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How Do I Grow My Twitter Following?

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vectorstock_439198 — Photo purchased from Vectorstock.com

There are really two types of tweeps:

1) Those who are really into it and want to grow their following quickly but have no idea what to do,

and,

2) Those who just let it happen organically.

Twitter does have Twitter limits for following: no more than 1,000 per day (but I can guarantee if you have an account less than 2K and you follow 1K per day, they will suspend you if you follow that many daily). Following programs (see below) suggest you keep it to no more than 100/day, which is still A LOT. If even half of those followed you back? 50/day and 30 days in a month, that’s — counts on fingers — 1500 new followers each month. Follow 200-500 daily like I do, you grow even quicker!

There’s no right or wrong way to follow. However, when it comes to building your author platform, there’s no question that the more visibility you have, the greater your chance at building relationships, gaining visibility, and potentially, greater sales, more reviews, and stronger word of mouth about your book. Also, if you want to have an agent represent you or sign with a publisher, know that they will expect you to have a minimum of 10,000 followers on Twitter (I’ve met with two agents and a few pubs — it’s true.)

So…with writing, real life, social media, blogging…how on earth do you best go about growing a large, interactive following?

Let’s deconstruct.

1) Purchase followers. Shoot, you can practically get someone to sleep with you on sites like Fiverr, why not buy a bunch of fake followers? I’m not recommending this (in my small test experiment, they are all fakes and eggs, and Twitter pulls them anyway). Besides, will a fake follower or egg purchase your book or throw you a RT (retweet)? No. So, don’t waste your money.

2) TweetAdder. There are multiple programs out there (TweetAdder, for example, and SocialBro) which have developed following algorithms. You put in some keywords (another reason to know your keywords!), and a few other pieces of info they ask for, set and forget it. I personally don’t use it (it’s a bit techy and clunky for me), but people who DO use it seem to love it.

3) ManageFlitter My program of choice, I love the ease of ManageFlitter to both follow and unfollow. How many people think they’re stuck at following 2K tweeps due to the Twitter-imposed ratio? Not. Use this easy, free program (I have their Pro version since I manage so many accounts) to unfollow eggs, inactives, nonfollowbacks, and nevertweeteds. I particularly like their ‘fast select’ button — it’s like playing a fun video game! Follow 100 (or unfollow 100) in one swoop. I do admit to getting small power high from it. 🙂 Plus, their customer service is awesome (men with Aussie accents. What.)

4) Twitter. Slogging through followers on Twitter itself is time-consuming, but sometimes it’s a wonderful way to dig into someone’s lists (that they’ve created or that they’re a member of), to see who else is on the list, who they RT, who RTs them, etc. It’s a bit like investigative work, if you will.

5) Memes. (Rhymes with ‘theme’) I created #MondayBlogs so people could share their latest blog posts and share others on Mondays. It’s grown in a few months from about 50 tweeps to a few thousand! If you want to participate (sharing a blog post on Mondays — you can write it any day of the week and share it any day of the work, but the meme itself is only on Mondays), search on the hashtag (#) #MondayBlogs. Hashtags create a hyperlink to Search within Twitter — so a list of everyone who is participating will show up. You can also follow @MondayBlogs.

Weekly memes like this (and #WriterWednesday or #FollowFriday) are a wonderful way to target other tweeps who are also participating. But remember this: you get what you give and you give what you get. If you don’t RT others, they won’t RT you. If you follow count is low, some people may be less inclined to follow you back or return a favor (sad, but true). Most of the weekly memes are a cumulative thing: the more you participate, the more you connect with others. If you are expecting hundreds of RTs and thousands of new blog commenters and followers from any weekly meme, your expectations are unrealistic.

6) Targeting. Don’t just follow anyone. Authors need to focus on finding readers, but seem to mostly follow other authors (which is great — it’s how we learn and grow to be a community). Instead of only following authors, however, look up these terms in Search: #genre (meaning, put in your genre), #reader, #amreading, #bookreviewer #bookblogger, #bookclub…really, anything that seems to be reader-centric, and follow those folks.

