Book Landing Pages Spare You Headaches and Irritated Bloggers

Happy Monday, everyone! So, today's post is because I've seen a number of bloggers over the weekend talking about last minute postings showing up in their email inboxes and how it annoys the crap out of them. When given less than a day to put up a post and make it pretty, giving it to them 24-48 hours ahead of time just isn't kosher. It chains them to their blogs and email inboxes. Worse, they may simply not see it in time.

Guess what?

You just missed out. Plus, you managed to annoy bloggers that are working for free and only trying to help.

As I've always said, make it EASY for people to share your stuff. This isn't hard.

So, to help you help them, today is all about book landing pages. Get those pencils ready, and let's get going!

A book landing page is any page that showcases your book and provides buy links. It can be a page on your website or blog, but it needs to focus on just that one book. Make it pretty, and make sure there's not a lot of visual confusion.

Here are some examples of landing pages:

This is from the Frayed Fairy Tales website.

This one is from Alessandra Torre's site.

And this one is from Geneva Lee's site.

As you can see, the things all these pages have in common are buy links, book covers, and info. There's not a whole lot there because there doesn't need to be. Keep it simple. If you do a web search for "book landing page," you'll get a ton of generic ideas on layout and such.

When you're making your HTML to send to your bloggers, send them the link to that page on your blog or website (shortened with bit.ly so you can track the clicks) instead of waiting for a purchase link.

On release day, go update your site BEFORE time for those posts to go live. It's so much easier to update one website than a ton of blog posts.

Save yourself time and emails, and save your bloggers the stress of rushing. They'll thank you and be much more likely to share your stuff in the future.

I'm just going to add my own little note to go along with the above. I feel like it's important.

When a blogger shares your release stuff, go to the blog and type out a quick thank you. This goes for shares on social media, too. It takes time, YES, but it's worth it. They work hard, and they don't get paid for what they do. Show that you appreciate them. It matters.

Okay, off my soapbox for today.

Anything to add?

Well, that's all for this edition, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Overhaul and New Topics

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Well, I did what I said I was going to. You now will find new topics on the Writing, Contract, Formatting and Other Tips part of my blog. There are two new sections to explore:

Blogging Tips and Blog Tours
Marketing Tips

I felt each needed their own page.

I also updated all the other pages with the links to various articles I've written over the last 12 months. There are a ton on the Writing Tips page. Woohoo! Viva la 2016!

Check them out and tell me what you think!

Are you looking forward to exploring all the new stuff happening around here?

Because I'm off writing, that's all you get here today. Be sure and check in Monday when I have my second news post of the year. Exciting times!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Marketing: Things I Learned by Working at the Telephone Company

Happy Wednesday, everyone! Today, we're talking about marketing and some things I learned from my time at two different telecommunications companies. Ready? Grab that pen and notebook and let's get going!

I was lying in bed this morning, my brain ticking away, and for some reason yet unknown to me, my brain attacked my past work experiences in the telecommunications industry. Yeah, okay, I was thinking about marketing and how different approaches yielded different results. For reasons of anonymity, I'm going to call them Company A and Company B. In both companies, I was a customer service representative.

Now, I worked for Company A in 2003ish. I had over a month of training before they'd even allow me to get near a real telephone and consumer. What I learned in training was how to provide customer satisfaction, and how to sell, sell, sell.

You see, Company A gauged performance on sales and disclosure. Problem solving was tickled, but we didn't get down and dirty with how to listen and respond to issues the customer was having. No, we were taught how to turn those issues into sales.

What was unique about Company A is how they taught us to approach the pitch. If you called in with an issue about having a prank caller, I would offer you XYZ product that would allow you to see who was calling and block them or offer you a number change (for a fee, of course).

When a customer called in wanting a cell phone, I was to listen and ascertain how fancy that phone offer should be. Was it someone who appreciated all the bells and whistles, wanted something basic, or wanted the latest and best thing on the market so they had a certain level of status socially? I then sold them a product based on their needs/desires.

