Category Archives: Author’s Guide to Social Media

So, you want to charge more than 99 cents for your ebooks? Here’s how!

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99centdreams

So, I was reading this article that someone linked on Twitter about what the 99 cent eBook price-point “means” or whatever to the future of self-publishing. If you know me at all, you know that I was eye-rolling pretty hard over some of the stuff in the article. Even the title itself is telling–indie authors question the price. Duh, of course they do. Everyone wants to get maximum payday from their work, amiright? But indie authors–you guys aren’t the ones buying the product. Do you see where it might get a little sticky if you start price-questioning?

Here’s the good news! You do have control over what people pay for your product, although it’s not in the way you might think.

One tactic I see overused (overused in that, it should never ever be used, ever) in trying to get readers to pay a “fair” price for self-published books is to tell us how hard indie authors work to put out a product, and that we should pay more because they spent a year writing it, made a monetary investment, poured their soul into it, etc. That their work is “worth” more because of that. Authors? The longer you continue to feel this way, the longer you will not get paid what you think you should be earning for your books. You might be protesting at me already for saying that, but I intend to show you why what I’m telling you is true.

The first thing you should never, ever forget: readers are not generous patrons of the arts, they are customers.

Writing books is a creative endeavor. Selling books is business. If you want to wear both hats, you need to know when to take one off and put the other on. When you’re marketing, you need to put on your business hat. If you forget this step, you’ll only stumble into earning a living writing by being lucky–do you want to leave it to luck?

One lady in the comments of the article I linked went off about how readers “should appreciate” how much time and effort went into writing a book. She made a point that we wouldn’t expect free lattes at Starbucks, why should we expect free content? Two things came to mind right off the bat: one is that, publishing is a multi-billion dollar business. We clearly do not “expect” free content, as those billions have to be coming from somewhere every year. The second thing that made me cringe when I read that is that, if Starbucks had taken her attitude of demanding that people “appreciate” their product and pay the price that they demand, they would have been long out of business by now.

Imagine when Starbucks was new, and you were used to getting coffee for less than a buck. You walk in and yow! A coffee with foamy milk was almost three dollars. Imagine if you’d asked the barista, “Hey, why is the coffee so much more here when I can get it for fifty cents down the street?” and the barista answered back, “Hey, man, I got up at four o’clock this morning to grind beans and brew coffee. I have to foam the milk every time someone orders one of these things. It’s worth that much because I have to put a ton of work into making that foamy coffee for you!” You might have been impressed with the amount of work that goes into it, but having never tried the coffee and not knowing anything about it, your real question wouldn’t really be answered–and that question is, “Why should I be paying more for something that I can get cheaper elsewhere?” The attitude probably would have turned you off completely to boot.

And remember, your customers have a lot of options because you have a lot of competition.

You, as an indie author, have an enormous amount of competition. In 2003, there were 300,000 books published. In 2011, there were three million books published. In 2012, that number could end up being as high as fifteen million, according to the number of ISBNs issued just this year. This is called market saturation, and it’s the real reason that you have a hard time making money off of your books. It’s not because your “entitled” customers want free content or don’t understand your blood-sweat-and-tears contribution to your work. There’s simply a glut of self-published fiction. Most of us do well to read fifty to a hundred books in a year, much less three million or more.

What that means for indie authors is that, if you randomly decide to charge more for a book just because you think it’s worth more, there are hundreds of thousands of competitors willing to step right in and take your sale. In the free market, competition is a major factor in determining what you can charge for a good or service. If you opened up a retail store and decided to charge twice what your competition charges just because you “feel” your goods are worth more, your store would go out of business. It’s the same idea with your books. You cannot charge based solely on what you think your book is worth and expect to do well. You cannot tell your customers that they “should” appreciate your work and pay based on that. They will go somewhere else.

How Starbucks got people to pay more for coffee.

Starbucks did not get to be where it is by just demanding that customers appreciate the quality of their product. Howard Schultz had a vision, and he knew it would be difficult to pull off in America because of the price point at which he would have to sell to be profitable and grow. He put a number of policies into practice that would help him achieve his vision:

  • top-notch customer service that was unlike anything most people had seen before
  • product consistency and insane(ly good) devotion to quality
  • great in-store ambiance
  • customer education about the product, such as where the beans come from and why they cost more (“arabica beans” wasn’t a major selling point outside of specialty markets before Starbucks made it a thing and told people why it’s better; now it’s everywhere)
  • sampling so that customers could try the product firsthand and know that it wasn’t the same Maxwell House that the diner served down the street (this is a HUGE one. It’s the quickest and best way to convince people of quality.)
  • specific customer service policies that would encourage brand loyalty and make both customers and employees feel like part of the “family” (remembering names, drinks, calling employees “partners” and allowing them to share the company with stock options, giving employees the tools to bond with customers to keep them coming back)
  • being innovative in corporate responsibility, such as giving even 20 hour per week employees health insurance and getting involved with various community and national volunteering or humanitarian projects, so that people would get warm fuzzies when they thought of Starbucks
  • encouraging customers to participate, taking ownership of their experience with customized beverages

All of these policies added value to Starbucks in the customers’ eyes so that the customers would feel A-OK about paying more for coffee. Starbucks didn’t just demand that the customers appreciate their product, they demonstrated why their product and company was superior and deserving of customer dollars. It’s the business version of “show, don’t tell.”

Self-published authors can do this, too. You can. But you have to start with the idea that you’re not entitled to a single sale just because you wrote a book. I’m sorry; I know that’s harsh, but it’s absolutely true. Once you get rid of the notion that you are entitled to make a living being a writer just because you wrote a book and published it online, you can start building your audience and reputation from the ground up.

Show us why your book is worth more than the thousands of other books that we could be buying.

Did you notice in the Starbucks list, I left off “buy great beans”? That was a given. Starbucks would have failed if they had crappy, second-rate coffee. (I know, some people hate the taste of their coffee–but they do use quality beans. It’s a matter of palate rather than quality.)

Writing a book that people want to read, that is a given. If you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be self-publishing.

You have to do more to stand out in a crowd of, literally, millions.

Adding value to your work goes beyond just writing a good book. It even goes beyond getting your book professionally edited and getting a professional cover design–right now, the lack of those things are huge issues in the self-publishing world, but you need to treat your book like these services are mandatory, or you will be behind the curve when innovations spring up to help separate the first draft manuscripts from the polished books. (They’re coming. They’re already in the works, even–I personally know people who are tackling this issue.) Once that happens, you will still need to separate yourself from the people that didn’t get left behind. You also still need to compete with traditionally-published books, which will nearly always be shined up good before they’re launched.

[Yes, I used "good" on purpose there. I'm from Kentucky, it's part of my DNA.]

Anything that makes your book different from other good books, or that makes it stand out, or that makes you stand out, tell us about it. If you can’t think of anything, that might be the underlying problem in not being able to get more for your ebooks. We pay more for branded items than off-brand items, so brand yourself and let us know who you are and what you do.

Remember that overnight success doesn’t happen.

You know The Bloggess, right? Blogger, author, “overnight success” (that took a decade)? Her book has been really successful, and she earned every bit of it by working her tail off, putting out free content, for years. That’s really the hard truth about becoming a writer and being successful enough to pay your bills: you’re going to give a lot up for free, or cheap, until you earn out your payday. When you self-publish, you’re skipping a huge advantage that traditional publishing has: a built-in audience. Distribution. Reader trust. You’re starting at, or close to, zero. Just like any other business, you’ll have to operate in the red for awhile until you build up your reputation and customer base. This isn’t anything surprising or abnormal–unfortunately, almost nobody gets to skip to the head of the line.