Got question? Ask away! Please share your experiences below also.

Nuts and Bolts

How to Get Great Work from Your Designer

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Pretty much anyone involved in publishing—authors, marketing, publicity, sales— is going to be working with a designer at some point. Whether you’re talking book covers, promotional materials or Web sites, eventually words must assume a visual form.

When creatives from two different disciplines converge, there can often be a communication breakdown. I’m a designer who works frequently with authors. Allow me to help demystify this Venus vs. Mars relationship and help you get the best work from your designers—saving you time and money along the way.

Be Prepared
Before your designer starts, make sure she has everything she needs to do the job. And err on the side of abundance. Providing everything (and I do mean everything) required for this job from the get-go will save you both time and money later. I’ve had clients hand off partial content in haste to start a project, only to have the project stall later when additional revisions were needed to integrate the materials that we should have started with in the first place.

Start by including everything you have an opinion about. If you have a color palette preference, clip sample swatches and pass it on. If there is a font that you would love to see used in the design, mention it. You may have a preference of custom photography over stock, abstract over documentary style. Make this known.

Also mention where you need guidance. Be sure to mention where it is you want the designer to take the wheel. This is especially relevant with book projects—specifically cover design. Often, the designer is tasked with communicating the essence of the book with the image and title treatment. Identify the most compelling qualities about the book and ask your designer for help visually representing this.

Corral those technical emails. If you’re building a Web site, you’re going to be amassing a lot of these. At minimum, you’re going to need to know where you registered your hosting and domain name. You should also include the FTP login as well. When you pass this information on, include registration emails, usernames, and passwords. Missing technical information can bring work to a halt—it’s best to track everything down before you even start.

Field Trip
One of the best ways designers can get a feel for your aesthetic preferences is by seeing examples of what you like. When a client shows me a bunch of different designs that resonate with her—and explains what about them what she find appealing—it’s one of the best gauges I use to plan out a project. In my experience, the more time my clients spend on this step, the better the whole process proceeds.

Keep in mind that the sample designs may or may not be within the same family. I’ve had a client show me graffiti on the side of a train as an example of the type of gritty treatment they were interested in seeing from his site design. The important part is identifying what it is about that design that is resonating with your client, so be sure to spend time discussing each example.

In addition to sharing design you admire, it’s helpful to show design that you don’t like as well. For instance, you may show a book cover from your genre that just doesn’t work for you. For instance, if you are a mystery author, perhaps you would show them a cover with a shadowy image hiding in an alley and use this as an example of the kind of clichéd design you want to avoid.

Involve All Stakeholders From Step One
Everyone who has a stake in the design decisions should be involved from the very beginning. That means publicists, editors, mother-in-laws… whomever is a decision maker. Pulling these people midway through is potentially disruptive. Since design is a process, it doesn’t make sense to involve a key decision maker once you are in the final rounds of designs. Depending on the feedback, it may take you back to square one.

Don’t interpret this as an endorsement to invite everyone you know to opine on the design process. I always advocate for a smaller team of people, led by one primary point who communicates with the rest of the team. If you invite a bunch of people to share their opinions, you better believe they will. Design by committee is rarely successful—often you end up with a bland version of the original design in an attempt to please everyone.

Be Crystal Clear
If you can not go a penny over a particular budget, say that up front. If there’s a drop deadline where someone will indeed be dropping dead if it’s missed, make that known. These decisions will drive the project. There’s a saying that I’ve made my mantra: “Fast, cheap, good. Pick two.” If having a sophisticated design with many design explorations is key, you will likely pay for it. If getting something done quickly is the highest priority, quality may suffer. Establish priorities with your clients and this will help you get what you want from your designer.

These are just a few ways that you can make the process easier for everyone. Easier often means cheaper. And easier often means faster. And when these things come together, everyone is (usually) happy.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:[email protected]

Tech Talk

Importance of SEO and Metatagging Part 2 by Lori Culwell

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SEO and Metatagging Part II: Where to Put Keywords!

