Oct 17

If you need an expert, who do I recommend?

Authors, Uncategorized No Comments »

Writer on the Tracks | Stock Photo © Trevor Goodwin #2220146

Every week, I consult with small publishers and authors who are choosing to self publish their own book. As I have written about in previous posts (best time to be a writer, good company, build your house) self publishing is a lot like being the general contractor on your own book project. Each step of the process can be contracted out to free lance professionals. Unlike companies who offer self publishing packages, which are kind of a one size fits all approach, an author can choose the help they need ala carte, and many times get a better product while reducing their overall costs.

I have worked directly with most of these professionals, or have interviewed them about their experience and each has a track record of success.

Note: Snowfall Press does not benefit financially from any of these relationships.

Copy Editing

Cover Design

Typesetting:

Marketing Services:

Social Media:

Publicity:        

Expanded Retail Distribution:

E-book conversion:

Out of Print file construction/conversion: (scan physical book to printable PDF)

Legal (publishing and copyright):

There are lots of other wonderful professionals out there in these different areas. If you are an expert in one of these areas, send me a note. We love to help our authors and publishers find new people to work with.

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Oct 08

Authors can drive ‘discoverability’ with their books

Authors, Marketing, Retail, Uncategorized No Comments »

I ran across this information in a news post, put out weekly by Rob Eagar, owner of WildFire Marketing. He can be reached at Rob@StartaWildFire.com. In his post, Rob mentions being at a recent conference and hearing Kelly Gallagher from www.Bowker.com, comment on a survey that Bowker recently did. Here is what he said:

“A survey of 3,000 book buyers found that women, ages 30 – 44, (a coveted key demographic) discover new books in this order:

  1. In-person friend referral
  2. In-person retail store display
  3. Visit author website
  4. Review bestseller lists

What does this research mean to you?

  1. Create tools, such as free resources, that make it easy for people to tell their friends about you.
  2. Get published with a traditional publisher who can get you shelf space in the major stores.
  3. Build an effective author website.”

Of the three recommendations, both ‘1’ and ‘2’ are doable and the author is in the driver’s seat. What are ways you can help your ‘fans’ tell others about you?

  • Use Facebook to engage fans
  • Use Facebook to physically sell your product
  • Create contests and encourage your fans to share these
  • Give away content from your books
  • Engage your fans in the writing process – let them see your progress
  • Create a ‘street team’ of loyal fans who get access to special deals/content if they do certain things to help you ‘get the word out.’

Getting published by a traditional publisher is a great goal, but not something you can build your plan around. I call it the Field of Dreams strategy. Just writing the book doesn’t mean that people are going to come publish it, and eventually come read it. This solution is becoming increasingly difficult as the number of writers in the market continues to grow.

Learn to put your time and energy behind the things that you can control and that will pay dividends for you NO MATTER which publishing direction you might take.

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Sep 14

Like us and get a FREE book!

Social Media, Uncategorized 6 Comments »

For a limited time, Snowfall Press is offering a FREE book to everyone who comes and LIKES us on our Facebook page. This book is a nice, concise guide to some of the best advice I have learned in my 17 years of publishing. I hope it is helpful to you, and let us know what you think, and what you would add these seven secrets.

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Sep 12

5 Easy Facebook Fixes for Your Business, Social Media 101 for the Publishing Industry

Authors, Marketing, Social Media No Comments »

This is a guest post by Jay Echternach of Gotcha Marketing. Used with permission.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 5 years, you probably have noticed that your advertising dollars in newspaper, magazines, radio and TV have gained less and less traction with your existing and new clients. This is no surprise to a vast majority of us who have shifted our efforts to the larger social media formats like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

These forward trending and aware businesses jumped ahead of the curve and started posting content on these platforms and hoped for the best. The results, unfortunately, were and have been less then stellar. Fewer and fewer customers are following their brand and they are left to wonder if this new age of social engagement is just not a picture posting format for their wives and kids!