Case Study, or, how you can apply this in the real world.

Someone that sj and I both love is @ChuckWendig. He’s an author who has built himself an audience that most self-published authors dream of building. He has published fiction (some of it is through Angry Robot, not sure about all of it) and self-publishes books about writing. He also blogs at Terrible Minds.

Wendig may or may not have launched Terrible Minds with an eye toward adding value to himself as an author (I’m not a Wendig Expert), but that’s exactly what seems to have happened. By writing well about something that he’s passionate about, he draws in a lot of traffic; by writing well and putting it out there for anybody to read, he can more easily make conversions when it comes to sales because we already have proof that he can write. When you can become a fan of someone for free, you’re a lot more likely to open up your wallet when they put something out for sale. (In the Starbucks model, this is “sampling” and “customer education.”)

Wendig is also amazing at social media. He puts out great tweets that are share-able, which gets him more exposure; he also talks to people who talk to him, in a nice way that doesn’t make them angry. I’ve even had conversations with him where we disagree about stuff, and he was still super nice about it. He respects his readers and doesn’t expect things from them, or go off on rants about how shitty it is that they will only pay x amount for his books. This adds value to his brand, because a person is more likely to pay someone that they like for content. (In the Starbucks model, this is “customer service” and also general brand identity.)

Wendig also regularly engages his audience. He runs writing contests on his blog (in the Starbucks model, this would be under taking ownership/customizing one’s experience there) and asks for feedback. His audience is not just full of people that followed him through a promotion who tune him out when he puts out content; they’re participating. They’re turned on, so to speak. This undoubtedly helps his sales.

If you looked up Chuck Wendig on Amazon, you might notice that some of his non-fiction books sell for $2.99. If you look more closely, you’ll also see that these books are full of content that he has posted previously, for free, on his blog. Let me say that again: people are paying for content that they could read for free on his blog. He organized it by topic and made it available for e-readers, which is always good for convenience, but they didn’t need to buy them. They wanted to own the content because they friggin’ love his content.

Chuck Wendig didn’t write a book, kick back, and then put it out there and wonder why people weren’t buying it. He hustled his ass off to build an audience (whether he did it to build an audience or whether he hustled his ass off and the audience came, it amounts to the same); that audience, in turn, values Wendig enough to pay for content even when they can get it for free. And they value him enough to share him around to their friends and create new fans. He didn’t demand that they recognize his value, he demonstrated it over and over.

If you want to charge more than $.99 in a market where you have to compete with millions of other people, you need to figure out how to do that. Don’t tell us that you have value, go out and show us you have value.

Are you a self-published author? Have you found any self-published authors because they created an online presence? Do you have any tips for other authors that have worked for you? Do you like cake? Drop it all in the comments below!

 

 

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Does bad publicity hurt authors?

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Bad Rubbish

So, there’s been a lot of to and fro lately–well, really, not just lately but often–about authors, social media, and “bad behavior.” Before I get started, I’d like to side-step for a moment to discuss why I focus so much on author behavior and not on reviewer behavior. It’s not that I want to be part of the reviewers vs. authors conflict; I love reading, and authors write books, so there’s no underlying conflict here. My focus on author behavior stems from the fact that I don’t really care how reviewers act unless it reflects personally on me–which, since I run my own site, and try to maintain a good standard here of fairness and objectivity whenever possible, it doesn’t affect me quite so much when there’s drama centered around Goodreads or Amazon reviews. People who follow my blog, or even sample the reviews, will see that it’s not the same.

How authors act, on the other hand, does affect me–it affects my buying habits and my reviewing habits. I don’t want to review an author who has publicly made a world-class asshole of him- or herself. If I review the book positively, without addressing the author’s behavior, it could be seen as an endorsement. If I review the book negatively, even if it’s a true review, it could be seen as jumping on the bandwagon of hate-flinging, which could damage my credibility. Regardless of my intention, I can’t control what readers assume or think of me when I put content out in the world. I want, therefore, to stay away from it altogether. As a consumer, I also don’t want to financially reward someone who is being a jerk.

Yeah, reviewers are jerks sometimes, too. But that doesn’t affect me nearly as much–and there’s not much leverage over a reviewer to get them to change their minds. Reviewers generally have nothing to lose unless they have a site with a following; even if I railed about bad behavior from reviewers, why should they change their habits? Because I said so? Pleeaaaaaaaaaaase. So, that’s why I focus more on authors than reviewers when I tackle these topics.

But! I started this post to talk about bad publicity. In the ongoing debates about how authors should or should not act on the internet, an argument that occasionally pops up is that there’s “no such thing” as bad publicity. Many authors who create controversy around themselves seem to think that this is the case; sometimes, the posts seem calculated to do exactly what they’ve done: make a splash, stir things up, and draw all attention to themselves. Other times, the author might try to laugh it off, claiming that they’re getting a lot of attention and it’s good for them either way. (I definitely had an author tell me this once, back before I had a blog and when the “publicity” he got from our back-and-forth amounted to about five friends of mine. He was a little bit completely out of his mind.) Many authors handling their own PR appear to be under the impression that any attention is good attention, and even negative attention will lead to an increase in sales.

Does this work? Should authors be less concerned with receiving bad publicity? Could bad publicity even be helpful to a new author who is trying to get their work out there?

In the short run, I’m sure an author who has made a stir will see a bump in traffic–maybe even a large one. People love to watch a train wreck, and in some cases, I could certainly see it leading to a boost in sales from looky-loos. I don’t view this as being a beneficial long-term option, though. The thing about watching a train wreck is that, eventually, people stop looking and go home. They forget. You become a vague name in their minds that they might remember if they see it again somewhere–if people still want to cover you after the drama surrounding you, that is. An author can only coast on publicity for a short period of time, whether it’s good or bad publicity; we consumers are getting new information every minute that crowds out the old information. We turn our attention elsewhere, often quickly.

Even Charlie Sheen, who had a very public “psychotic break” (his words, to Playboy) that resulted in him leaving his hit show, can’t ride his publicity forever. When his new show, Anger Management, debuted on FX, 5.7 million people saw the show. The next week, 3.4 million watched. Then 2.4 million; I read somewhere it finally got down to 1.25 million before leveling off a bit. People may have tuned in based on the controversy from before, but people eventually fatigue and tune out; if his ratings continue to fall, Anger Management is going to get canceled just like any other show. The publicity from before won’t prop up the show if the show itself doesn’t stand up.

“It’s so fucking stupid. I’m in a beef with a warlock society? You’re kidding me, right? How do you go from making Oliver Stone movies to being in a feud with warlocks?” Charlie Sheen, post-meltdown. Apparently, there were some negative side effects.

Any publicity you get will circle back to the product that you put out. Publicity leads the reader to you (provided it’s not the kind of publicity that makes people say, “WELL! I’m never buying that person’s books!”); your product has to take the next steps on its own. This is where it gets tricky.

Getting an audience of people who read about you, on a blog or in the news or wherever, to buy your product can be challenging even under the very best circumstances. I don’t personally do a lot of sales myself, this being a free blog and all, so I’m going to use Regretsy as an example. Regretsy had a Kickstarter project for a book of Finnish folktales (and a trip to Finland) almost a year ago. If you’re familiar with Regretsy, you know that the site has a lot of followers that frequently follow links from the blog to go clear out Etsy shops, for charity or because the shop is just damn wacky. The Regretsy audience isn’t one you’d associate with stinginess. Out of their 130,000+ followers, though, only about 1.4% took part in the Kickstarter, despite the excellent rewards that the folks at Regretsy offered them. (If you compare the number of backers to their number of Twitter followers, it bumps up to a whole 5.8%.) If I recall correctly, the project didn’t get fully funded until close to the deadline. Regretsy fans love the site, but the turnout was still low when it came to deciding to spend money–not because Regretsy did something wrong, and not because their audience doesn’t like to spend money on things, but because it’s difficult to convince people to spend money. Even if you have a huge following that loves you.