Now that you’ve done your keyword research (and wasn’t it so interesting?), you’ll need to go back and put these keywords into your website so that the search engines will associate your site with these words, with the ultimate goal of having your site pop up when people Google those words. The words are the demand, your site is the supply. Got it?

These instructions are for people with sites based on WordPress, which gives you the easiest access to your metadata. If your site was built using html, you will need to actually crack open the back-end with a program like Dreamweaver or have your designer/ developer do it for you. This is another reason I recommend that authors switch over to WordPress. (.org, not .com).

To put your keywords into your site, you’ll need an SEO plugin. My favorite one of those at the moment is SEO for WordPress by Yoast,, which you can find right here: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ . If you’re familiar with WordPress.org, you should have no problem going to your “Plugins” panel and uploading this one.

Install and activate the plugin, then follow the prompts to set it up. You will be using the keyword list you generated using the tools from my last post to write descriptions, title tags, and meta information for your website. Make sure to use complete sentences, and use (but don’t overuse) your keywords. In the “keywords” section of the plugin, add the top ten keywords from your research. If there are more keywords on your list, that’s no problem—you’ll be using those later on your blog.Make sure to use the keywords from your list to name your categories, include them in the “Title Tag” for each page, and so on. Do not “stuff” all the keywords in one place, but do use them throughout the site, because this is how Google learns what your writing is about so that it may share it with the world (in the form of “your site showing up in Google results.”)

This is the second part of the SEO series I did for IndieReCon back in February. Read the whole post here.

Tech Talk

Ten Things To Do Before You Go Viral

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I have touched on this on many occasions, but then I got an interesting
email the other day from a literary agent (who shall remain nameless), asking
me to rank, in order of ROI (that’s “return on investment,” for you
non-business types) each of the the following:
websites, Facebook Fan Page,
social media, GoodReads, Amazon Author Central. Of course, the person in this example is a
writer, so the examples are
writer-specific, but if you’re a musician, “GoodReads” might be equivalent to
“LastFM” or “MySpace” or whatever your favorite musical/ social profile thing
is at the moment. I am assuming the
literary agent was asking me this because writers, for the most part, tend to
be lazy and entitled and want you to pick “one magic bullet” that’s going to
solve all of their marketing problems and sell a million books for them, and if
you know anything about the internet and internet marketing, you know there is
no such thing.

The bottom line? I
don’t just think you need to be one place. I think you need to be everywhere. I think when someone Googles you, there
should be a way to get to you and your awesome stuff in all ten slots of Page
One.

Now, don’t get me wrong.
I actually don’t mean that you should be out there gladhanding the
entire world on Twitter and pushing out your links in an artificial way every
day. I don’t think that works, and I
don’t recommend people spread out their energy and waste their time on things
they don’t like, because that is pretty much a guarantee that you’re not going
to get anywhere with it.

But (and this is a pretty big but)—it’s not an “all or
nothing” situation. I do think creative
types need to responsible business people, and that means creating profiles (with
links) in every place that is relevant to you, so that your interested audience
may follow those links back to you and your awesome stuff. Yes, this means you’re going to have to put a
little time into making a website, and a Twitter profile, and a Facebook Fan
Page, and even a profile on LinkedIn, just to establish your brand equity so if
something you do goes viral, this doesn’t happen, or this. For
me, this kind of “set up and maintenance” is less about that outward, pushy
kind of marketing, and more just about being professional and setting up shop so
the world can find out about you.

You’d probably be really surprised if I told you how many
writers/ creative types get really upset when I tell them this, or sigh, or
cry, or yell about how they “DON’T HAVE TIME TO DO THEIR ART,” and I think this
is a big fat copout. Not being
responsible with your digital life, not having a website, not having a proper
Facebook Fan Page—it’s all part of the same thing, the “Artist’s Mindset,”
which used to manifest itself in saying you were a “starving artist” or that
you “didn’t want to sell out,” but now seems to be an excuse for neglecting
your digital life. This is
mostly the reason why I am not taking author clients for consulting
anymore, because I simply got tired of being wanting me to do their work for them,
then yelling at me when I told them what it would cost.

