Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

How to Boost a Post on Facebook

Facebook LogoFacebook offers several ways to advertise services and products. In 2013, guest Nickie Storey-Bailey told us how to use Facebook ads to garner more “likes” for our author pages. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to boost individual posts to get them in front of more people.

I don’t have an author page, but I do have a page for my small publishing company. Each time we publish a new book, I post about it on Facebook and wait for approximately three people to see the post, two of whom are the author and me. Thanks to Facebook’s always-changing algorithms, it’s nearly impossible to get eyes on our pages and page-posts these days without paying for it. Thankfully, it doesn’t have to cost a fortune.

Post your status update first, and then click on the “Boost” button (red arrow below). Continue reading “How to Boost a Post on Facebook”

New Book Promo Sites, Blogging, Freebies…

book-promotion-megaphone-1480342_960_720As we constantly search for ways to introduce readers to our work, a few opportunities have recently crossed my path. There are two new promotion sites that look promising, Amazon have added Prime Reading to their Prime program, giving away your product seems like it could be advantageous once again, and there’s another outlet where you can blog.

Here are my findings. Continue reading “New Book Promo Sites, Blogging, Freebies…”

Authors Should Find a Mailing List Service to Meet Their Needs

mailinglists2_newsletterLast month I talked about using InstaFreebie to build an author mailing list. This month, I thought I’d discuss finding a mailing list service to meet authors’ needs.

While authors could just send newsletters from their personal email addresses, most don’t. Generally, personal email companies frown upon their members sending massive amounts of email to people, and will sometimes suspend the account for being a spammer. So, people tend to go with mailing services. In addition to allowing an author not to be labeled a spammer, mailing services provide a wealth of data about the emails sent. They tell the sender whether the emails were opened, which links were clicked, and who unsubscribed. Continue reading “Authors Should Find a Mailing List Service to Meet Their Needs”

The Next Seven Book Reviewer Complaints

Mistakes authors makeEveryone had so much fun with the last seven complaints I had while reviewing books, I thought I’d give them a chance to get right down to some more. Some are a bit esoteric, but when a reviewer is really busy and looking for an excuse to go on to the next book, a few of these will do the trick every time.

8. Information Dump

This is feedback from everyone in comments on the earlier post. NEVER, EVER, EVER bore the reader with an Information Dump. I know you need us to know the whole life story of the main character, but we don’t know we need to know it, so why read it? So we put your book down after Page three.

When is an information dump not an information dump? Never. The only time information is okay is when we don’t notice it, or, best yet, when we want the information. If you can set up a situation where the reader feels like, “Why is he doing that? WHY is he doing that? WHY IS HE…? Oh! That’s why!” then you’ve got it nailed.

Part A: Developmental Errors Continue reading “The Next Seven Book Reviewer Complaints”