“WHAT?! We live in the consuming-est country in the history of consuming! How is it hard to get people to spend money on things?!” Our entertainment bucks don’t stretch very far these days; while we may seem like we’re spending mindlessly, buying up things like Fifty Shades like sex is going out of style, we have to make choices with our cash. If we want to buy Fifty Shades, we can’t use that same money to buy anything else. When you get beyond the infinitesimal percentage of products that get heavy media coverage, you suddenly find yourself in a zone where consumers have become a lot more skeptical about buying your product. Who are you? What is this, and why do I want it? Do I want to spend money on you? And, the all-important: is there something I want more than what you’re offering?

(I feel I should note here, Charlie Sheen had about eight million followers on Twitter before he quit recently. When he joined in the wake of his rock-star-from-mars meltdown, he set an actual Guinness Book record for reaching 1 million followers on Twitter faster than anyone ever had. By the time Anger Management hit its fourth week on the air, a maximum of 15% of those eight million were tuning in–so, it can be difficult, it seems, just to get people to spend time on you, even if all they have to do is click over to watch your show, and even if you’re super-famous like Charlie Sheen.)

Imagine how this works for indie or self-published authors trying to convince people to purchase their books–authors that don’t already have a huge platform and thousands of followers. As you start building momentum, you’re working really, really hard to catch a very small number of readers (5% per venue where your book shows up? Maybe as much as 15%?) even when blogs or reviewers say awesome things about your book. Your buzz builds slowly as readers see your name repeatedly on their favorite blogs, on their friends’ reading lists, on their friends’ social media, in the “also bought” section of online retailers, maybe in a newspaper article or two. Since building a following can take quite a bit of time–see also The Bloggess, who says it only took her ten years to become an overnight success–it seems that part of being successful would be keeping your buzz flowing in a positive direction. Giving readers any reason to turn away from your books doesn’t seem like a smart move to me, even if it boosts your visibility in the short-term.

What if, though, you do find yourself in a controversy that gets a lot of attention and leads to heavy media coverage? Wouldn’t that help more than it would hurt? Well, it could happen, but not very often–if anything, it might lead to even more people swearing not to buy your book. I’ve rarely seen “real” media covering the dramz that happen in the reading world. If you’re relatively unknown, to get the attention of the mainstream media, you have to be more than an author embroiled in some drama. This drama has to be spectacular drama, and even then, it would have go be on-going and dynamic to keep you in the public eye long enough to see sustained results. (Stop the GR Bullies has only made it onto the blogs–not the news portions–of a couple of large news outlets that I’ve seen, despite the fact that people have been losing their shit over it.)

It’s a hell of a gamble that I’d probably avoid–after all, you don’t just want to be an author for a week or two, right? You want to keep being an author, not go out in a blaze of glory, scraping up whatever cash you can from a quick burst of sales. Also, public drama means you risk scaring off the people (bloggers, reviewers, the media) who can help you build that slow burn that could sustain you over time.

For me, it boils down to this: while bad publicity may not always be a death sentence for your career, that quick burst of views probably won’t help you much in the long run. You may not even see a tremendous jump in sales in the short term, because people aren’t always quick to part with their cash even when they love you, much less if they’re skeptical about you. How your product performs depends largely on the product itself; why not, then, build your brand carefully and try to avoid bad press? This way, you don’t burn any bridges or turn any readers away from your work. Plus, it’s exhausting to get a burst of publicity, even if it’s good publicity. Dealing with any kind of backlash is even more stressful and draining–wouldn’t you rather spend that energy on making great books that people want to buy?

“WAIT! This post is part of the Author’s Guide to Social Media series. You haven’t even talked about social media!”

I know, I haven’t addressed it directly–but, let’s be real, almost every incident of non-famous author drama that has cropped up in the last, oh, practically forever (or at least, since the advent of social media), has involved social media. You don’t see blog posts like “Fisticuffs broke out at a bar last night when self-published author Dramz Attentionslut caught sight of a reviewer who had previously panned his book” or “After a heated exchange in which author Bitchy Pooperson demanded that a bookstore patron purchase her book instead of freeloading while drinking coffee, Ms. Pooperson went out into the parking lot and keyed the reader’s car” or even “Writey McAuthorpants ran crying from a movie theater yesterday when three hecklers sat behind her and threw popcorn in her hair, yelling ‘You suck at writing!’ and ‘Don’t quit your day job, bitch!’” Nay. This stuff happens on the internet; it’s great to make sure to keep your real life in check, too, but you especially have to monitor what you say in your social media. Assume that anything you put out will be interpreted in the worst possible way, and assume this will create a giant headache that you’ll wish never happened.

Assume you will go from making Oliver Stone movies to being in a feud with warlocks. It’s a downgrade.

What do you guys think? Am I crazy like a fox, or crazy like I’m on a drug called Charlie Sheen? Sound off in the comments.

P.S. I did an informal Twitter poll: “On a scale of 1–’Who?’– to 10 — ‘Stalker fanperson’ — how much attention do you devote to Charlie Sheen these days?” So far, I haven’t gotten a response above 3. If people can tune out Charlie Sheen, they can tune out anybody.

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Book bloggers can be your best friends.

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…. or, of course, your worst enemy. We’d really like to be friends, though.

(Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I would like to be your friend, at least.)

When everything goes well, book bloggers and authors have a symbiotic relationship. We bloggers have no content without books. Authors are able to get more exposure through blog audiences. Blog readers get the benefit of both reading the blog and finding out about the authors’ books. It’s a winning situation all around–when everything goes well.

Still, I’ve seen some disdain out there for book bloggers, and a most of it seems to come from writers. I’ve seen writers sneer at book blogs, looking down their noses at us–”hobbyists,” they call us, and in context, it’s an insult. I’ve also seen the reverse: book bloggers who don’t welcome author interaction in the slightest. I think this is a damn shame, but frankly, having had some of the interactions that I have had with certain authors, I don’t blame book bloggers for being wary. For that matter, I also don’t blame some authors for being wary of bloggers, as our self-appointed role is to be critical of an author’s work, and some bloggers are better at this than others. (This is why I try to make it a goal never to be unfairly ranty, especially of indie works. It’s also why I try to be choosy in selecting the books that I read for review, because I don’t want to be that person. You know the one I mean–the cranky, hyper-critical type.)

But, look, y’all–in any given subset of people, there will always be a few who are, well, asshats. We can’t change this. What we can do, however, is endeavor to ignore these jerks. We then can move forward to create a happy, harmonious world where readers, book bloggers, and authors work together to provide the best possible outcome for everybody.

Rainbow Valley

I’m skeptical. What can a book blogger do that I can’t just do myself by building my own audience?

As an author trying to sell your work to readers, know that it’s automatically going to be more difficult for you to build an audience from nothing than it would be for a blogger (edit: also, we’re considering that this blogger has taken the same types of measures to gain an audience as anybody else would, and that they can write halfway decently and don’t suck at reviewing. It’s kind of an “all other things being equal” sort of scenario). When you reach out to readers, no matter how nice and non-markety you are, some of them are immediately going to be suspicious: is this guy or gal just trying to sell me a book? As readers, we don’t become fans until we’ve read and enjoyed your work. As social media friends, we don’t want to be marketed to until we become fans. Do you see the dilemma?

