Category: marketing

3 Top Tips, books, Her Royal Risk, His Majesty's Secret Passion, Leena Hyatt, marketing, Nas Dean, selling, Valentine's Day

How To Succeed with Blog Tours: Three Top Tips

christinahollis
Available from http://bit.ly/1ujX5zc

1. Decide what you want to get out of the experience: selling tons of books would be ideal, of course, but it doesn’t always happen. You also run the risk of overexposure if you’re a one-trick pony (see Tip 3, below). Concentrate on building and strengthening your on-line networks. Open a spreadsheet, and log the details of your number of followers, comments, and other details before you start. Make sure you provide the entertainment and information your followers are looking for in your pieces. If the totals on your spreadsheet increase after your blog tour, that leads to more satisfaction in the long-term than a temporary blip in downloads. You may never know whether a purchased copy of your book was read, but it takes positive, measurable action for a blog reader to sign up for your newsletter, or “like” your author page.


2. Get someone else to handle to admin. I work with Nas Dean, although other on-line assistance companies are available. Compare several before deciding which one to use. I’ve found Nas offers great value for money and has lots of contacts, so you get plenty of opportunities for networking. This spreads the word about you, and your work. A good admin person will arrange dates, and supply an idea of the material your host is looking for. An administrator will also arrange giveaways and competitions. Don’t leave everything to them, though: when your blogs go live, visit the pages to make sure things are running smoothly, and reply to all comments.

Available from http://bit.ly/1GQPIIq

3. Hide Your Message, So They Go Seek: Mary Stuart wasn’t in the business of selling books, so she only had the phrase “Philip and Calais” engraved on her heart. The three words branded on an author’s every organ should be “buy my book” although you should keep it in mind, rather than out in plain sight. Shrinking violets don’t sell many stories, but avoid veering from no promotion at all to becoming the most shameless self-publicist since P.T. Barnum. Make sure your cover art and buy links are there on every piece you submit, but be careful to include more than simple advertising in the content of those blogs. You want to engage, entertain and maybe even inform your readers. My first book for The Wild Rose Press, His Majesty’s Secret Passion, came out at the beginning of February this year. On the 14th of every month, I have a regular blogspot with Leena Hyat’s Authorsoundrelations. Of course, this ties in nicely with Valentine’s Day. Rather than do a straight “Buy my Book!” with links, this year I provided hints and tips on keeping your Valentine’s Day flowers fresh for as long as possible (you can read that piece here).  The information came from my flower-growing life outside of writing. The tie-in with His Majesty’s Secret Passion was that my heroine Sara was given a beautiful bouquet by a mysterious stranger.

Blog tours involve a lot of writing, but they are good fun. I’ll be scheduling another one in a few weeks to promote Her Royal Risk, the next book in my Princes Of Kharova series.  Visit my author page here on Facebook to find out more details about what’s going on.

competitions, Free Books, marketing, Promotion. Goodreads Giveaways

Three Ways To Get Yourself (And Your Work) Noticed…

christinahollis
By Warburg (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons
Bookstore In Florence

Even if you’re contracted to a big-name publisher, a writer’s life is no longer simply about plotting, characterization and dialogue. Typing “The End” is only the beginning. Nowadays, when it comes to writing books you have to “Tell them to go out and buy…” in the words of Tom Lehrer.
There are thousands of new titles put out by conventional publishers, small presses and indies every year. To make sure yours gets noticed, you have to connect with readers everywhere around the world. Here are three ways to get started–
WORD OF MOUTH: Book signings and personal appearances are always worthwhile, although traveling eats into writing time. Signed books sell well, but with the High Street in decline and libraries feeling the pinch you have to choose your pitch with care. Writers are often insular, so social networking online has become a great way to  meet and interact with readers. I love Twitter, Facebook and blogging. The main problem is, one thing so easily leads to another. Chats lead to exchanging links, which soon turns into surfing and Wilfing (“What Was I Looking For?”). That’s why it’s a good idea to set limits, and have dedicated burst of Tweet-time (or a regular  “Facebook five minutes”) and stick to it.
BLOG TOURS: Blog Tours are fun, and a great way to discover new sites and fellow readers (and writers). I used Romance Book Paradise to arrange The Weight Of The Crown Blog Tour for me. This meant I could hand everything over to the enterprising Nas Dean. I was then free to concentrate on writing my next book. Nas arranged loads of online play-dates, consisting of interviews and guest posts. Dropping in to answer comments at the various sites was a real pleasure. Nas collated all the questions, questioners and reviews. She also provided a detailed database of people who commented on my posts, so I could arrange the prize draws. And it’s not all one-way traffic: I discovered many great sites along the way, such as The Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills (love that name!)
COMPETITIONS AND GIVEAWAYS
Everyone loves something for nothing, and these are a great way to get your work and your name out into the public domain. Try using the #free hashtag on Twitter. Goodreads Giveaways allow you to offer copies of your book. Readers apply, and Goodreads select winners and then contact you  with details of where to send the books. I’ve used this to great effect. Keep your eyes open for small, easily mailed things to use as prizes: scented soap, key rings, notelets etc. If you’re offering prizes to an international market, check regulations and in particular, avoid food. I have sent out pots of home-produced honey, but only to winners in the UK (and in proper honey posting containers. Imagine a messy, sticky trail all across the Post Office!) Despite the rise and rise of the e-reader, bookmarks are still popular. Don’t forget to include your website details and email address on them, and your readers will have a permanent reminder of you.  
Tell me your favourite ideas for marketing, for the chance to win a little goody bag!
Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, marketing, Pomodoro Technique, Twitter, Writing

A Writer’s Life: Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn ….

christinahollis
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMetamodel_Linkedin.jpgFile URL: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Metamodel_Linkedin.jpgAttribution: By Jean-Marie Favre, LIG, University of Grenoble (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
By Jean-Marie Favre
…and Uncle Tom Cobley and all.
If you’ve dropped by my blog before, you’ll already know technology means nothing to me. My main aim in life is to tell stories. To my mind, settling down with a notebook and pencil or my Neo  is sheer luxury, but these days that’s just the start of the process. If your aim is publication, putting words on a page is only part of a writer’s life. You have to market yourself and your work, which takes time – time I’d rather use for writing.  
Getting your name out there and becoming “searchable”is seen as a vital career move  – but what happens then? As well as  blogs, websites, accounts with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,  author pages on Amazon (.com and .co.uk) and publisher’s sites are practically mandatory. All these pages need to be kept up to date, and that’s a continual work-in-progress. The net’s thirst for information is unquenchable, and the sea of snippets is immense. I love keeping up with gossip, so I Tweet regularly as  @ChristinaBooks. Once on-line for that, I find it hard to leave. The quick look at one site I’d intended soon stretches into half a hour of surfing far and wide. I now ration my time on line, so I can concentrate on writing. It’s difficult to break the habit of dipping in and out, so I set a target for the amount of work I’ll get done before I can have a session of idling on the net. This is where the Pomodoro (TM) technique mentioned in my last blog comes in useful. I work intensively for short bursts, then reward myself with a spot of site-hopping.
I’m still trying to find out exactly what LinkedIn is for, by the way. It seems to be full of interesting and like-minded people, but I’m not entirely sure why. Obviously there’s an employment-exchange element, but if someone endorsed my copy-typing skills I think I’d be more likely to refer them to an optician, rather than  offer them a job! 
How do you use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and the other social networking sites, and what’s the best thing your surfing has done for you?