Even if you called in and didn't want a cell phone, I was told to prompt you for a story about a scary experience where you had a flat or were worried about your teen. Then, in order to soothe your fears, I was to sell you a mobile device.

There were only three hard and fast rules: 

1. Don't piss anyone off (because a satisfied customer tells maybe ten people, but a dissatisfied customer tells anyone who'll listen).
2. Don't lie (that's lawsuit material right there). 
3. Don't hang up on the customer no matter what (see item one).

I worked for Company B in 2006ish. I had nearly three months of training, the last of which was done talking with actual customers while a coach sat nearby to answer questions or provide guidance, before I was allowed "out on my own." I was trained on how to make the customer happy and give accurate information.

Company B rated performance on customer satisfaction, problem solving, and accuracy of information given. Period. We were taught how to make our customers giddy.

This company's unique approach was not in the customer having the latest and greatest gadget or upgrade, but having the plan that was right for their usage. If you didn't sell anything, that was okay. They wanted people paying for exactly what they needed and no more.

Why? They were looking at it from a retention perspective.

You see, customers aren't profitable for at least two years. If you can't keep your customer around, you lose oodles of money. So, it was still needs based, but it wasn't about the upsell.

I was told to examine every customer's account and make sure they had the plan that worked best for how they used their phones. If that meant removing a product, then so be it. When you hung up, you knew Company B had your back and wasn't trying to price gouge you.

There were only two hard and fast rules:

1. Listen closely and provide the best customer service possible.
2. Don't get belligerent or hang up on the customer no matter what.

How does this pertain to book sales?

I'm getting there! Hang with me.

What hit me after I had a little while of contemplation was: Both companies were after customer satisfaction, but one focused on sales while the other focused on retention. Each method worked (they're both huge companies), but the difference in the people working there was astronomical.

At Company A, everyone in the office was on some kind of antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication.
At Company B, everyone was genuinely happy. Every single day.

So, here's what I'm getting at with my lengthy retelling:
If you create a novel that's well written, well edited, and tells a great story, you'll be able to sell it because the level of reader satisfaction rises. Those readers will keep coming back because they know you'll produce a great product and you care about their experience.

But you have to market according to why those readers need to read your book.

Marketing and selling are just phase one. Reader satisfaction is the biggest chunk of pie imaginable. So, focus on the reader and writing a book you know will bring them back for more, and you'll be selling oodles of novels in a short amount of time.

My question for you today is: Why does a reader need to read your book? Give me your best pitch in the comments!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Creating a Universal URL for Your Book on Amazon

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm going to show you how to create a URL that will prevent you from having to list all the sites on Amazon where your book can be bought, but will take potential buyers right to your book no matter where they live. How amazing is that?

Ready? Grab a cup of Jo and let's get going!

There are a few steps to this, so hang with me.

First, let's go get the ASIN for your e-book (if you already know how to do this, feel free to skip down).

Navigate to your book on Amazon (however you get there) and make sure you're on the Kindle version. Like so:

Now, go to the nav bar and copy the link you see there.

Paste into something like Word or Notepad so you can select a small portion of the text (I'm using Notepad here):

Select anything between .com/ and dp and delete it:

Now, select anything after / and delete that, too:

You now have the basic Amazon URL for your book. Like so:

But we want the ASIN! See that last letter and number string? This one:

Select it. That's your novel's universal ASIN. It's the same on every Amazon store. Hit Ctrl+C to copy it.

Now, go to A-FWD here. You should see this:

Go to the box marked GLOBAL ASIN. Click in it and hit Ctrl+V to paste.

Now scroll down and copy the link that's been created! You never have to post a billion links for your book if you want to reach international audiences. BOOM!

Easy peasy. You can use that link in all your marketing forevermore.