The reality is that well executed, social media IS the new frontier for engaging your customers, especially in the world of publishing. Self-publishing has grown exponentially in the past 5 years as waves of budding authors are now able to get their books in print digitally. Having lost (or avoided) the traditional publishing path, they are left holding-the-bag in terms of getting their book sold and marketed.

Many of these new authors and small publishers turned to the world of social media and began posting and looked for the orders to roll in…and they are still waiting! What happened then? Did the digital media world suddenly collapse before they got their message out? Quite the contrary as the social media world continues to expand with newer platforms like Pinterest, Wellwer and Xanga, which are bigger and bolder platforms with millions of daily users are looking for instant connections, resources or information that fits their lifestyle or needs.

These new stewards of content (first time or self-published authors) took the age old view of advertising (think newspaper ads dominated by feature or price messaging) and began posting this on their personal Facebook page. HUGE MISTAKE!

So let’s look at the 5 Easy Facebook Fixes for Your Business:

  1. Do not post business content on your personal Facebook page, set up a fan page. That allows you to install a fangate page to garner likes and get multiple eyeballs on your Facebook fan page quickly.
  2. Create a FREE offer (think e-book!) to acquire e-mail addresses of potential clients.
  3. Think 80/20 rule; 80% relational / 20% informational. Your clients like to see pictures of your family, grandkids or latest outdoor excursion!
  4. Post visual content Facebook and the web is a visual medium, post pictures OFTEN!
  5. Hire a fun, creative agency to handle your project. We know this seems like a shameless advertisement for hiring us, but really, your hands are full running your business on a daily basis. Additionally, just because your 15 year old daughter likes Facebook, does not mean she gets how to post daily to engage your clients!

The nice folks at Gotcha Marketing are web and social media guru’s and avid readers having spent many years in the publishing world. Let them lend you a hand in creating and developing your next marketing campaign. To follow Gotcha Marketing’s blog simply click this link: www.gotchamktg.com/blog.

Jay Echternach is a web marketing strategist with Gotcha Marketing, located in Portland, Oregon. Jay’s contact info: jay@gotchamktg.com or 503.967.5646.

 

 

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Feb 02

Blogging and social media is critical for any author

Authors, Marketing, Uncategorized 1 Comment »

I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with a local chapter of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) in Minneapolis called MN NICE (Minnesota Novelists Inspiring Christian Excellence). The topic was blogging, and the general consensus was that authors benefit when they blog. Blogging is a key ingredient to build a tribe of people who follow you and are the same people who are more likely to buy a book that you write.

Courtesy of stock.xchng.com and jaylopez

The group facilitators did a nice job presenting a list of tips for both new and experienced bloggers to consider.

Here is a short list:

  1. Blog regularly
  2. Create a schedule and stick to it
  3. Your blog should have a focus…people will expect certain things when they come to read it
  4. Create posts with intriguing titles that capture people’s attention
  5. Write quality content
  6. Allow people to subscribe to your posts
  7. Do not rant about the publishing business
  8. Find links that also draw people into the website
  9. Tag each post with key words for the search engines
  10. Use your social media to promote your blogs
  11. Highlight links within the posts
  12. Keep your page simple
  13. Keep your blogs short – between 500-600 words
  14. Comment on other writer’s blogs
  15. Participate in the conversation with people who are commenting on your posts
  16. Include pictures in the blog post
  17. Use easy to read fonts
  18. Host giveaways. Be unique
  19. Use analytics to gauge what works
  20. Use unique techniques like vlogging (video blogging) to create unique content

You may also be interested in some aspirational blog numbers posted by Amanda Luedeke, who is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. In her post, she says that authors should have 30,000 unique visitors every month on their blog. In addition, authors should have 5,000 Twitter followers; 5,000 Facebook followers; and if you are public speaker – you should be speaking at least 30 times a year to at least 10,000 people.

