying marketing.

And for those seven years I was too busy, too tired and too wrapped up in making a living and commuting and working over time and dealing with my disintegrating marriage and building a new life after separation to focus on the thing that I really wanted: being a professional author.

Now, things have settled. I don’t have a commute anymore, save from the bedroom to the kitchen table where I work. I do what I love for a living.  My domestic life has stabilized and most of the stress that was sucking the energy and life out of me has gone.

And that means I have both the time and resources to properly market my latest book, and use what I build there to help sell the next one.

These blog posts: “Marketing True Magics” are going to document this journey, from picking the tools I’m going to use, to planning out the marketing strategy, to implementation of the tactics that will support that strategy.

And I am hoping that you’ll come with me. Whether you’re an author or an aspiring author, a marketer, an agent or an editor, a fan or just curious to see what goes into making a small press book get noticed.

Together we’re going to see what works well and what works poorly, what helps sell my book and what wastes my time.  And at the end of it all, we’ll all know more so that for my next book (or for your next book) we’ll do even better.

Next week: It’s Not Just the Book.

It's a book!

It really, really is:

Now that is a happy-making sight. We've got the book out to the first batch of reviewers, and will be doing more later this week. The promotional plan is getting underway, and I'm trying to organize myself around it.

It's very, very exciting!

Book Promotions: Brain Storming

So, working on the publicity for Cold Magics (and a Zombie movie!) for the last few days. Been brainstorming possible tactics I could use to promote Cold Magics. Came up with an interesting list. Thought I'd share it:

www.erikbuchanan.ca

Amazon Author Page

Amazon Forums

Writing Forums

Book Forums

Blog Tours

Virtual Book Launch

Online Media

Traditional Media

Podcast Interviews

Book Fairs

Sci-Fi Conventions

Book Store Signings

Online Reviewers (other than Amazon)

Traditional Media Reviewers

Awards

Library Tours

Book Clubs

Online Bookclubs

Book-lover Websites (Shelfari, iRead, etc.)

Just looking at the list you can see that everything needs flushing out. What can I do with each venue, how do I make contact, who do I make contact with, when do we make contact? There's about a dozen questions to ask for each one, but having the list means having a place to start.

Time to Start Working on Publicity

Yep. Cold Magics is in the hand of the mighty talented Gabrielle Harbowy, who is editor in charge at Dragon Moon Press (excuse the mess; they're building a new website). We're looking for a short turn-around time on this one, and that means getting together the publicity plan.

Now, for those who don't know, there is are differences between publicity and marketing.

Marketing gets you a guaranteed audience through traditional advertising, pay-per-clicks, paid interviews, infomercials, etc. It costs money and studies have shown that, for book sales, it isn't that effective, unless you have massive reach and say... a movie deal.

Publicity is cheaper, but does not have a guaranteed audience. Instead, have to build an audience by persuading them that what you have to sell -- in this case, Cold Magics -- is worth talking about. If you can do that, proper publicity can lead to interviews, articles, book reviews, word-of-mouth and from them to sales.

Interestingly enough, good publicity can far outweigh good marketing as a tool for getting audience (people listening to your message) and sales. Especially now in the days of social media.

So, step one is building a publicity plan. We're looking at a six month plan at this point, to promote and get interest before launch (launch date will be announced soon). There will also need to be a post-launch plan to keep attention on the book over the summer, through the convention and book fairs, and then into the fall season, when it's a great time to convince people they want to be buying my books as presents to give to others.

And I cannot tell you how cool it is to be able to say "my books."

So, this weekend is about getting the plan together (plus cleaning and laundry and all that fun stuff). I've been doing research for a fair while, have the concept going and the lists I need to get made, and from there it's a matter of putting the pieces together.

I'll put up more details about the plan going forward because I did say this blog would be about book marketing, and I haven't done much of that lately.

So, off to get groceries, then work on the plan.

And because I haven't mentioned it lately, now is an excellent time to read Small Magics, so you'll be ready when Cold Magics comes out.

A Little Marketing Stuff

Been so busy this week that most nights I haven't been home 8 p.m., so what energy I have left has has gone into editing, rather than blogging.

That said...

A while back I came across some book marketing information which looked pretty interesting and sent it home with the idea of posting it here.

So, here are the websites:

http://www.bookmarket.com/
http://www.writerswrite.com/bookpromotion/
http://www.midwestbookreview.com/bookbiz/advice/introver.htm

Have a look, and if you find it useful, let me know. Also, if you find it useless, let me know. I'm curious as to what people think.

Back to learning Drupal for the new website. And editing.