In the spirit of “I am giving you good information so you
can work on your own behalf,” here is a handy list of “Ten Things To Do Before
You Go Viral,” for your reference. This list was created for creative types, but it also absolutely applies to you, even if you sell soap. What if Brad Pitt suddenly loves your soap, and everyone is talking about your soap? Are you organized and together, and can you handle the traffic and all the soap orders that are going to come in? If not, refer to the list.

Get your website in order.
By “your website,” I mean yourfirstnamelastname.com. I do not mean a Blogger blog, or your Tumblr,
or anything else that you don’t actually own.
I mean your domain, on hosting you paid for, nothing less.

2. Make sure said website has at least a “Contact Us” button,
preferably a Contact Us form (to filter spam), and make sure that you’ve
actually tried to send an email to yourself using that button or form. You would be sad if I told you how many
people don’t do this.

3. Put your stuff up. Do you have books/ albums/ anything for sale? Make sure they are on your site, readily
clickable for people to buy. I don’t
think I can make that any more clear.

4. Make sure you’re google-able.
When I Google you, does your website show up as # 1? If not, you should get on that.

5. Make sure all roads lead back to you. Is there a link in your Twitter profile that
goes back to your website? What about
your Facebook Fan Page? Take a look at
the guy who does this awesome video series, Minute Physics. Is he some kind of website genius? No, but he is extremely organized. If you want to find him, you can—imagine
that!

6. Get prepared to handle traffic.
Is your website going to crash if a million people go to it in one
day? Maybe call your hosting company and
find out.

7. Secure points of access.
Right now, go through your website, FB fan page, twitter, and any other
“open loops” out there that represent you (like LinkedIn or Tumblr, or a random
Wordpress blog). Look at the entire
network as if you were a stranger who happened upon your work. Are there any “dead ends” that you don’t
check, or where people could get stuck?
If so, fix them now.

8. Clean up garbage. If you
know there is something awful out there about you (like you’ve done something
you’re not proud of), now is the time to face it. You might not be able to get it “removed,”
per se, but you CAN be proactive about getting your website and social media in
order, write some articles for other blogs or publications, or start some more
profiles (like at squidoo, about.me, or the zillion other social media sites
out there to push the bad results down to Page Two or beyond.

9. Include a photo, preferable the same one. If/ when your stuff goes viral, people are
going to want to write stories about you, and they are going to ask for
photos. Another reason for this is
simple: people want to associate your
work with an actual person, and it’s better if you don’t make potential fans
tax their brains by having a picture of your dog as your Twitter profile
picture. Get it together with some
consistent branding!

10. Stop
acting weird. Hey, guess what? The internet is like a big recorder that remembers everything. If you showed your boobs on
Facebook or talked some weird political crap on Twitter, maybe go back and clean that
up, because the minute you go viral, reporters are going to dig around for this kind of thing and write about it. This is good advice for you even if
you’re not going to go viral with something, because potential employers are
Googling you to see if they want to hire you, and no one is hiring “Boobs on
the Internet” girl. I promise you, this applies to you if you own a small business. I recently did not buy something from someone because I happened upon her business’ Twitter, and realized that she was using it to espouse some very radical beliefs. I don’t think that your personal beliefs have anyplace in your business, unless there is somehow something wrong with the money from people who don’t share your beliefs. Think about it.

That’s it!

Nuts and Bolts

Anatomy of a Viral Success: Seth Casteel, Underwater Dog Photography

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I know, it totally seems like I harsh on people for not having their sh$t together, so I thought I would take some time to focus on someone who got everything very, very right and is reaping the benefits of that preparation in his career.

You probably still don’t know the name “Seth Casteel,” but chances are you’re
familiar with his work. One year ago, his underwater dog photography series went viral, and because he was prepared, this sudden rush of fame and attention took his career to the next level.

Here is the Facebook album where I (at least) first encountered Casteel’s photography.