Enter the book blogger. The book blogger has become so passionate about reading that she wants to write about it. (I use she just because I’m a she. I know there are fabulous male book bloggers.) The book blogger doesn’t ask for anything in return, really; oh, there might be the occasional, “Please vote for my blog! Thanks! :D” posts, but that only comes after  the readership has been built, and it’s generally only a click’s worth of effort. She churns out content about what she’s reading just because she wants to do so, and people respond to that in a positive way–especially if she writes good content. There’s no risk involved of even a few dollars. She builds an audience by putting out free content that interests people–readers, in this case. She develops relationships with her readers, as blogging ranks on the sucky scale of activities if you don’t interact with anybody while doing it. Over time, a mutual trust builds up between blogger and reader, if the blogger stays honest and doesn’t do anything bullshitty. As far as audience-building goes, the blogger doing it for the love of the blog has an advantage over the non-blogger or the blogger whose primary motivation is to sell their books.

Book bloggers are a bridge to more readers.

I wrote before, in my post about Goodreads, about book bloggers being a bridge between you and your potential audience. Bloggers make good, sturdy bridges that you can skip merrily across if you do all of the right things. Why? That trust thing I was talking about. If you say, “hey, buy my book!” to a group of readers, you have an ulterior motive–you want to make money and you want people to read your book. Why should I trust you when you say you’re the next Neil Gaiman or Stephen King? You’d say anything to get me to buy your book. The blogger, though, doesn’t have any such conflict with the material, unless they turn around and write a book. (Which, side note–one of the reasons that bloggers-turned-authors do so well is that they’ve put in enormous time and effort putting out free content. I already know that when Allie Brosh’s book comes out, I’m going to buy it, and I’m going to love it, because I have been loving her work for awhile now. She’s probably going to sell a copy to everyone on the internet.) If I, as a blogger, say, “I really loved this book! This guy writes like Neil Gaiman!” I didn’t have any reason for doing so unless I really believed it.

Bloggers can also develop a special kind of credibility that random reviewers, like on Goodreads or Amazon, may not. Although I often look at aggregate reviews for a book, if I don’t know the individual reviewer, I don’t know how much credibility she might have. Following a single reviewer or blogger over time gives me an idea where our tastes match up, where they differ, and how well the reviewer can analyze a work. I’ve been reading Amy’s reviews for awhile, for example. (She writes them for IB, so, it’s kind of necessary that I read them–I love them anyway, though. Her reviewing skills outshine mine.) Amy often reviews from an emotional frame of reference, but she also has the literary skills to back up how she’s feeling about a work. I’ve come to know enough about her reviewing style and her taste to trust her reviews, and also to know when she reviews a book that I would love or that I wouldn’t love based on what she likes. It’s the same with me and Rob–we’ve known each other for so long that I can tell whether or not I’d like a book based on her opinion. If Amy or Rob says, hey, this is a good book, I will probably read that book. Book bloggers, over time, can build up that kind of credibility with their audiences.

Okay. You’ve convinced me. But I get turned down so often by book bloggers; how do I get a blogger to review my book?

I’ve written one post about this already. It has a basic blueprint for getting your book into the hands of a blogger who is eager to review you. I would like to reiterate here that it’s so, so, so important to make sure you’re targeting the right blogs. On IB, our main focus is literary fiction, and we primarily like to accept new books from indie authors or indie-press authors. I have this laid out right in our review policy: we prefer literary fiction. I still get a lot of pitches from people who either don’t know what literary fiction is, or mistakenly think that their books are literary fiction. I turn down all of these pitches. In fact, I turn down 48 out of 50 pitches, probably, and I reckon about half to three-quarters of the ones I turn down are people who don’t have their book categorized correctly.

Look, there’s nothing wrong with genre fiction at all. I like genre fiction, too; I don’t just read literary fiction, although that’s what I like to write about. It’s okay to be honest with yourself that your book isn’t a literary mystery or a literary romance when it isn’t–in fact, it’s beneficial to you to be brutally honest when categorizing your book. Why? Because it’s important for you to know who your readers should be. If I reviewed a romance novel tomorrow and said it was amazing, I would probably get a lot of “WTF?” responses. The people who read this blog don’t come here for romance reviews because we’ve never written them. Sure, some of them might like romance, but the common thread here is literary fiction, so you can bet that everyone who comes here probably enjoys literary fiction. If you say, “Hey, this is a literary romance,” and it’s not a literary romance, it’s not going to get a good review (or any review, most likely) and the people who visit here probably won’t read it.

If, however, you send it to blogs that do review romance novels, well, that changes the ballgame entirely. The audience there wants to read a book just like yours. Same goes for crime novels, or sci-fi, or fantasy, or whatever genre you fit into. Find the people who like to read what you write; I think that if you put in the time and have a strong focus when contacting blogs, rather than blanket contacting anybody who writes reviews or has more than a handful of Twitter followers, you’ll do better overall.

What about giveaways and stuff like that? Any blog might promote my book if I do a giveaway, right?

Nooooo. It’s the same with giveaways as with reviews. Yeah, your book might get exposure, but it’s like . . . it’s like renting out a billboard for your bacon company across the street from a Jewish temple. Probably a lot of people are going to see your billboard, but many of them won’t ever buy pork; it’s a waste of your time and resources. Exposure is meaningless if your target audience isn’t interested, and it could even generate negative exposure (such as, “Geez, what kind of idiot would advertise bacon across from Temple?” or “That’s very insensitive, that bacon guy should be ashamed of himself”). Negative exposure definitely does exist for authors; don’t think to yourself that any publicity is good publicity. It’s not.

What do bloggers get out of all of this, anyway? Free books?

Most of the book bloggers I know are drowning in free books. They have more free books than they ever care to read. I know, it seems ridiculous–more books than one cares to read?! All I can say is, sometimes you accept books that you never really wanted to read in the first place to be nice, or sometimes you overload yourself with books and you can’t seem to knock them out in time for the next crop. Plus, when you’re reading for a blog, there’s always a bit of a schedule involved–you want to be timely and relevant and that sort of thing. So books pile up, and it becomes less exciting over time to get a FREE BOOK because you start to feel a little guilty about all of the other free books that you haven’t gotten ’round to yet.

So, I wouldn’t call it *exactly* an advantage. Also, as nice as it is, I’ve always been able to get books from the library. It’s really more convenient than anything.

No, what we get out of working with authors is enhanced content. We’re not just readers; we started these blogs so that we could write about our reading experiences. Authors give us something to write about! Then our readers have something to read, and they find out about new, awesome books they could be reading (and, let’s be honest, also they find out what to avoid). I look at author interaction as a potential opportunity; rather than just reading and reviewing the book, which I could do on my own, there’s the potential for interviews, giveaways, guest posts, all of which enhance the experience of my blog for the people who read it.

So, let’s be friends. You and me and all of us.

I think it’s time for book bloggers and writers, on the whole, to kiss and make up, and stop circling each other like the Jets and the Sharks. Besides, if we unite, we can come together against our common enemy–publishers!

(JUST KIDDING, publishers are not the enemy. Heh, heh. I heart small presses lots.)

Book bloggers, tell me about some experiences you’ve had with authors! Or authors, tell me about your experiences with book bloggers! Or readers, tell us why you do or don’t like having blogger/author interaction. OR, you can tell me about your favorite dessert. (I like desserts.) Drop it all in the comments below!

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Goodreads: how to tell if you’re doing it wrong.

