Posts Tagged ‘Beyond the Manuscript’

Beyond the Manuscript: Engaging Media on a Local and National Level (week 6)

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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:

Over the last 5 weeks I’ve really enjoyed sharing the Beyond the Manuscript blog series with you. For this final week I called upon our publicist Alison Storm to provide some practical tips for engaging media on a local and national level.

Engaging the Media

Local Media

For many authors local media will be the best resource for spreading the word about your book.

  • Highlight Local Ties: If you’re a Greenville, SC author getting a newspaper in Texas to care about your new novel is going to be a lot harder than getting the attention of the Greenville News. Think about what is going to make people care.

For Literal Lily, an Ambassador children’s book. The author’s mother-in-law illustrated the book. So rather than pitch the book itself, which doesn’t really have a news peg we pitched that it was a family affair and were able to book several interviews.

National Media

While booking a national show would be great, you may actually find that you sell more books after local media hits.

  • Think About News Angles: This is especially important for novels and children’s books. The author of Dancing From the Shadows has personal experience with autism and the novel revolves around the subject. So we used that as a hard news angle to pitch the media during National Autism Awareness Month.

Practical Tips For Contacting Media

Access Decision Makers: Find email addresses of decision makers. Do Google research and you should be able to find the person you need to contact. At newspapers this person is likely an editor. At a TV station it’s an assignment editor or producer. At a radio station it’s a programming director or producer.

Don’t Use Attachments: Copy and paste your news release into the body of the email. Many news outlets have spam filters and do not accept attachments.

Offer Free Review Copies: Offer to send the decision maker a free review copy. Don’t simply send a free review copy unless you’ve found someone who is interested. That’s just a waste of resources.

Time Your Email Correctly: Do not email your news release at the end of the day or it may get lost in the shuffle. TV stations especially have a lot going on just before show time and this is not when they will be most attentive to your pitch.

Follow Up in One Week: A week after you initially contact media outlets follow up. Include your original email in your follow up email and be very brief. Ask simply, can I send you a review copy or answer any questions? Alison says she almost always has the majority of her success after the follow up.

Don’t Get Discouraged: Don’t be surprised if you don’t hear back. You may send out hundreds of pitches and only get one response. Don’t give up. Craft a new pitch. Use a new angle.

Once You Book an Interview

Prepare and Practice: Do not wing it. This is especially important for live interviews when time is limited. List out the main points you want to cover. Practice your sound bite answers. For TV appearances, wear solid colors and bring your book with you.

Don’t Say “My Book”: It is amazing how many authors will do an interview and never say the name of their book. It may feel awkward, but it’s extremely important that you work in the title of your book several times throughout the interview.

Smile and Get Excited: If you aren’t excited about your book, why would anyone watching your interview be moved to buy your book?

Don’t Expect Media to Sell Your Book: We’ve had authors appear on programs that we thought would result in huge sales boosts and the response was minimal. Media should be used as a tool in your arsenal, but it’s not the only thing that will help your book sell.

What experiences have you had with media?

I’ve really enjoyed sharing a lot of the basics with you. My hope is that you find these tips helpful on your journey to publication and marketing. If you’re just getting started talk with us, we’d love to learn more about your work and find out if we’re the right home for you and your title.

Beyond the Manuscript: How to organize a successful signing (week 5)

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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:

 

For many authors a book signing is high moment in their career as a writer, they get to interact with family, friends and supporters and see the excitement and response first hand from those buying their book. With this in mind you want your signing event to be great!

Signing events are a big deal. If you have a good event managers will want you back and short list you for future events. The work you put in is invaluable.

Select a Time and Location

The first step is obvious, you will want to select a popular local retail store, preferably working with the manager and retail partner you’ve already connected with. When selecting dates keep your area in mind. Certain nights in certain regions or during certain times of year are not good. Think mid-week meetings, football season, local high school games. These are small details that can have a great impact on turnout.

 

Start Promoting

When a date is selected you want to start event promotion, there are many steps you can take to make your signing a success. Being strategic and paying attention to the detail are a big part of it.

  1. You will want to use the tools you have established. Create a Facebook event, invite all your followers. Make it open to public and encourage fans to share.
  2. Email your contact list, perhaps you already have a eNewsletter you send out, use this list and notify them of your event. If you don’t have an eNewsletter look into signing up for a service like MailChimp.This is a great service that allows you to professionally send and manage your email marketing and will avoid you’re email from being blacklisted or becoming associated with spam. Your eNewsletter is a great way to keep you front and center with your fans.
  3. Go old school and produce flyers or handouts, a good publisher will coordinate with you on this. Distribute them at church, among friends, leave copies at the bookstore. Some stores are open to using a quality flyer as a bag stuffer. Create an event poster, put them up at the store (with the manager’s permission), at coffee houses, church, give copies to friends and ask them to further distribute at the places they frequent.
  4. Reach out to your media list, see if the local paper will interview you and promote the event or perhaps you can get on a local breakfast show the day of your event. Use your well-developed pitch. Alternatively coordinate with your publisher to assist you in your media outreach efforts.
  5. While preparing the ground locally add your event to local event calendars. Many newspapers, cities and local news stations will have event calendars for free on their websites.