Did you know about this? Does it help?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Creating Your Own Blog Tour - Step Two - Creating Promotional Materials and HTML

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! Woohoo! Tomorrow is Friday! My excitement cannot be contained. If you were with me on Tuesday, you got the first taste of this little series on blog tours. Today is all about the graphics and the HTML, baby! I'll give you a list of posts with links, and we'll move on to the awesome stuff. Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

In this series:
How to Sign up Bloggers
Creating Promotional Materials and HTML
Finding Reviewers
Creating a Thunderclap Campaign
Throwing a Facebook Launch Party

I'll update the links on all the posts each day so you can find your way around. Time for the gravy!

First of all, if you don't have a way to create teaser images, you'll need to get one. Many, many people just use a book cover, and that's fine and dandy. But, if you want to look a little snazzier, here are a couple of tools you can use:

FREE
Gimp (there's a learning curve. Tutorials can be found here -- I also suggest downloading directly)
PicMonkey (the ever awesome Sarra Cannon has a tutorial on how to use it here)
Tagxedo - Word Cloud Maker
Canva

PAID
Adobe Photoshop (there's a learning curve here, too)

Gimp is close a close sister to Photoshop, so I'll give you a little walkthrough here in a minute. Right now, you need to go grab a photo to use. Please don't use photographs illegally! There are a couple of great sites with FREE public use images, and a couple that aren't too expensive to purchase digital rights to. Please, don't get you or your bloggers sued. Here's a list:

FREE
Free Use Photos on Flickr
Morguefile
Free for Commercial Use

PAID
Dreamstime
123rf
RedBubble
Bigstock
Dollar Photo Club

Remember, when buying or downloading an image for a teaser, you usually want the smaller version so it's not a webspace/loadtime hog.

Now you may want to get a new font that fits the look and feel of your book, yeah? Here are some free font sites (please look at the licensing on EACH font you plan to use):

Dafont
Fontsquirrel (these are 100% free for commercial use)

Of course, free fonts come with their own issues (like not being very clean), but I'm trying to do this on a budget here. If you think you may want to purchase a font, do a search for buy fonts. You'll be overwhelmed quickly.

Now, let's get into creation! I'm gonna use a teaser I already created, but my screen will look a little different because I'm in Photoshop.

Be sure you've installed any fonts you downloaded before you begin, and your images are somewhere you can locate them quickly.

Open Gimp and choose file--open.

Find your image and open it.

Look for a good place to put the text. I darkened the bottom a little with the burn tool.

Select the type tool and choose your font, then set the color.

Click anywhere on the image (you can drag the type once you add it), and type in your text.

Position the text and add some little colored bits to make some of the words stand out (play with it--don't be skeered)!

Add the book title somewhere!

Save that puppy in a folder titled "blogtour_titleofbook_documents" and name it "titleofbook_tourpackage_teaserimage"

You're ready to rock and roll!

Now, some people will want plain text while others want HTML. This is easy to do! Follow these steps:

• Type out your entire text in a new blog post (leave out links for now).
• Hit Ctrl+a, then Ctrl+c.
• Open a notepad or Word document.
• Hit Ctrl+v.
• Type in your links where they go.
• Save the text document in your tour folder as "titleofbook_tourpackage_plaintext" and close it.
• Add your images (book cover and teaser you just created) and your hyperlinks to your blog post.
• If you're using Blogger, click the HTML button on the top, left-hand side.
• Hit Ctrl+a, then Ctrl+c.
• Open a NEW Word or notepad document.
• Hit Ctrl+v.
• Save it in your tour folder as "titleofbook_tourpackage_HTML" and close it.

You're all done! Now you can send your package to the bloggers, and they can create magic.

How easy was that?

Don't worry, I know it seems like a lot right now, but soon you'll be an old hand at this. Tomorrow I'll go into how to find reviewers for your book.

Was this helpful? What didn't you already know?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

BookBub and Favorite Authors

Happy Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm gonna talk about something I got in my e-mail yesterday that might just flip the way BookBub does things on its head. If you're ready, grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Are you a subscriber to BookBub? If not, why is that?

It's been said that one BookBub ad can launch you from zero to hero overnight. But they're picky about the authors/genres that get featured. I know authors who've taken this route, and they say it changed their career.

Now, it seems as though there's yet another way to get "in" if you haven't already.