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I logged into Goodreads this morning and found something highly irritating. Goodreads has a tool that allows you to suggest books to your friends. (That isn’t the annoying part. Stay with me.) Because I basically accept everyone’s friendship on Goodreads, I’m sure I have a few authors sprinkled in there as well as readers. I don’t go looking people up, I just click “accept.” One author that I had apparently friended took it upon herself to recommend a couple of books to me. Okay, that’s no problem in itself; I like hearing about books. The issue was that the books she recommended to me were both her books. When I saw them sitting there in my book recommendations tab, my eyebrows raised so high they almost lifted off of my face. What’s more, I’m pretty sure they were erotica. While there’s nothing wrong with writing or reading erotica, anybody who has looked at my shelves or read this blog for more than two seconds would know that erotica is waaaaaayyyy down on the list of things that would be appropriate to recommend to me based on my reading tastes and what I review.

I’ve been told on Twitter that if she had a proper author profile, she wouldn’t be permitted to do this. I guess she circumvented that by not claiming her author profile. I appreciated her chutzpah. I appreciated it all the way to the “unfriend” button. Click.

Since I became a book blogger, my Goodreads activity has gone up quite a bit. (I almost never used Goodreads before that, because I started off on Shelfari, where my book club is still hosted.) One area in particular where I have seen increased activity is author communication. I get requests from authors quite frequently. I do love talking to authors; the problem, though, is that some authors don’t understand how to use Goodreads to approach readers and bloggers without being . . . well, obnoxious. Goodreads has been advertising themselves as a great portal for authors to reach audiences–and it is–but, sadly, some authors missed the “how to use this site effectively, and what not to do” segment of the program*.

Don’t worry. I’m here to help. Let’s talk about the ways authors can effectively use Goodreads, and also what not to do.

The Good

As a self-marketing person on any social media site, the first step is to be yourself (professionally) and to be personable. Because this is a book-focused social media site, you may want to talk about what you’re reading as well as what you’re writing. Other than making you seem less “markety” and more like a person, getting involved on Goodreads about the things that you are reading will have distinct advantages for you: one, you’ll get more positive exposure, which will probably lead to more friends; two, Goodreads might actually suggest you as a friend to people who have similar tastes to you, who in turn might be highly interested in reading your books. I’d be much more curious to read an author who likes the same books I like.

The next step is to promote through the proper channels. Find groups that do author Q&As, giveaways, or feature books that have been submitted to them. You can also find bloggers through Goodreads who do the same. When you do find a likely group or blogger, contact them privately and professionally to tell them about your book. (Pro tip: when contacting bloggers or group leaders, it’s a good idea to be highly familiar with exactly what they do and tailor your pitch to them, rather than blasting them with marketing language. Referencing specific reasons that they might be interested in your book based on their past content is a plus. Spending your energy targeting just a few extremely likely candidates rather than trawling for anybody who answers will generate more interest, which will likely lead to more readers and more sales.) Be a consummate professional–but also be yourself!–through the entire process and you will look attractive to other people who might want to feature you.

Once you start generating your own fan base on Goodreads, you can use your blog to keep people up-to-date or start a conversation among your friends and readers. (I think you can also route in a blog feed from another blog–or perhaps cross post from your regular blog, if you want to tie that into your author profile.) Starting a conversation rather than just broadcasting is an excellent way to keep people tuning into your blog regularly. We all love to give our opinions about stuff, and we appreciate being asked. (One caveat: the discussion thing could backfire if you are extremely spirited and/or unable to agree to disagree with people.)

The Bad

If you want to make contact with readers, bloggers, or group leaders, remember that you need to start from zero with each one. (This is why it’s often good to contact readers through an intermediary, like a blogger or a group leader. Their readers already trust them because they have put in the time to build relationships with their audience. It’s like using an existing bridge to get across a river instead of trying to build your own.) Before first contact, we have no idea who you are and no trust built up between us. When authors do the kind of thing that happened to me this morning–randomly dropping your book recommendations without even a hello–you’re starting off on entirely the wrong foot and swinging our relationship immediately into a place of distrust. It’s much more difficult to bring a relationship back from a negative place than to start a good one from the beginning.

I have also been invited to a number of author-created Q&A groups for that author. These groups always feature authors I’ve never before encountered, and I almost always skip the group–even if I click “join” just to make the request go away, I never actually go to the group and participate. The thing to remember about groups is that the content is member-driven, especially if your group relies on members asking the author questions. As a potential member who has never heard of you, and who has many other things to do, I’m not going to expend any energy on this group. I don’t have any questions for you because I have no idea who you even are.

The Q&A groups are another area where it’s better to use a bridge than to try to build a new one. Do Q&As through existing groups and through blogs. Bloggers and group leaders sometimes get overwhelmed with requests, but it’s also nice for us (in my opinion) to have fresh content available, since we are in the business of putting out content, and we and our readers do want to know about new books. The relationship between authors and book groups or blogs can be mutually beneficial.

Finally, don’t make the mistake that many authors make–they go through and friend any- and everyone, or they blanket-target readers who like x kind of book by Similar Authors. Readers won’t respond to this at all because we can all tell the difference between being a “target market” and someone genuinely being interested in us. Making friends is a good thing–it’s a great thing!–but it has to be a genuine effort.

The Ugly

I wrote before about authors behaving badly; even though my part of the post took place on Shelfari, it links to a post about some authors who self-destructed on Goodreads and other social media. A lot of the meltdowns occurred over bad reviews. I freely admit, some people write asshole reviews. These are probably the same people who call up customer service and act like assholes or ask in restaurants to talk to managers over asshole things. Not all of the reviews in question were written by assholes; some were very thoughtful, just very damning. In either case, Goodreads isn’t the place to defend your work against bad reviewers.

Oh, you might be tempted. Even if you don’t go balls-out like the authors mentioned in the Goodreads-implosion post, you might be tempted to say, oh, hey, you know what I actually meant by that was blah blah blah. Don’t do it.

Why? Well, there are a lot of reasons; one is that you don’t really want to come off as trying to influence your reviewers. It seems a little shady and might cast your positive reviews in a negative light: did those reviewers REALLY like the book, or were they argued into it? Or did they write a good review to avoid an argument? The second is that you have no idea how that person is going to react. They might thoughtfully accept your point of view, or they might dig in their heels and press on. It could easily blow up in your face. A third reason is that arguing someone’s review will put people off. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and most of the people that you want to read your book also want to know that they can honestly review your book without you getting all up in their reviews. Goodreads is largely reader-driven, and you as an author want to respect their space.

To piggyback on that, it’s also futile to argue with someone’s personal experience. If you review a restaurant and say you hated their food, but the chef came  back at you to tell you how delicious the food is, that’s not going to sit well with you. It’s definitely not going to make you like the food. If it’s public, it also probably won’t sit well with a lot of other reviewers, who are going to empathize with the reviewer even if they disagree about the food.

I think it’s best to ignore bad reviews completely–especially if someone is being an ass about it. We can tell when reviewers are being asses, too. If a book has generally good reviews, and one person writes a terrible review and comes off like a complete jerk, I automatically ignore their review. A good reviewer is objective and relatively even-keeled, and most of us respond best to that kind of review.

Ready? Set? Goodread!

Now that you have some basic tools to help, go forth and Goodread with confidence. Just remember a basic rule of thumb: think like a fan or a customer, not like an author. I think this is the greatest key to using social media as a tool to connect to potential readers and fans.

How about you all? Have any Goodreads horror stories? Success stories? What do you love and what do you hate about interacting with authors on GR? Leave your comments below!