It only takes a spark, to get a fire going, and if you don’t start with something, you will also end up at the same place. Nowhere.

What other blogging ideas or suggestions do you have?

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Jan 26

12 Must Do’s When You Win a Book Award

Authors, publishing No Comments »
  1. Send out a press release announcing that your book has won an award.

    Courtesy iStockphoto.com

  2. Announce the award on all your social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc.)
  3. Send an email to your existing email subscribers announcing the award.
  4. Add the award information to the book’s website.
  5. Update all the online listings for your book (Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, CBD.com, etc.) to reflect that the book has won a prestigious award.
  6. Add the information to your media kit and update your author biography to state “award-winning author.”
  7. Order the award stickers from the award organization and apply them to your book covers.
  8. When you reprint the book, make sure you incorporate the award symbol on the front cover of your book.
  9. Add the book award announcement to your email signature.
  10. Put the award on your letterhead and business cards.
  11. Notify all the professional organizations that you are a member in.
  12. Hold a celebration party.

Reprinted by permission from the CSPA Circular, the monthly newsletter of Christian Small Publishers Association (www.christianpublishers.net). CSPA represents, promotes, and strengthens small publishers in the Christian marketplace. ©2011 CSPA

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Aug 02

You Don’t Get Authenticity from Association

Marketing, publishing 1 Comment »

This is a guest post…Jon Hirst is a friend and publishing coach.

Recently, I was on Twitter interacting with a person I follow. He had made a comment about how kids learn to be consumers from their parents – especially their tech-loving dads. I responded by agreeing and saying that my desire to have an iPad was probably not setting the right example for my children.

Later on that day, I received several automated tweets from people selling iPads. The messages offered special deals on the popular item. WOW! What a lack of context. These vendors were trying to influence me through a very organic tool – twitter – but since they did not listen to me, their message made them look silly and made me even less likely to give in and purchase an iPad.

The mistake that the iPad vendor made is a very common one being made in many industries today, including the publishing industry. Our consumer culture has taught us that we can get what we want by pragmatically utilizing the tools and techniques that are seeing success on a given day. That was true in modernity where progress pushed us to dehumanize our efforts and create things for the broadest, most generic audience.

Today we are in a liminal time—the doorway of a new era—governed by new rules. It is the Age of Context—an age defined by authentic communities in specific contexts that add value to each other in relationship. It is this new era that twitter, Facebook, and other tools were created for. However, many people from the last era are bringing their assumptions from a past era to these communities and tools.

What does that look like? It looks like my Twitter experience. I was engaging in conversation with a person about the negative impacts of consumerism, and an intruder into my community tried to get me to buy the very thing I was rejecting!

The publishing industry is doing the same thing. Many in publishing are entering into authentic conversations with generic sales pitches and slick marketing techniques. They are still living in modernity and creating/delivering products to consumers as if those rules still applied. So when they see new tools, they think they can set up a username and password or speak with the right words and get around the process of engaging in conversation and joining the community.

The challenge is that authenticity doesn’t come by association. You have to be an authentic participant in community to be accepted and given the right to share about your passions, vision, products, services, etc. And more importantly what you bring to the conversation must be a fit for that context.

It is a dynamic and organic process – which means it can’t be automated or defined by a focus group. Book publishers who will succeed in the Age of Context will develop authentic voices for the causes and communities that they seek to serve.

As they do this, they will then be able to engage those audiences with the ideas in their author’s books, and I am convinced that the audiences will respond. So no more email blasts to millions of purchased addresses . . . no more generic catalogs of products . . . no more gimmicky radio spots. As publishers build authentic voices, their books and messages will become focused on specific audiences and the interaction between the idea and the community.

So are you engaging authentically in the communities that represent your readers?

Jon Hirst

Co-Founder of Generous Mind LLC – a think tank helping thought leaders be generous with their ideas.

www.generousmind.com

www.twitter.com/generousmind

http://generousmind.blogspot.com

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