Archive for the ‘Beyond the Manuscript’ Category

Beyond the Manuscript: Building Your Fan Base (week 3)

posted on by tlowry

Beyond the ManuscriptOver the span of six weeks Ambassador COO Tim Lowry will be sharing a series he calls “Beyond the Manuscript.” Whether you’re a new or seasoned author we hope you’ll find this material helpful:

This week we’re going to take a look at building your fan base as you write. If you have followed the steps previously laid out you should have your social home bases in place, now you have to put them into action.

Start by connecting! Seems obvious however some people feel that by just having an online profile followers will just drop into place without any work. You will want to reach out to friends, family, and fellow writers inviting them to connect with you, invite your contacts across from your personal page to your fan page. Friend, Like, Follow, join Circles. Think of how you network at a business or social gathering. This is exactly the same thing you’re just doing it online.

Once connected:

Bring your fans on the journey with you. If you are a fiction writer this can be as easy as teasing excerpts, or inviting followers to share feedback on characters or a part of the story you’re having trouble developing. This involvement lets fans feel like they are part of the action.

Guest blog, share about your writing experience, the highs and lows, the search for an agent or publisher, perhaps you want to take a little extra time to build added content for sharing outside your book. This could be creating sub-stories for characters outside of the main storyline or creating interviews and back stories with the fictional characters. This all allows readers to build a connection. Be sure your activities connect back to your home base, your website. Include your link everywhere you can.

We’ve briefly mentioned promo videos over the last two weeks. A promo video can be as simple as a still graphic displaying the book title and you reading a gripping excerpt in the background for 90 seconds or a more developed video such as the trailer for A Time To Heal below that showcases the title beautifully.

Any readers that frequent our site or social media may have seen us promoting Google+ Hangouts with our authors. This is one of the biggest tools that Google+ offers that is set apart from the other social media sites and personally I think it is brilliant! If you’ve never taken part in a Google+ Hangout or seen one you can follow this link to see a recent Google+ Hangout we did in partnership with our friends at Gospelebooks.net to promote Peter Hubbard’s latest title Love Into Light. With the right partnerships and pre-marketing a Google+ Hangout can bring you many new followers and sales of your book.

In putting the above tips into practice you will see your fan base grow. It is important to keep your posts frequent but they don’t need to be all about you or your book. A good balance is 70/30, 70% interaction and sharing material not related to your book, 30% promotion and selling of your material. Be aware of your time on social media, I’ve heard frequently from authors that hours just melt away once they get on Facebook. If you’re working on a deadline for publication be wise with your time online. Use tools like Hootsuite to efficiently schedule your posts across all your social media platforms.

Next week we’re going to be looking at developing your product launch plan. Your launch plan will help you put all your tools to work.

What is your biggest struggle with using social media? Have you found anything that works for you?

Beyond the Manuscript : Creating Your Platform (week 2)

posted on by tlowry

Beyond the Manuscript

Over the span of six weeks Ambassador COO Tim Lowry will be sharing a series he calls “Beyond the Manuscript.” Whether you’re a new or seasoned author we hope you’ll find this material helpful:

  • Week 1: Author and publisher marketing
  • Week 2: Creating a platform
  • Week 3: Building your fan base
  • Week 4: Developing your product launch plan
  • Week 5: How to organize a successful signing
  • Week 6: Engaging media on a local and national level

Any author that has ever attended a writer’s conference or been in the publishing industry any length of time has likely been told “you need to work on your platform.”

This week we’re going to cover some of basics needed to get you on the road to Creating A Platform.

A platform is key to the success of any book. If you have no established platform and no plans of establishing one then the your going to be facing an uphill battle. Thankfully however there are now more ways than ever before to build a platform, get a following and get your message out to the masses.

Let’s take a look at some of the tools that are available to you.

Social media icons

-Facebook: I have no doubt that everyone reading this has heard of Facebook, you probably already use it on some level. This is must for building your social presence — think of Facebook as a country with 1.1 billion residents, this is a huge market!

When talking about Facebook with respect to building your platform we’re talking about creating a fan page verses using a personal account.

A fan page is created from your personal account and Facebook has genres in place allowing you to easily create an author page. A fan page allows people to “like” rather than friend you.

With Facebook you can also customize your page URL (web address). We recommend making your URL your author name. The key in all this is to create a brand — your name is your brand. You want to make it as easy as possible for your readers to find and follow you.

-Twitter: Again I’m going to assume almost everyone reading this has heard of Twitter, you may already have an account and have tweeted out a link to this blog, for others we’re getting into a grey area. Twitter is a powerful networking tool. Using short, concise messages you can grab attention and easily direct followers to your content, keep posts to 140 characters or less, incorporate links and hashtags to what is relevant. The best way to learn how to effectively use twitter is 1) by using it, 2) following others in your category that you respect and see how they’re using it to build there brand and following.

-Google+: Although relatively new to the social media scene Google+ is growing in popularity and an important one for building your platform. Google is the king of search and they love data. As a publishing house we have recently seen some of our Google+ posts show up on Google’s home page for a search ahead of websites related to the product. Put simply Google likes Google, that makes this a must. Finding friends and creating circles will take some getting used to however once established Google offers great tools that makes the learning curve worth it — Google Hangouts could perhaps be one of your most valuable free marketing tool. We’re going to go into further detail about Google Hangouts in the coming weeks and how you can use this tool to build a following and sell product.