*I don’t know if there’s actually a program. Don’t go looking for one and then say, “But you said  there was a program!” It is a metaphor.

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Getting a website designed.

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*Note: The examples of website that I’m putting into this post are not “finished” designs. I am not a web designer. These are just ideas and examples. So, please refrain from getting in my comments and telling me that I am a shitty web designer, because I’m not a web designer, so of course I’m kind of shitty at it.

In our last Author’s Guide to Social Media post, I touched on the author website. The author website is significant, because, when used correctly, it’s the hub of your internet presence. It’s also the one piece of your social media that you will probably hire someone to create, if any, because unlike Facebook or Twitter, your website design will be unique to you.

So, if I’m just going to hire someone, I’m good, right? I don’t need to read the rest of this post?

NO. You still need to read the rest of this post. Why? Because you need to be able to tell your designer what you want in a website. It’s like building a house; you don’t just hire an architect and let him build what he wants, you tell him what you want in your house. And you approve everything. Otherwise, you might end up with a really ugly or jacked-up house. So, I’m going to take you through the steps of hiring a designer and making sure you get a site that works for you, because I care about you. (Also because I want to be able to find the things I want when I get to your website, so, I guess my motivations are not entirely unselfish.)

Step One: Go to Clients From Hell and read through the site. Not only because it’s enlightening, but because it’s hilarious. Basically, Clients From Hell tells the tales of client interactions gone horribly wrong somehow, usually because of the short-sightedness of the client. It’s educational because you can find out the kinds of things that you don’t want to do when hiring a professional designer (like, insist that you don’t have to pay because you aren’t using the work). It’s hilarious because, well, there are some really stupid people out there. So even if you don’t learn anything new, it’s worth going for the lulz.

Step Two: Make a list of everything that you want on your site. I made a list on the last post of things that I’d want to see on an author website. You can also get ideas from visiting other authors’ websites and just clicking around; don’t assume that something is good just because it’s on another website, though. Really click through and see how usable it is. Can you find the information that you want easily? Do things about the website annoy you? Note down the positives and negatives of sites that you click through.

This mock-up I made shows some of the more important elements you’ll want on your website. If your website doesn’t at least have this stuff, you need to work on it or work on your designer. (Click to embiggen; not to scale)

 

Step Three: Think of a design that you’d like. Even if you aren’t able to make a design of your own, you should have some idea of design elements that you’d like; maybe you write romance novels and what something soft and feminine, or maybe you write literary fiction and want something sophisticated and classic. Try to keep these ideas loose and keep an open mind; the person you hire may suggest alternatives that will work better for you–like, if you want a hot pink leopard print background, they might steer you toward something that won’t make your viewers blind when they click through to your site.

Design is so, so, so important. Even simple designs need to be designed well–even moreso, actually, since they are so simple. Even though we’ve come a long way from websites that look like this:

badly-designed sites can hide behind sleek exteriors. Websites can look great but be unwieldy and difficult to use.

The “website” above looks interestingish, but it’s not usable. There’s no content that immediately draws you into the site. The navigation isn’t obvious. People make very quick judgments about whether they want to fool with a website or not–after all, the whole internet is out there to peruse.  If they can’t get what they’re looking for easily and quickly, they will leave your website; if your designer wants to design you an avant-garde masterpiece, you may want to say “no thanks.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t have a cool site, though. Let’s say you write mysteries. You could have a site that reflects that:

You’ve got your central navigation, your content areas, your social media, your name real big at the top. Nobody who comes to this site is going to be confused about who you are or what you do; it has personality without being intrusive on the functionality. (And a real designer would do a much better job with execution. Like I said before, these are just rough ideas. Sketches, if you will.) A cleanly-designed site that expresses what you write will draw people in and allow them to find the content they’re seeking.

Step Four: Ask your designer about a content management system. You will need a way to add content to your website yourself; you definitely don’t want to have to call him or her up every time you want to update information or post a blog. Let them know what your level of familiarity is with posting content to sites–do you blog using WordPress? Have you ever built a simple website before? Finding a CMS that you’re comfortable using is important. It’s better to ask about this upfront than to end up with a website you have no idea how to use and might “break” if you go into it making changes.

Step Five: Read, read, read your contract before committing to a designer. And don’t use a designer without getting a contract. Contracts protect both parties–it prevents you from stiffing your designer, and it prevents your designer from absconding with your hard-earned money without finishing the work. Make sure that you are comfortable with the terms of the contract. Even though this post is directed toward designers, rather than clients, I think it has a lot of good details that can help you understand what having a contract for web design will entail. Make sure you go over the contract and discuss anything you don’t understand. (If your designer doesn’t want to do that for you, move on to a new designer. Seriously. That’s just terrible service.)

Step Six: Have your content ready. Your designer won’t be able to put content on your site until they know the content that you want; you’ll have to provide copy, photos, etc. Not having content ready will cause delays, which could present a breach of contract for some designers (refer to your contract for details); even though your job is writing–and your day job, if you have one–their job is making your website, and we’ve all experienced the frustration of not having something to get our jobs done that someone else is responsible for providing. Plus, you might incur additional fees if you don’t hand over your content in a timely manner.

Additional tips:

  • Don’t sign off on something if you don’t like it. If you don’t like the design, for example, and you let yourself get talked into it or you don’t speak up, then decide later that you really just don’t like it at all, you’re creating a lot more work for the designer and you might have to pay additional fees to get the design fixed.
  • If you hire a friend, or have a friend do a free site, be careful. If there’s money involved, that could turn into a sticky situation (ie, if you don’t get the site you want but are too nice to tell them, you might feel ripped off); if it’s free, they might feel taken advantage of if you work ‘em too hard.
  • Ask questions if you don’t understand something. If you don’t know why they did something a certain way, you can say, “Can you tell me why the content areas are this size? They seem a little small.” or “Is there a reason why this font is so small?” If they don’t have a special reason, or if it’s just because that’s how they like it, you can ask them to change it if you want; if there’s a technical reason, changes might be more difficult to make.
  • Did I mention to make sure my eyes don’t bleed when I visit your site? Please triple-check this.

Have you had experience with having a website built for you? Success stories? Horror stories? Tell us in the comments!

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: How to build your media empire and take over the internet.

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Social Media Forum

I plugged “social media” into Flickr and these guys came up. They seem legit.

I wrote a post recently about how authors can use Twitter to market their books. It got some really good feedback, both from people who buy books and people who write books. Improving the connection between readers and writers can only benefit everybody: we want your books, and you want us to want your books, so we all win. That got me thinking about other posts I could write to help improve reader/writer relations.

See, we’re living in a time where the separation between artist and audience has grown so thin that it has nearly evaporated completely. People like to be able to follow their favorite actors, writers, musicians, and artists on the internet; it serves two purposes for us: we get to know the people behind the work, and it keeps us on top of the news of their creations. We no longer have to go through the dismay of finding out that an author we love has had a book out for nearly a year and we didn’t hear about it. Clearly, the benefits to us are advantageous to authors, as well–namely, in that we buy your books.

How, though, does an author build a social media presence? How does one decide which sites to join? There are only about a zillion different social media sites, and joining all of them would take up so much time that there would be no time left for writing–or eating, or sleeping, for that matter. Never fear, my friends and fellow booksluts–as both someone who has used social media to launch this very blog and someone who fits into the intended audience of “people who purchase books,” I am here to help with some social media guidelines.

You need to be on Twitter and probably on Facebook.