Note the caption that appears next to every single photo:

We’re loving this underwater dog series from photographer Seth Casteel.
See more from Seth here: https://www.littlefriendsphoto.com/

If you like Seth Casteel’s underwater dog photography,
please show some love and follow his official Facebook page “Little
Friends Photo” here: https://www.facebook.com/LittleFriendsPhoto

Now, maybe this is the original poster being thorough, but if Seth Casteel hadn’t had an easily-findable website and social media presence, those links wouldn’t have been included, and who knows? Maybe he wouldn’t have gained thousands of new clients, a print calendar, photo licensing up the wazoo, and a book, all in the past year. This, friends, is how you do “The Business of Art.”

Let’s take a look at what happened in the “overnight success” story of Seth Casteel. Here’s what he’s doing right:

Website: well-organized, clear, easy to get in touch with him. https://www.littlefriendsphoto.com/index2.php#!/home.

Here’s one thing I love about Seth Casteel: his website looks great. It is fully functional, up and running, and he was 100% prepared for the onslaught of attention and new work. Good looking, brand-appropriate site, clear e-commerce section, Contact Us button is easy to find. Another thing I love about this site is that the VERY FIRST IMAGE you see reminds you of why you came there—you saw the underwater dog photography on Facebook (or somewhere else), thought it was amazing and innovative, and wanted to see what else this person had going on (or if he could take photos of your dog).

Facebook Fan Page: Once again, well-organized, up to date, the username is right, and he’s properly using a Facebook Fan Page (not a profile). https://www.facebook.com/LittleFriendsPhoto

Twitter: He shoots, he scores again! This Twitter profile is up to date, it has links back to his main site and Facebook page right there in the profile, and he is regularly answering all of his tweets. Another example of a creative type being ready for success when it came along. https://twitter.com/ltlfriendsphoto

Instagram: There he is again. Check the link in the center of the profile, right back to his main website.

Wired magazine story: https://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/03/diving-dogs-are-good-catch-for-photographer/

And, so, to sum up: Seth Casteel has been doing awesome dog photography for many years, and also happens to have been awesomely organized and business-like about his digital presence. Please take an example from him, and use it to motivate yourself to get organized in anticipation of YOUR big success!

Also, I totally have this book, and it is every bit as cool as it looks. Get it!

Social

How to Get More Twitter Followers

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There are LOTS of ways to get more Twitter followers these days. Heck, you can even buy them (not that I recommend it)!

I think the bigger question is: how do I connect with targeted readers on Twitter?

Keywords. This is a term that scares people. Well, man up. It’s simple: what do you write about? What are your interests? Say you’re a nonfiction writer with a passion for vintage birdcages. Boom – two keywords right there: nonfiction and vintage birdcages. Enter those terms in Search.

Search. One of the best ways to find targeted followers is to use Twitter Search – that little bar at the top of your page. Type in terms like: book blogger, book reviewer, nonfiction, etc. (or with a hashtag #bookblogger, #bookreviewer, #nonfiction – try both ways) is easy and effective.

Twitter also has an Advanced Search function. If you can’t find what you’re looking for in regular search, try there.

Applications. I adore ManageFlitter because not only can I clear out nonfollowbacks, eggs, and nevertweeteds, I can also follow people using their search function, which allows for both an Account Search and a Tweet Search.

Why do I love it so? Because I can unfollow 100 people all at once. I can also follow 100 people all at once. What a huge timesaver! (And it allows for multiple accounts, which is convenient if you have more than one Twitter stream like I do.)

I also use Pluggio. It has this very cool feature where you set it to follow certain keywords and it works 24/7 to find you relevant followers. TweetAdder also does something similar.

There are many options to follow/unfollow. Google and see which application you like the best.

RT others. RT (aka retweet for Muggles) means you’ve taken the time to share someone’s stuff. It takes only seconds and makes you an immediate friend.

Hashtags. Facebook users are still scratching their heads as to why we tweeps use the number sign in front of words. But if you’re on Twitter, use of a hashtag creates a hyperlink to whatever it is that you’ve attached to the number sign. So what? Here’s what: hashtags allow you to join in the conversation. What conversation? Who knows?