I'll get to that in a moment; first, I'm gonna tell you what BookBub is if you haven't heard of it.

If you like free and discounted books that have great Amazon reviews and an author with a strong backlist of titles, BookBub delivers that to your inbox once a day.

Readers can find e-books like Prey by Michael Crichton (I've read this and it's an awesome book), for just $0.99 rather than the $9.99 it usually costs, without having to hunt those deals down or make guesses, with a free subscription. This is one of the deals I saw on the site today. You tell BookBub your favorite genres, and they tailor your e-mail to your tastes.

Authors can be included in the daily e-mail for a fee, after they submit the book and get approval by the BookBub team.

Here's the link to sign up as a reader: Join BookBub.

A team of folks at BookBub research every book submitted to see if it'll be an excellent fit for their reader base. If yes, they notify the author and the book is included in the ad. If no, they decline the offer and move to the next title on the list.

But what if an author has a huge fan following on the site? Don't you think that might just influence those folks doing the choosing one way or the other?

Now, you can follow your favorite authors on BookBub. There's a simple search and follow system (I sought out a number of Indies to see if they were on the list, and I found them with relative ease).

You see where I'm going with this, don't you?

If you're considering a BookBub ad, you might want to cinch the deal by having your fans (who are subscribers to the daily list) go add you as a favorite author. Why? Well...

Say I have a novel that's usually $3.99 on Amazon, and I want to discount it to $0.99 for three days. I've published twenty books to date and most have at least ten reviews above three stars. But another author who has the exact same deal and backlist stats also submits a book to be included in the ad.

How do the folks doing the picking make a decision between the two?

If I have two hundred people who've added me to a favorite author list, and the other submitter has only fifty, which author do you think will win that tossup?

Yeah...

So, it may behoove you to ask people to add you to their BookBub favorite authors list. Now. Before the site is flooded by others doing the same.

Here's an easy, step-by-step list to share on your own blog or social media that can help you guide your readers to listing you as a favorite author (feel free to share this snippet, and shoot a link back to this post for your author friends):

• Sign up for BookBub here
• Decide your preferences
• Go here and add your favorite authors
• Click save

Did you add your favorite authors yet?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Book Backmatter

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Today, I'm gonna talk a little about what you need to do in your book's backmatter. Yeah, that stuff that comes after the novel ends. So, grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Open up that document that contains your book. Pan over until you get to the end. What do you see?

For most authors, you probably see something that looks like this:
About the Author:
K. Littlegross is...

Then maybe social media links.

After that...?

How about we change the way you think about your book's backmatter. Everything that comes after the last page of the story is considered backmatter. If someone just read all the way through your book, chances are they like your writing. If they didn't, they would've quit reading a long time ago (unless they're just one of those people who can't stand not finishing something they started).

Let's use that to your advantage, shall we?

On the FIRST page after your book ends, try adding something like this:

"Thank you for reading my (novel/short story/serial/etc...). I hope you enjoyed it. If you wouldn't mind, would you kindly leave a review? Not only does it help others gauge the book's worth, it also helps me know what I did right and what I might be able to do better. Readers are the reason I write! I love hearing from fans."

Give them a way to subscribe to your newsletter and tell them why they should. Do you do exclusive giveaways in your newsletters? Mention it! Or, ask them to like your amazon author page. Don't forget the LINK!


Now, here are a couple of other things to include before your About the Author page:

• An excerpt from another work of yours (don't forget the sales page link at the end!).
• An excerpt from a fellow author in the same genre (don't forget the sales page link at the end!).
• Acknowledgements (I suggest putting this in the back so it doesn't interfere with the sample percentage).

These are things to include on your About the Author page:

• Your author photo (resize to small [72dpi], please)
• Your bio
• Your bibliography (don't forget to link them to the sales page!)
• Perhaps a review quote or two
• One synopsis from a book in a similar genre you've written
• Awards you've won for writing
• How to find you on social media
• Another request for that review

Why should these things be in this order? Because a reader will get bored wading through author "stuff" unless they've become super fans.

