The past two weeks I’ve described how to determine your author name, purchasing your domain name, finding an internet service provider, determining who will host your site, and what web-site building software you will use. You may recall I strongly recommended WordPress to build your site. One of the reasons I like WordPress for author sites is because it IS possible to Do-It-Yourself with their… [Read More]
Last week I wrote about deciding upon your author name to determine your domain name. Once you have purchased your domain, the next step is stake out your own real estate on the internet. Before you build your author website, you will need to answer three questions. (1) Who will provide you with internet service? Internet service providers (ISPs) are those who bring the… [Read More]
Are you on the start of your journey to publication? Authors’ names are their brands, and satisfied readers exercise brand loyalty. They shop for titles by author name, and when they come across a real find, they recommend it to friends. Those friends do the same, and the chain continues. But a book is more than a cover or jacket. It is the embodiment of… [Read More]
Guest blog by Carolyn Porter, author of Marcel’s Letters: A Font and the Search for One Man’s Fate (Skyhorse, 2017). In the five months “Marcel’s Letters” has lived in the world, I have been honored to join ten book clubs, and I look forward to the half-dozen more who have arranged events for the coming months. The visits have been delightful. If I sound surprised,… [Read More]
Where should your book be reviewed? What literary journals and magazines should you submit excerpts or adaptations to? Which bookstore events will be worth your while? Are there podcasts or radio interviews you should book to promote your new release? These and other questions you may have when you begin to put together a marketing strategy are not easy to answer. Studying your comp titles… [Read More]
What should be in your digital toolkit for the business of being an author? Google Suite for your email. Do you wonder why your emails don’t get a reply? It may be they were never delivered. If your account is with AOL, Hotmail, or Yahoo, there is a strong likelihood if you send someone you don’t already have a connection with they will never receive… [Read More]
Who are your readers? They are not your family and friends. And don’t expect them to buy the book when it comes out. Unless they are in it. And that might not always be a good thing. Who are the people who don’t know you and will be pulled to your book enough to take money out of their pocket to buy it so they… [Read More]
In the past two years, the importance of Instagram for marketing books has grown exponentially. Readers, book reviewers, and now even publishers have adopted this new social media platform for marketing new releases. As of April 2017, there are more than 700 million users. And it is extremely popular with the millennials. If your audience is under age 35 or college educated, consider joining Instagram…. [Read More]
More than 1.7 billion people are active on Facebook. Fifty-three percent of them are female. The average Facebook user in the U.S. was 40.5 years old. These statistics help explain why it is one of the most popular social media platforms used by authors to engage with readers. But what happens when Facebook explodes with news about political scandals, natural disasters, celebrity deaths, or sports?… [Read More]
When your writing is published, expect to go public. Positive engagement with your audience is critical to the success of your book. Readers want to connect with authors. And writers like to hear feedback from their readers. During the last decade publishers have come to expect authors to create and manage their online personas on various social media platforms to promote and market their books…. [Read More]