Here’s an example: on Valentine’s Day eve this year, I came across a hashtag: #candyheartrejects. In a flurry, I typed:

It’s not me. It’s you. #candyheartrejects.

It’s now been RTd over 100 times and I gained a bunch of new followers. So, that’s what.

Handle, bio, header, and background. Handle is your Twitter name (you have only 15 characters). Make it easy. Pick a great shot. Show us, in your 160-character bio, that you’re interesting (don’t tell us – snore), create a colorful header and background. Even if nobody knows you, these send nonverbals that sell you. Brand yourself, not your book.

Interact! It’s social media, not one-way broadcasting media. Don’t be that guy.

Please share your thoughts!

Tech Talk

Back it Up! A Dropbox Review

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I know, I’m about to start sounding like I work for the Dropbox Corporation, which I decidedly do not. Since it is free (at the smaller levels) and awesome, I would like to recommend that you start using it as well. I like it when technology catches up to a need I actually have, so now I am starting the process of consolidating files from multiple computers/ devices, using Dropbox as my catchall/ backup for everything. I was resisting this because I knew it was going to be a super-huge undertaking, but it’s already saved me time twice today, so I’m happy I’m doing it.

In case you don’t know about Dropbox, it’s a “cloud based” file backup/ sharing program, meaning the files exist in your account in cyberspace, not only on your physical computer. The good thing about this is that if your computer (or backup drive) gets a virus or you get a Gremlin of Mischief and Inconvenience, you can just laugh, shut that computer down, switch to another computer, access your files on Dropbox, and continue on with your day. I must say, I wish I had done this before. Already I have deleted a ton of crap I thought I was saving for a “rainy day” that has just turned out to be miscellaneous, now-outdated courses I already took, drafts of books I wrote that have long been published, and other things that I just really, really did not need to be saving. Did you ever write something so bad you want to never see it again? I have. And now these terrible things are being deleted so that no one will ever see them.

This is the part where I urge you to back up your data, because if you fail to plan, you plan to have an undignified, child-like meltdown when all of your work disappears. So, get a backup drive (that works), try out Dropbox, start using cloud-based email—do whatever you have to do, but do something! You will thank me later.

Social

5 Ways To Be An UnSuccessful Indie Author

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writer frustrated — photo courtesy of flickr

by Rachel Thompson

A man told me recently that he’s tired of people not recognizing his brilliance, his erudite posts and tweets, and purchasing his books by the boat load. Can’t people see how amazing he is?

I’m totally not kidding. Now, granted, Freud would have a field day with the guy’s ego, but admit it: we all kinda feel like that way to a certain extent. Why aren’t we selling more books? Why don’t we have more fans?

Let’s deconstruct.

1) Laziness. Authors, as a whole, like to write. And maybe talk about our creative process (which, by the way, puts nonwriters to sleep quickly. Trust me.). What we don’t like to do is the M word: market. It’s hard work, it takes away from our writing, and besides, it seems self-involved – like bragging, if you will. And that seems dirty somehow.

But it’s not, if you are doing it right. Don’t spam links to your latest masterpiece (book or blog) constantly; the one-way broadcast model has never worked effectively in any industry, except perhaps radio and TV (and even then, you need ads and fans). Promote others. Be generous. Be informative. Be genuine.

The majority of my sales come from a combination of Twitter and Facebook, my blog, and ads. I can track clicks using bit.ly and I can also see how many books I sell each day using both my KDP reports as well as my Amazon affiliate account info (which you, too, can set up).

2) Lack of ads. You don’t want to pay for ads. It’s too expensive. It’s confusing. All true. Kinda.

Can you afford that daily Starbucks? Then you can afford ads.

You can pay as little as a few cents to a few dollars per day on Google AdWords, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine. Even Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Goodreads have ads. Bottom line: increased visibility means increased opportunity for sales.

3) Full Automation. You’re simply too busy to interact live with people on social media or your blog, so you schedule in everything and never respond. After all, writing must come first, right?