-Website/Blog: This is your home base, the social networks are the connectors to you but your website is where it all happens. Use great tools like WordPress to create a robust website with a blog integrated. When building your site think about what you want it to achieve. If you’re wanting to push sales do you want to link to major retailers or would you prefer to handle your own sales using a service like paypal or perhaps providing both options? Do you speak at events or do you want to build this out as part of your marketing? If so make sure your site has a speaking calendar, instructions on how to book you and if possible audio or video of you speaking at other events. Do you want to offer freebies to bring fans to your site? Perhaps you have had several interviews or have a great media kit you’d like to have downloaded — this can go on a media page.

-YouTube: This is yet another one of Google’s sites.If you’re going to create a video there are options like Vimeo and Animoto however we strongly suggest YouTube as the way to go, this being a Google run site it works nicely with their analytics and places it higher in searches than other sites. Again, use your author name to brand your channel on YouTube.

It is important if at all possible that you keep your branding consistent. Website URL, Facebook URL, Twitter handle, YouTube Channel etc. Do not use some nickname or alias that only a handful of people know you by, stick with the name that is on the book.

Next week we’re going to be talking about how putting these tools to work and building your fan base as you write.

What tool have you found most successful for you to connect and build a listening audience?

Beyond the Manuscript: Publisher vs. Author Marketing

posted on by tlowry

Beyond the ManuscriptFor the last number of years I’ve been attending writers’ conferences across the Southeast as a publisher and enjoyed meeting with perspective authors, as I attended these conferences I found a common thread  that many authors although they perhaps had good manuscripts had no real grasp on how to market their book or what to do next.

I recently returned from a conference in Florida where I had the opportunity to share a presentation titled: Beyond the Manuscript: How to Sell Books and Build a Following.

Over the next six weeks I’m going to be sharing a variation of this presentation with you. Whether you’re a new or seasoned author I’m hoping you’ll find this material helpful.

We will be covering:

  • Author and publisher marketing
  • Creating a platform
  • Building your fan base
  • Developing your product launch plan
  • How to organize a successful signing
  • Engaging media on a local and national level

Publishing experts often talk about how writing a book is only 10% of the work an author must do.

To quote Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson, the largest Christian publisher in the world, “No. A good book does not stand on its own. It is foundational, but it is not enough. In fact, it hasn’t been enough for at least two decades.” (Platform; Get Noticed In a Noisy World, Thomas Nelson 2012.)

The truth is publishing is changing and it is changing rapidly, there are more ways than ever for an author to be published.

  • Traditional publishing
  • Self-publishing
  • Co-Publishing/Partnership Publishing
  • eBook only publishing

There are pros and cons with each of these options and the truth is there really is no longer a wrong or right way to go about being published. What is going to determine the success or failure of your book is what is put into the marketing.

There are two arms to the marketing of any book — the marketing you do as the author and the marketing done by the publisher.

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 PUBLISHER MARKETING

– Retail: a publisher has an established relationship in place with key retail outlets allowing them to place a title in the retailers system and look to retail buyers for placement and promotion opportunities within the stores.

– Distribution: a good publisher will have a strong network of distributors. For ourselves this includes Ingram/Spring Arbor and Baker Taylor which are the largest in the nation this creates title accessibility to almost all book retail outlets in the nation. Outside of national distribution your publisher may also have international distribution that can open new markets that are difficult to reach as an author.

-Media: a publisher’s PR and marketing team will be able to pitch their authors to the appropriate print media, along with radio, and TV on a local or national levels, a publisher will also utilize their online and social media platforms to promote their authors, titles, media coverage and events.

The above is just listing a few of the key marketing elements a publisher can bring to the table.

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AUTHOR MARKETING

As an author your marketing needs to be able to stand alone meaning you are out there promoting and building a fan base and network of direct consumers.

Your marketing must also compliment aspects of the publisher’s marketing. As an example earlier in the year we ran a blog tour for author Carrie Daws’ fiction Romancing Melody, this was something that we arranged as a publisher but looked to Carrie to come along side us and promote the blog tour, pushing links to her followers and being available for any potential interviews.

The big question many authors have is “When does my marketing need to start”?

NOW! The sooner you can make a start the better.

Your marketing starts with your manuscript. If you are still in the process of writing your manuscript or even in the pre-submission or edit phase be thinking of how you can make your content more marketable.

Would someone want to highlight a passage on each page, would they want to share it with a friend? If you write with this in mind you’re going to have a marketable manuscript. Have quotable elements, these can later create sounds bites for media and sales pitches.

You will want to master your pitch. No one else can do this for you, it takes work but when you get a good pitch down and build confidence in your product, you will become the ultimate sales agent for your title.

Your pitch needs to be direct! As a publisher we receive a lot of title pitches with submissions. If your pitch says “My book is for males and females, age 7-99 that like to read.” STOP!! This will not help you on your way to getting an agent, publisher or selling books.

Pinpoint your customer, what are your competitive and comparative titles, what makes your book different? Why should someone want to read it? Think in sound bites. If you’re in the kitchen and the news is playing in another room, you hear a tease for the next story and it draws you out of the kitchen to see what is next. That is a sound bite, that is how you want your pitch to grab people.

Develop an online profile. I will go into this in much greater detail next week as we talk about developing your platform but as an overview your online platform is creating a social hub for anyone anywhere to connect and interact with you.

Thanks for sticking with me. We covered a lot of ground setting the base in this first post. I’d love your feedback, what have you been doing as an author or a perspective author to prepare your manuscript for the market?