Tag: marketing strategies

Experts Talk Marketing Strategies at Virginia Book Festival

virginia festival of the book At the Virginia Festival of the Book, this past March 23rd, several authors and experts talked about the best ways to build platform, as well as some specific marketing strategies. Last time we looked at platform building. Now, let’s look at marketing.

First and foremost, when it comes to marketing, think about trying to reach your reader. This is something that indie authors can do particularly well. Jane Friedman, former Writers Digest publisher who now teaches digital publishing at the University of Virginia, noted that traditional publishers have failed in gathering information about readers. “They’re selling to bookstores, so they don’t have these great email lists or insights into the market,” Friedman said. Authors can look more broadly at readers and try to reach them. Email is an especially effective way. Continue reading “Experts Talk Marketing Strategies at Virginia Book Festival”

Creative Marketing Ideas

Melissa Pearl - Dec AdMarketing doesn’t have to suck. It can be interesting and fun.

I don’t know many authors who love marketing. I, for one, would rather spend my time writing and editing. I wish the books would just market themselves. Unfortunately they don’t and this year I decided to have an attitude check and come at marketing from a different angle.

Now, before I launch into this post, I just want to share that my best marketing strategy so far has been to make the first book in my series FREE and then run a Bookbub ad. I have two full-length novel trilogies and I have used this strategy for both of them. It’s paid off big time and given my rankings an awesome boost, therefore giving me that extra exposure that’s so vitally important. Continue reading “Creative Marketing Ideas”

Measuring Up

When I first started out in this business I was advised never to talk about my sales numbers. I thought this was really good advice and have tried to stick with this as much as I could.

The one problem with this is that it’s hard to know where you’re at on the scale of things. Is that imporant? Well, sometimes I think it is. Looking at your ranking, comparing your books against others it can be quite motivating…but it can also be really depressing.

Out of all the groups I belong to, I share my sales numbers with one of them. We are a very close-knit unit and talk daily. We discuss everything to do with writing and publishing. I trust them and they trust me. So, in my opinion, this is a very safe place to be open about how my sales are going. Like I said, it can be motivating, encouraing and also depressing. Continue reading “Measuring Up”

Social Media and the Author

Is social media marketing simply a distraction from other, more productive activities, or does it work to move books?

You may have wondered this from time-to-time. There seems to be little correlation between your number of Twitter followers and your sales figures.

Most authors are not good marketers. We seem to either over-enthuse about our books, to the point we drive people away, or we are so meek we barely mention ever having written a book. We think to ourselves, isn’t that the kind of thing my 2,500 fans ought to know? Continue reading “Social Media and the Author”