Wrong. You need to do both. I personally use a combination of scheduling and live, primarily on Twitter and Facebook. I check in with Pinterest (now the second largest social media platform behind Facebook), LinkedIn, GoodReads, and Google+ a few times per week only.

There are also mobile apps for all of these channels, so really, there’s no excuse not to live interact when say, you’re standing in line for that coffee at Starbucks.

4) Lack of Knowledge. I hear this one a lot: ‘What do I do? Where do I start? It’s too confusing to create a platform when I don’t even know what one is so I’m just not gonna bother.’

When I published my first book, back in early 2011, I didn’t know much either, but I knew this: social media and blogging are essential to creating a reader base. I’ve now read many books (including Lori’s fabulous How to Market A Book), and attended multiple conferences and webinars, and can tell you: there is no lack of information out there available at little to no cost.

The onus is on us (no matter how you’re published), to learn about platform-building and starting your marketing campaign.

5) No Blog. Huge, huge mistake. Blogging is like a mini-version of your book, even if you blog about completely different topics. Your blog shows your style, allows you to connect to readers in a completely different way, and most importantly, increases your Google and Author Rank.

A fellow writer told me she only updates her blog every few months. Another writes three daily blogs and hardly sleeps. Find that in-between place that works for you. I blog twice per week at minimum, and have written three books and am raising two kids, as well as working full-time on my social media consulting business, not to mention writing books four and five.

(I need a wife.)

It’s also helpful to participate in Twitter memes like #MondayBlogs, where you share your latest post and retweet others. Meet other writers and their readers. Guest post, or have others guest for you. #WriteStuff and #WriterWednesday are also great.

We’re all busy. No excuses. Make it happen.

6) No Newsletter. Okay, you get six ‘not to-do’s.’ Email marketing is still incredibly effective, but you must create a newsletter using something like Mailchimp or Constant Contact. It’s incredibly easy and it helps you stay within the FTC spam guidelines.

Many authors don’t know that they can’t just mass email news to their email contacts, but that’s a big ‘spam’ no-no, and can cause your provider to shut down your account.

I personally don’t do a weekly newsletter. I mostly just do them when some major kind of promo is happening, or a giveaway, or I need betareaders. Create your tribe with your newsletter (but that’s a whole other blog post).

There’s not a successful author out there who doesn’t market their books. If it helps, don’t think of it as marketing – think of it as connecting.

Whatever it takes, step out of your comfort zone and get your hands dirty. Maybe then we can see your genius.

Got questions? Ask away…

News

Amazon’s Latest Mistake – How to Avoid It

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A lot of noise has been made about a recent author/Amazon incident, surrounding Jamie McGuire and her title Beautiful Disaster, including this article in Forbes. If you aren’t familiar with it, the general gist is that Amazon proactively offered refunds on a title purchased six months previously, and also offered an additional sum of money that comprised the difference between the original indie book price and the current big publisher price (the author had been picked up and republished). They then deducted that amount of money for the refunds from the original indie author account (not the big publisher account). Ouch!

For some reason, Amazon is choosing to remain silent and not come to their own defense. Here’s the thing, I happen to be a big fan of Amazon on both a personal and a professional level (as are the other founders of Booktrope) and I think Amazon’s decisions in business are just that, business – versus some wild conspiracy to take over the book planet as we know it. As a result, we have all been wracking our brains over here, trying to figure out just what exactly could have happened to make this a more or less “innocent mistake”. And I think we have a very reasonable scenario about how this could have happened. Certainly if it didn’t go down like this in this specific case, it could have.