Even Wil Wheaton finally broke down and joined Facebook, despite posting five months ago that he thinks Facebook is evil. Why? Because Facebook has staying power. Google thought it was going to come in and scoop up the disgruntled Facebook users, but the fact is that Facebook has permeated our online social culture so completely that getting people to move away from it will require the new site to take extraordinary measures. The people have spoken, and what they’ve said is, “Yeah, Facebook annoys us sometimes, but we are still pretty committed to using it. I mean, y’know, we already have all of our photos uploaded and everything.” A lot of people use it, in fact, so you should strongly consider having a presence there.

Twitter is a whole different animal as far as social media goes, but even more important. Twitter users keep each other current on events and news, and Twitter connects you to new people faster and more fluidly than any other social media platform I’ve ever used. (I’ve noticed that Facebook users tend not to add people to their friends’ lists as quickly; Twitter outperforms FB in allowing people to make new connections, in my opinion.) If you want to grow an audience, Twitter is the place to be; I strongly advise considering Facebook, but I think Twitter is basically mandatory. (Again, see that previous post for using Twitter to market your books.)

When you’re picking your Twitter handle, I strongly advise you to get some variation of your actual name. This is more professional than “sportsfanauthor” or “Caliboy3058″, and will create more brand recognition for your followers; I may not associate a “fictional” name with you as easily as I would your actual name.

Websites: Do you need one?

Yes. You need a website. Your website is your online hub. It should be yourname.com if possible, or something like yournamebooks.com if yourname.com is taken–in other words, it should have your name, and be memorable enough that people can get to it easily.

If you search “author websites” or “what to have on author websites,” you’ll see a ton of posts regarding this topic. I’m going to give you my own list, based on what I would look for as a reader and as a book blogger who might review your books:

  • A list of books and links to buy your books. The link to this should be found easily on your front page.
  • A list of other publications (magazines or periodicals in which you’ve been published, blogs where you’ve guest-posted, anything that a fan might want to seek out–and links and information about how to find these publications)
  • A bio–a little fleshier than a jacket cover bio, maybe, but it doesn’t have to be a book (har har)
  • Upcoming releases and news, including interviews and articles about you
  • FAQ. Get a lot of questions asked over and over? BAM, you can answer them once and for all.
  • Contact page. This is really important and it should be honest and thorough–do you only want to receive certain kinds of contact? Would you prefer e-mail contact only? Do you accept books to sign and return, and how do you want that handled? Do you have employees who handle your contact?
  • Publicity page. This is also important. Telling people how to contact you for interviews or reviews, providing publicity photos of yourself (rather than taking the chance that they will pull up your 7th grade school photo off of Google somehow), and basically letting people know that you have publicity in mind and are open to contact will help you when someone wants to feature you. This should be separate from your general contact page information; it could be on the same actual page, but it needs its own separate section.
  • Links to all of your official social media, especially Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.
  • A blog, if you want one (more on this later).

Your website should also be well-designed and not look like it’s from GeoCities 1998 (unless you’re purposely being ironic for some reason). If you are unsure how to accomplish this, and I cannot stress this enough, look into it before you build a site or pay someone to build a site for you. An author website needs a clean design, centrally-located navigation (ie, it should not be a maze of links), and the features listed above; an author website does not need a lot of bells and whistles on it. You’re not a photographer, so you don’t need a high-tech media gallery that fades and flashes and scrolls; nor do you need a bunch of fancy widgets or things that pop up or pop out or do anything that might annoy someone reading your site. Also, for fuck’s sake, no music, ever. These things all distract from more than they add to a simple, beautifully-designed site–so if you get a designer who is telling you that you need these things, run away. Plus, the fancier a site, the more likely it is to break, and also the more likely it is to annoy a user who just wants information about you.

How about Goodreads, LibraryThing, and Shelfari? What’s the deal with those?

Goodreads is an excellent site to be on if you can interact with people reviewing your book without having a meltdown. I wrote before about authors behaving badly, and that post linked to another site discussing the ramifications of going after users who negatively review one’s work. The general consensus is that if you act like a douchebag, even if the person who wrote the bad review is a bigger douchebag, you will lose potential readers in droves. If you absolutely can’t turn a blind eye to people who might (fairly or not) talk smack about your work, I would suggest avoiding Goodreads at all costs.

If, however, you’re able to smile and be polite to even the nastiest reviewer–or, barring that, ignore them completely, which is the best move unless they cross legal lines and you need to involve a lawyer–make a beeline for Goodreads and set up your author profile. Make sure your book is in their database, check out some groups (especially groups that like to do giveaways/author interviews) and contact their leaders to see if they would be interested in featuring you. Goodreads has a page about their author program that includes a slideshow at the bottom about how to use Goodreads effectively. (Want to know if you’re using Goodreads wrong? Find out here.)

LibraryThing and Shelfari have smaller audiences. I haven’t used LT, but I find Shelfari’s interface clumsy for connecting with other people–and since the point is to connect, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time or energy there.

Blogs and Tumblr

Blogs (including Tumblr, which is a blogging format) can be useful or extraneous. If you write good blog content, and are interested in blogging, I say have a blog. If you’re mostly interested in using the blog to post news and updates, rather than blogging about something (like, you know, book reviews, ahem–or, any topic, including just blogging about your life), you can do that using a blog platform–which I recommend heartily because you can categorize and tag entries for guests who want to see only interviews and articles, or only upcoming releases, etc–but you don’t need to go out and set up a blog or Tumblr for that elsewhere.

LinkedIn, Pinterest, Flickr, Google+, Reddit–do I need this other stuff?

The firm answer to this is, no, you don’t need any of these things. Can they be helpful? Yes–if you use them properly. Social media sites are valuable to you only when you are able to use them consistently, put out good content, and connect with followers. You might think, well, all these people are on Tumblr, so I should be using Tumblr to take advantage of that audience, right? Chances are, though, those people also use Facebook or Twitter. So you’re not really “missing” that audience by not using Tumblr. Choose social media sites based on where your audience is and based on the kind of content you can put out.

Unless your books are photography-based, I’d say that image-based social media, such as Pinterest or Flickr, will probably be less helpful in gaining a reading audience. You’ll get followers, but they might not translate into book sales. LinkedIn is mostly used for connecting professionally, and you may be able to use it to make important industry contacts that will help you in your career; it, again, may not translate to readers. I’d recommend using these services only for personal reasons and not as part of your social media promotion package–if you dig photography, for example, you can join up on Pinterest or Flickr and have a link on your website, but if that’s not really a passion of yours, you don’t need it. Edit: Apparently, Pinterest is quite helpful in driving traffic. If you have spare time and you have any graphics on your blog that you can pin without being in danger of copyright violation or what have you, I guess Pinterest is a good thing. I wouldn’t necessarily go crazy on it, though–especially since, if you end up pinning a zillion things from everywhere, your Pinterest will become so much white noise to your followers after awhile.

Google+ . . . oh, Google+. Everyone had high hopes for you, and the hopes fizzled out rather quickly. I wouldn’t put a lot of energy into Google+ right now (maybe not ever), but having a profile set up might not be a bad idea in case it takes off.

And finally, Reddit. Reddit is a community, and in order to use it effectively, you’ll want to plan on spending a bit of time there to become part of the community. While it can be helpful for connecting to people–especially if you are relatively famous and will sit down and do an “AMA” thread, which stands for Ask Me Anything–it’s not a site that you can use for self-promotion. Reddit is also not a site where you want to have a misstep, as an egregious error could go viral and bring you the sort of publicity that exists in your nightmares. If you’re not well-versed in the internet, or you’re not interested in being part of the Reddit community, I would steer clear of this site.

TL;DR

To recap:

Twitter: Definitely.

Website: Definitely.