You'd be surprised at how much difference these little things make. Remember to update past books when you publish something new. It isn't difficult, and it'll keep your fans coming back for more.

How many of the above do you implement now? Were you aware of what you could do with the back of your book? Tell me about it!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Marketing Plans

Happy Tuesday, everyone! I know you've probably heard the term Marketing Plan a billion times, but do you really know what it means to have one? Do you even know what a marketing plan is? Well, today I'm gonna do my best to lay it all out there. Heck, you might even get a handy checklist by the time it's over. Grab those pens and notebooks and let's get going!

Definition of Marketing Plan (from Wikipedia):
Marketing strategy is the goal of increasing sales and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Marketing strategy includes all basic and long-term activities in the field of marketing that deal with the analysis of the strategic initial situation of a company and the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented strategies and therefore contribute to the goals of the company and its marketing objectives.

In author layman's terms: Marketing Plans are goals you set for the launch or publication of a novel, and it includes details on how you'll keep it selling long term.

You need a marketing plan so you don't just throw your book out in the world and hope it hits someone who might enjoy it. Yeah, I've done this. I imagine you have, too.

So, let's go over the things you need to think about when you're halfway through your novel and the things you need to answer once it's off to the editor. You can do these things while you work on your book!

Grab a sheet of paper (if you haven't already) and write down the following questions:

1. What's my book about?
2. What genre is my book?
3. What age is my target audience (Don't write all - be specific)?
4. Will more males or females enjoy my book?
5. What other books will they have read?

Now that we have those questions down, let's go into some channel specific stuff. Next:

1. Where does my target audience hang out?
2. What social media do they use most often?
3. What activities do they enjoy?
4. Who would they most likely get a book recommendation from?

Let's say my book is about a young skater boy trying to escape the oppressive dictatorship his family has endured for hundreds of years. Genre is young adult urban fiction. Target audience are males between the age of thirteen and seventeen who've read Outsiders. They hang out at skate parks, hip coffee shops, and restaurants like McDonald's after school. They'll read books suggested by friends or forced by teachers.

Make a list of things you can do to get your book in front of those readers. Be detailed. Examples:

Advertisement:  I'll put an ad on my car that appeals to skateboarders and go to McDonald's every day for an hour to have a coffee and write for an hour. My car will be parked in the lot in a highly visible area. I'll put free bookmarks at every hip coffee shop within a fifty mile radius of my house and replenish them weekly. I'll put an ad on the local teen radio station with my blurb.

Social Media: I'll post images of skateboarders doing cool tricks with a link to my book and a twenty-five word blurb every week on Instagram. I'll use Twitter to increase hits by having my photos auto-tweet.

And so on. Also, write down what you'll do with folks you know. E-mail list, friends and family, etc...

After you've done all of the above, create your launch plan. Start four to six months out. It should look something like this:

24 Weeks out -

• Schedule author interviews with blogs
• Start posting to social media about what's coming
• Blog about writing the book

16 Weeks out -

• Finalize list of bloggers willing to help (yeah, they schedule way ahead of time)
• Add the book to Goodreads with a release date

8 Weeks out -

• Have cover designed
• Order swag and vehicle imagery
• Contact radio station

6 Weeks out -

• Send book to beta readers
• Ask for ARC reviewers

4 Weeks out -

• Send book to editor
• Schedule Facebook party and collect giveaways

and so on.

As you can see, it's a long and arduous process to properly launch a book.

I found a couple of apps that may help you along the way! They're all about creating a business plan.

Get them here for iPad and Android. They're called: MyBizPlan and MarketMyBiz

How do you plan for a launch? Share!

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Facebook Pages Gives You Insights to Your Fans

Happy Tuesday, everyone! What I have for you today is gonna make you jump up and down and squeal. While poking around Facebook one day, something interesting caught my eye. You may know how it works, and you may not. I know I'd never even paid attention to it. Well, you can bet I'll be looking a lot more closely now. Grab a cup of coffee and let's delve into this thing called Facebook Page Insights.