An author uses DRM to lock down and protect her book, as many do.
In case you aren’t familiar with this term or how if functions, DRM is intended to keep people from giving away an ebook they have purchased. It functionally means that no one “owns” the digital copy of the book that you have sold them, it is more akin to having a “license” to read the book.
If a book with DRM is pulled from the system, any person who has purchased the book, but not yet read it, can no longer access the content.
Wouldn’t this result in a series of requests from affected customers about not being able to access the content? Wouldn’t you then say that this is legitimately a “content problem”? I think we have all been reading this term in another context, i.e. the content being flawed, versus the content not being accessible.
Now, assume that same book is uploaded by someone else, say a publisher, also under DRM and under a new ASIN number.
How do you get that new content to the users who have complained? It is no longer the same book, for all intents and purposes.
If enough people complain, would you potentially take a proactive (albeit in hindsight, drastically mistaken) step and email ALL of the people who could be affected?
Can you see where some of the folks working in customer service at Amazon, arguably not the highest up in the food chain, might not even have taken a moment to think where these refunds would be coming from (simply pushing the transaction through to the “account” in question)?

As I said, I have no idea whether this is how it happened, but it did make me think about the broader concept. I think that the lesson in this story is not to hate Amazon, or shy away from self-publishing and then moving to traditional – the real moral here is to rethink whether DRM is necessary. If you do choose to use DRM, be sure you are careful about how you change gears. If you bought a print book from me and then I took it back without refunding your money, how would you feel? No matter how you are published, alienating readers is no author’s goal.

I have reached out to Amazon to see if I can get confirmation on the above being a possible scenario…should they respond, I will update this article!

Questions

To Pen Name or Not To Pen Name? That Is The Question!

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To Pen Name or Not To Pen Name? That Is The Question!

‘I am a corporate consultant with a straight-laced job, but, I write erotica. How do I remain ‘genuine’ online yet keep those two personas separate.’

Very good question, and one people ask quite a bit. What are the disadvantages and advantages of having a pen name? This is tough for people because we say ‘brand the author, not the book,’ right? But this situation is a bit different.

Let’s deconstruct.

1) Privacy. This is the biggest advantage of having a pen name, particularly for the erotica genre. One of my clients is an MBA in a top corporate job, and one of our first orders of business was to set up her branding as an erotica author with a pen name.

Not only did this keep her job out of the equation, it also kept her family protected – especially important because she had teenaged children who would no doubt be horrified! And a husband who also had a conservative job.

She’s also quite active in her church with her family, so this was another important consideration for her.

Another client writes hot thrillers using his real name, but not a real picture. He’s in banking and doesn’t want his real life to mix with his persona.

2) Persona. Choosing a pen name allows you to become, to an extent, the best representative of your content. This allows you to become the content, if you will. For example, if you normally write MG or YA and you want to write BDSM or other hardcore material, it gives you a chance to be far racier in your online life than you would be in real life.

And this is an important distinction with regard to branding: you have written this content, whether it is based on real life or fantasy. You can interact with people you normally never would (which brings a whole other perhaps unwanted element, but that’s another point). The biggest advantage to creating this persona is being consistent – you are representing your books and your content across all channels of your erotica author platform.

This is where you can really delve into your interests as an erotica writer that you may not normally share on your more traditional author profile.

3) Branding. Let’s delve further into branding. I usually recommend that an author use their real name and use their picture as their avatar, but that becomes difficult if you’re trying to keep your private life private. In this case, many erotica authors use a ‘hot’ photo of some sort that has to do with their work.

And that’s appropriate in this case. Regardless of whether you are writing erotica or say, textbooks, it is possible to create different personas.

I do recommend still branding the author no matter the books. How? I think Bella Andre does it best: she has three pen names, each dedicated to a different genre. She personally hasn’t kept it a secret, but initially she did.

Finally, a quote from talented erotica author, Sandra Bunino:

‘I find myself walking a fine line between being genuine for my readers and maintaining the privacy and security of my non-online life. I love to engage my readers on social media and try to be accessible. I believe it’s an important part of the connection between reader and author.

That’s one reason I decided to use an actual picture on social media, my website and book promotions, though I do use a pen name. Of course, that overlap can be risky. There are times when my personal life and author persona collide and I’m okay with that. I’m proud of my work as an erotic romance writer. If it makes someone uncomfortable, it’s their issue, not mine.’

There are a few more considerations, but if you think ‘brand the author, not the book’ in all aspects of your promotion (whether your true self or a persona), you’ll achieve success!

What are your thoughts? Do you have a pen name? Share your experiences with us!