 

The Key to Success

We have put each of these elements into play for many events. As a case study lets take the title Healing Hearts. Earlier this year we had a major launch, we reached out to key regional magazines months in advance, we got an interview and it was circulated to 300,000 readers in a Dallas based publication. We held interviews with local affiliates of national stations. We created a Facebook event inviting hundred of followers. The author sent out emails and mailings to 500+ contacts and announced it among his contacts and at his church. Barnes and Noble advertised the signing on their website and in-store with posters. Our publicist was on the ground in Dallas to assist with media and sales. The event came around and we sold several hundred books and the event ran seven hours making it one of the largest events in this history of this specific Barnes and Noble store. Much work was put into this. The author worked extremely hard coordinating his personal promotional elements and we as a publishing house worked to tie the event and media together. Our efforts combine to make a great event. The volume of sales for this event may have been the exception rather than the rule however we have seen strong sales over and over when the above steps are put into action.

I share this to encourage you. Put in the hard work.

Also, don’t be afraid to be creative with your promotions.

 

Getting Creative with Promotion

Consider having a blog tour running up to the big event. Each blogger can post a review, link to the title and announce the event through their blog posts. You can then share each post daily through your social media in the run up to the event.

Ask the store (if an indie) to host a Google+ Hangout with you. This can be used to promote the event and store. For an indie store this can be a great way for them to get followers to their social media, they may even be willing to offer a gift card as a prize. Remember that stores are also looking for ways to get attention and if you show you care about getting them exposure they will appreciate it. A lead into a signing such as this also provides you with a media angel.

You also can be thinking of what kind of giveaway you can offer. It could be something as simple as giving away a handful of signed copies through your site in the run up to the signing or a free ebook for the first 10-25 sales at your event. This can be something to partner with your publisher on. Have the buyers email their book receipt from the event to the publisher and eReader type. The publisher could provide a download code.

 

Final Prep

With the big event about 10 days out, you’ll want to ensure stock is on hand. This seems like something you shouldn’t need to worry about however even the best stores can make a slip up and we find ourselves overnighting books. Avoid surprises, check up on the stock or have your publisher do this. It is also worthwhile having a plan in place seeing extra stock accessible should you sell out.

Finally, this is the one party you don’t want to be late for arrive 10-15 minutes early.

I’d love to hear about your first signing, what did you learn from it?

Beyond the Manuscript: Developing your product launch plan (week 4)

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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:

We’re now 4 weeks into this series and today we’re going to be looking at Developing Your Product Launch Plan.

Ideally the building of your platform should be in full swing while you’re writing and especially as you advance into publication.

As you move into publication you want to start working on your launch plan. This is very important. If you wait until the book is out then start planning you will have lost valuable time and opportunities.

Developing a launch plan starts with creating buzz.

You need to get people excited.

Why?……

Your book is coming out!! This is exciting, let people feel your energy and enthusiasm, you’ve put a lot of hard work into getting to this moment.

Use your social media, share updates of when and how your book will be available, publicize scheduled signings, readings, book festivals, conferences. Let your fans know. Offer your followers pre-release exclusives, this could be the ebook and print book bundled or personalized copies. You can partner with your publisher on this for joint marketing.

You will want to connect with retail. This is especially important in your home market, this should be were your biggest initial audience and personal sales come from.

Pick a strategic retail partner. You might decide you want to have the support of a local indie store or if your publisher has distribution into a national chain you may take this route. Many writers develop friendships with bookstore managers early on in the writing process so you may already have a store in mind.

Once you’ve picked a retail outlet you feel is central to the local success of your title make those all important introductions. You’ll want to connect with the manager, owner or CRM (community relations manager), share with them about your book (using the title, not “my book”), how you’d like to work with them on a local level for a launch party/signing. They may have questions so be prepared, as I shared in earlier posts you’ll want to master your pitch. This allows you to draw in the manager and get them excited, be prepared to tell them about your local reach, what you’ve been doing to build a following and most importantly be prepared to tell them how and when they can get the book. Is it nationally distributed through a publisher/distributor or is it a self-published title that you will be handling the distribution? If this is the case know your discount scales and terms.

Once you’ve established your local retail partner, link to them on your website. Plug them in your social media and connect with their social media, keep a close eye on what they are doing so you can make yourself available should they be doing anything locally that will help get your book out there.

Stay connected with the manager work with them on your local events.

When planning events you have three main categories you can consider:

  • Retail: this includes bookstores, gift shops, coffee houses
  • Non-Retail: covers churches, book clubs, libraries, schools and of course
  • Online: Google+ Hangouts, blog tours, giveaways

Each of these categories need to be explored and tested by you. You will find that you’re going to have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. If you plan wisely you can have each event cross promote another.

Think about your audience and where they will be likely to go.

The next step is creating a media database. A media database along with your retail contacts and fan base will become a go-to list for the ongoing success of your title and any future titles. You will want to compile a spreadsheet including:

  • Local TV and radio show producers
  • Local news papers and magazine editors
  • Local events calendars
  • Bloggers and reviewers

Do keep in mind national media likes several months lead time. National magazines around 3-6 months lead and national broadcast around 3 months lead unless it is breaking news. If you’re reaching out to local TV and Radio the lead time is not as essential.

Creating this database for yourself is going to take work but it is worth it. If you have a good publisher they’ll have reach into an extensive media databases and will pitch your title as they see appropriate. I do however recommend you make your own connections when possible and build on relationships with any that interview you. You never know when your subject matter ties in perfectly with breaking news.

Your platform is established. Your social media is active and working. You’ve got your pitches down. You have store contacts, media contacts and a launch plan created.

Next week we’re going to put this all into action and help you make your first big event a successful signing.

What retailer do you want to have your first big event at? Have you got a game plan in place to ensure a buying crowd is in attendance?

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

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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)

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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

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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?