You know those e-mails you get each week with your page stats? Yeah, the ones your eyes glaze over when you open and you promptly delete? You're aware it's great information, but who has time to care? Well, those are insight snippets. It's a tiny look into some of the data Facebook is collecting about the folks who interact with your page, and you need to care. But they give you oh so much more if you know where to look.

Open Facebook to your main news feed and look on the right-hand side:

See that thing titled Recent Posts? Look at the bottom. Here:

Click it, click it! You'll get something that looks like this:

Oh, but wait! Our fun is just getting started! Look at the bottom again where it says See All:

Yeah! Now, click that one and be amazed at what you get. Should look something like this:

Holy Information Overload, Batman! Wait! Don't get your knickers in a twist and start crying just yet. I know it's a lot to take in, but let's get to the juicy stuff so your brain doesn't seize up. Scroll down to where your posts are displayed and look at one that's performed well. You can tell by the length of the pinkish bar under the Engagement heading. Mine is a post on Rachael Brownell.

Click the post text, and you'll get this. Yours won't have Rachael's smiling face, but we can't all be cool!:

Look at all the tasty information your brain has to analyze on the right side! As you can see, that post got 12 likes, comments, and shares. It even goes as far as telling you exactly how the post was engaged with. Wow. Let's look at another one where I did a flash giveaway:

As you can see, this post did way better. Most fans will engage if there's something in it for them. I gave away two copies of Fractured Glass. It kinda went bananas. Let's go back to the Rachael post and click Boost Post. Here's where you can use Facebook ads if you see a certain post is doing well and think more people might enjoy it.

But, that's just a quick foray into the world of Facebook Page Insights. Once you close the popup window, take a look at the top of the page and go bananas with your clicking finger. Check out all the tabs!

This lesson only went over the Posts tab. Can you imagine what secrets the others hold?

What are you waiting for? Go find out!

Did you know about this nifty feature? If you did, how do you use it?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Scheduling and Planning for Maximum Efficiency

Happy Friday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm sharing with you a little tip I read over on The Book Designer. If you aren't familiar with that blog, go check it out right now. Joel is a wealth of information on self publishing, book formatting, book covers, and typography. It's worth your time to browse around.

Anyway, one of the posts last week was about planning your blog posts (they were talking to market a book, I'm talking just planning). I used to do this, and seem to have fallen off the wagon since the move. Actually, everything has kinda been bananas around here since the move, UtopYA, and changing the kids' bus times and stuff around. I've been in headless chicken mode.

Why? Because I didn't take the time to re-schedule my life. To be fair, the kids did just go back to school a couple weeks ago, and I didn't know what time buses would run, etc...

I don't have that excuse anymore.

So, scheduling it is! You all know how much I love schedules. I've written about scheduling your day down to the minute so you're able to be more productive, and there's a post here about scheduling your social networking time so you can hit everything in a week. I even went as far as restructuring my schedule here once I got where I wanted to be search-wise.

That schedule has now been printed off and will be used to create a schedule like the one I shared on ChaBooCha (first link above). I'll also be scheduling in my editing/proofreading on a separate sheet so things are interchangeable when I have a job to do on that end.

Here's hoping.

How about you? Do you schedule like that? Would you like to? What's stopping you?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Marketing Advice via Bella Roccaforte

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm continuing my post about what I learned from UtopYA Con 2014. I started it yesterday, but I'm interviewing for new editors over at INDIE Books Gone Wild and it's time-consuming. Apologies! First, a little bit of information about how I met Bella Roccaforte and what I learned from her. Put down your coffee (Gasp! Did I just say that?), grab your pens and notebooks, and let's get going; because this is going to be epic.

I met Bella at UtopYA Con and we quickly realized we're from the same area in Georgia (North Atlanta). Because I am who I am, I talked about everything marketing. Getting off the elevator, she turns and says, "You should go to the Amazon marketing panel tomorrow. I'll be there."

After all she told me over the previous hour, I would've broken an ankle to get to that panel. So, I went. It wasn't long before Bella found herself ushered to the front table by the moderator.