Facebook: Probably. Can’t hurt.

Goodreads: Absolutely, unless you will ragestomp people who give you negative reviews, then no.

Blog: Only if you are actually blogging rather than just posting promotions for your books.

Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit: For personal, rather than promotional, use. (Unless you are a photographer.) (Probably should use Pinterest.)

What say you, readers and writers? Readers, where do you go first to connect to authors and discover new writers? What social media sites do you use the most? Writers, what has worked for you in the past–and what hasn’t? Let us know in the comments!

The Author’s Guide to Social Media: Using Twitter to market the books you wrote.

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I got a tweet yesterday on my private account–not that it’s protected or anything, but I just mean, on my non-book account–from an author imploring me to check out his work online. I had never encountered this author before, and I really had no bloody idea why on earth I should want to check out his “fiction” in a magazine–no, I mean really, I had no idea why he had approached me or what about me made him think I might connect to his work. A quick glance at his Twitter told me that he didn’t really know why I would like it, either–most of his tweets had the same indiscriminate message blasted at a number of targets: Check out my work “X” at website Y!

Being the sweet, caring, and politic person that I am, I told him he was doing it wrong.

To my surprise, he answered back. “Please enlighten, I am too new to Twitter.” How to encapsulate it in 140 characters? I promised him I’d write a blog about it, so here I am, writing a post about it. He’s not the only person who can benefit from this information, really–I get and see a lot of ill-advised tweeting from people who think it will help boost their sales, but don’t understand that Twitter is not an advertising forum.

If you’re an author who has heard that social media is the way to get readers, but you don’t know how to do it or it hasn’t been working for you, fear not–I’m here to help. This post is specifically about Twitter, but the basic concepts can be used for any social media.

Problem: You post lots of information about your writing, but not very many people are following you or visiting the links that you post up.

Would you watch a television channel that was all commercials, or peruse a website that was all ads? Unless the channel or site was dedicated to exceptional examples of advertising, I’m guessing that you would not. Building your Twitter account with the primary aim of using it to directly market your books–such as by Tweeting random people “Hey you should read my book” or only posting about events related to selling your book–means that you’re basically creating a “channel” that is wall-to-wall advertising. The people that you do manage to get to follow you will probably mentally block your feed within a week.

Solution: Spend the majority of your time on social media building genuine relationships and putting out desirable content.

Social media is called that for a reason–be social! Talk to people. Make friends, remembering that the person who goes on incessantly about their own projects comes off being a tiny bit self-absorbed. Instead, ask people about their projects. Form collaborations, or guest post on blogs. Put yourself out there, and be generous and genuine. Or, barring that, be wickedly funny. People on the internet love the lulz. You get followers because there’s something in it for them to follow you.

Not talking about your projects may seem counter-intuitive, but remember what I said about the all-advertising channel. People will turn it off. You can talk a little bit about your projects, but know when ease back. Good things to post are (brief) information regarding events, upcoming publications or appearances–”news,” in other words, especially items that would be helpful to other people. I personally find you can get away with repeating “news” once or twice if you space it out, but too much repetition causes that mental off-switch that you want to avoid. (People on Twitter can be a little tetchy, too. The etiquette rules are quite complex and can be difficult to grasp before you have been there for some time. Playing it safe is better at first.)

Problem: You put out awesome content, and you have a decent amount of followers, but people are still not reading your books.

So, you’ve done step one–you have developed into an awesome tweeter, people are willingly following you–you might even have more followers than you are following at this point, and it’s kind of a big deal when you cross that threshold for the first time. But your sales are still pretty abysmal. What gives?

Solutions: Various potential solutions.

One problem is that you might not be connecting with the right audience. People on Twitter tend to run in circles a lot of the time; I myself have two different accounts, and my follower bases couldn’t be more different, save a few core people that follow both. A very few. My @thebooksluts account has–you guessed it–a lot of readers, writers, and a few publishers that I interact with regularly. My personal account has far more political followers, along with people who are local to where I live, and some people who cook, because I connect with people very differently on that account than I do on my booksluts Twitter. If you write crime thrillers but, because you play video games, have a lot of RPG aficionados as Twitter friends, they’re probably less likely to read your books. Not that you should dump your gamer friends, but consider widening your audience to connect with bookish types who like crime thrillers.

If you have acquired a few trusted confidants, try DMing them and asking if there’s something you’re doing wrong or that you could be doing better. Don’t come off needy or whiny, just that you’re looking for tips to improve communication without being spammy. I find that doing this privately is the best route, as any other conversations are very public, even if they don’t “feel” public. Your friends might be able to give you some great insight.

Make sure, too, that all of your social media is working together. If you’re linking people from Twitter to, say, a blog, and the blog is turning people off for some reason, or your website or what have you, it might not be because of your tweets at all.

Problem: I found someone on Twitter who has a book blog or a website and I want them to feature my book, but after I tweeted them a link, they basically told me to piss off or they ignored me. What did I do wrong?

Starting a conversation with a link to your work is like asking someone out on a date while showing them your genitals. A little romance first would be nice! And really, if you’re trying to (ahem) expose yourself to people who will read your book, this is the way to go, rather than approaching random people on social media. Why? Because book bloggers and websites that feature reviews have fans who want book recommendations. You want people to read your book, and the blog audience wants suggestions on awesome new books to read, so it’s really a match made in heaven if you can get the reviewer on board.

Solution: Romance us, dammit!

First, read the blog or website that you want to be on, or think that you want to be on. You might find out that you actually do not want to be on the site–maybe you write books that the reviewer doesn’t tend to enjoy and he or she would give you a bad review, or maybe the blog audience isn’t your audience.

See if there is a protocol for pitching a book to the person for a review or a feature. Many book bloggers have this on their site. If they have this, then you just follow the protocol. Following the protocol scores MAJOR POINTS because a lot of people? do not follow protocols. A lot of people do not bother to read things that have been posted up, or seem to think that those posts do not apply to them, or something. It makes us predisposed to warm fuzzy feelings when instructions are followed.

If there’s nothing like that on their website, and you have ascertained that your book goes with their audience and their tastes, start by saying something like this: “Hey! I was reading your site and I loved it. I especially liked review of X. I wrote a book that is quite similar to X, do you accept books to review?” Approaching the person like a human being and letting them know that you actually have read their blog will get you in quicker than indiscriminate tweeting; asking if they accept books rather than “will you accept my book” is smart, too, because it’s less pressure for them. If I feel like I’m being pressured, I almost always say no.

Tip: Don’t try to be tricky and sneak your book into conversations that are not about your book. Seriously. Even if you try to make it seem funny, it’s not funny because we know what you’re doing, and it makes us feel like pieces of meat that you look at with dollar signs in your eyes. “Got a vacation coming up, huh? Does that mean you’ll finally have time to read my book?! Eh?! I’m just kidding, we kid, oh this is so funny–but no, seriously, are you ever going to read my book?” Yeah. Don’t do this.

Remember, above all: social media =/= social marketing.

Nobody goes to social media because they desire marketing. Even super famous people with a zillion followers don’t spend all their time sitting around saying “buy my book/watch my show/etc!” They wouldn’t have a zillion followers if they did that. The point of Twitter, if you’re using it to connect with your current or potential future fanbase, is that just being on Twitter and doing a good job at Twitter reminds them that you are there. It’s exposure. And sure, when your newest book gets published, you’ll want to tweet about it–”So happy! My new book finally hit the presses today!”–but the way you would share it with friends, not consumer sheep.

How ’bout you guys? What turns you off when it comes to Twitter marketing? Have you found any tactics to be successful? Tell us in the comments!