Things I learned:

• Stay off your book's Amazon splash page. Every click that doesn't equal a sale, gets put into the algorithms (not in a good way).
• Don't make the first book in a series free until you've written at least three. This gives you a loss-leader that starts your sales funnel.
• Keywords matter. Don't hunt for your Amazon keywords in Google (not the same search engine, ya know?).

Pretty cool, right?

Now, most Indie authors have day jobs or other things they do besides writing. Bella happens to be an SEO analyst. After the con was over, she shared the following post with us:

Links that Every Indie Author Should Know

You must go check out that post. You can thank me later.

What was the last thing you learned from someone when you weren't intending to?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

A Look at Blog Tour Companies

Happy Thursday, good people of the blogosphere! Not a lot of lead-in today, because this post will be a long one. Warning you now so you don't get your knickers in a twist over it. Of course, I imagine a good number of people will be rankled by what I have to say below. Hopefully, my words will make you stop, think, and spend your money wisely or reconsider the way your tour company works to truly provide the promotion your authors need. Grab your pens and notebooks and let's get going!

First of all, let me say I won't be quoting prices from any particular blog tour company. We'll use my fictional one called A-1 Super Great Fantastical Wonderbar Blog Tours (A1S). I did a search and they don't exist as of the date this post is going live.

Now, A1S offers a tour that's all inclusive for $300. This money gets you:

• 1 Month of Promotion
• 30 Tour Stops
• 10 Reviews
• 1 Facebook Party

Your other 20 stops will be guest posts or author interviews. Great! Sounds good to have 30 blogs feature your book over the course of a month, right?

Let's look at the numbers.

A1S has 15k followers on Twitter. 250 people subscribe to their blog. 12k people like them on Facebook. Seems like a pretty good deal, huh?

But... Come on, you knew that was coming.

How many of those followers are readers of your genre? Better yet, how many of those followers are readers at all? Even more intriguing, how many of those followers are readers hungry for exactly what you're offering?

My guess is, most of them are authors who have previously used the service OR are tour hosts with the company and not your target market: readers of books. My second guess is, you'll either get 1 or no posts on their blog. Most often, Tweets are marked #BookTour. I don't know about you, but I glaze over those when scanning my feed.

Before I jump ahead, I'm gonna break down what you've paid for above and show you why there's a flaw in the system.

• 1 Month of Promotion - This includes all the items listed above on various blogs. I've learned (from speaking with other authors) that you oftentimes appear on the same blog more than once. And you get, what, one tweet a day? Oh, my bad, you get two.
• 30 Tour Stops - 10 of these stops will be reviews so no work there. But now you have to come up with either a guest post, an interview, or an excerpt from your book for the other 20 days. All of these are things you have to provide. So what? Well, if it takes a day away from your writing and there's no return (I'll get to that in a moment) you just wasted a whole day. Besides that, there's no guarantee these blogs target your genre of book or that the blogs have been alive more than a year (do you know the statistics for blog life?).
• 10 Reviews - Reviews are an Indie author's life blood. I get it. But if that review doesn't get posted to Amazon, what good is it doing you? A review that sits on a blog, stagnating, rotting in the archives, doesn't do anyone any favors. Oh, and those reviews can be any star rating. While I admire honesty, the tour companies don't guarantee they'll match your book with bloggers who prefer your genre. This could be an EPIC fail.
• 1 Facebook Party - Really? What are they gonna give away? Free copies of the book you sent? Swag (you have to mail)? Paperbacks (again, that falls to you)? And people show up because they're hungry to win something and go away, never giving two sh*ts about you or your book. It's likely the partygoers are the blog tour hosts.

What's the flaw? These posts aren't targeted. You could have a book about witchcraft that ends up on a Christian blog. Do you really think their readers are going to rush out and buy your book? Is it conceivable to think the blog owner would write a glowing review? No. No. NO!

Another problem with touring blogs is: You can't guarantee your book will land on a blog with a good following of readers. If the blog hosting your book only has 13 followers... Well, you can see where I'm going with that. And is it crazy to suggest maybe those "followers" are previous authors who appeared on that blog? I think not.

Don't even get me started about those tour hosts who don't post when they're supposed to. Dear me...

But, Jo, it's about the exposure!

Really?

Let me clear that up for you with some numbers. We all love numbers because they don't lie.

• 30 stops where each blog has maybe 100 people that actually read their content (and that's really a generous number). Okay, that's 3,000 right there. You're right. It is. 3,000 random, non-targeted people who may or may not be readers. Most likely, you'll be lucky to reach 10 readers of your specific genre who actually read the content on one of the 30 blogs your book appears on. Oh yeah, I forgot you're on some of those same blogs more than once. Nevermind. See my point?
• 10 reviews that could all be one or two stars and slam your book into the nether. This is gonna hurt you more than it helps. In this case, you PRAY those reviews don't hit Amazon. Yikes. If the tour host does post the review on Amazon, you've provided a copy of the book. There's no "Amazon Verified Purchase" on the review, and the reviewer has to state that you gave them the book. *shifty* So your 4.42 star average on 35 reviews (20/5*, 10/4*, 5/3*) could plummet to 3.8 stars with just a couple of bad reviews and you have no control over it. As a matter of fact, if your tour company isn't targeting people who enjoy your genre, the likelihood of that happening increases ten-fold.
• 1 Facebook party that gets you 10 additional likes on your author page by the hosts of the tour company and a lot of stuff to mail out afterward (does the money ever stop leaving your pocket?). Totally worth it. Not. Even if you get 1k new likes, with the way Facebook has changed things up, you'll be lucky to reach 5 of those people.

After day one, your exposure post sits on that blog, buried day after day by new content created. Unless someone searches specifically for your book, they probably won't stumble upon it.

And don't tell me you aren't out there through the whole tour, marketing your rear end off to drive traffic to those blogs. Oh man, are we crazy or what?

After all that, I'm now going to hit you with something you may not want to think about. But I need you to think about it. How many sales did that tour get you? How did you go about tracking those sales? A good rule of thumb here is to use a specific, shortened link with a marker attached. Use bit.ly for this if you have to so you see with your own eyes I'm not blowing smoke up your bum. Chances are, you'll get maybe 20 clicks.

Oh, wait! Most tour companies won't let you send in your own links. Why? Because they add their affiliate code to them and they probably don't want you tracking those clicks anyway. If you still feel you must tour, avoid companies that won't let you use your own links. They're in it for THEM, not for you.

I have a couple of friends who recently paid for blog tours and I'm going to share a little of their experience with you.
Friend A has a very popular YA book with great reviews on Amazon. This friend did a month long tour much like the one above (sans FB party). While the book was on tour, it was on sale for $0.99 (regularly $2.99). A number of great reviews were written, with maybe half of them making it to Amazon. A couple of the tour hosts never posted about the book (most tour companies say they aren't responsible for this if it happens... Like HELL they aren't).

Guess how many sales this author got over the course of the tour?

NONE. That's right, not a single one. And that book hit Amazon's top 100 overall during its free period. It has a very high rating and not a single one or two star review on over 20 reviews. Plus, it's in a popular genre. Go figure.

Friend B has another popular YA book that's been hailed as unique, fascinating, and well written. This one also did a blog tour recently. At least 10 or so reviews went up on blogs during the tour. Very very few made it to Amazon.

Want to take a guess at how many sales there were? This book is also well reviewed with a very high average.

Now that I've completely disheartened you, it's time to tell you where your money might be better spent.

I have no personal experience to back this up with, but I know many people who've used it and they swear by it. Plus, the company isn't afraid to show you their statistics. Best of all? They target people interested in your genre. There's also no additional work needed from you beyond producing a great book! Holy crap!

Book Bub.

I'll say it again:

BOOK BUB.

Take a look at the prices here. Now scroll down to the Teen and Young Adult genre (which both of the books above are in). Look at the average sold numbers.

Why does it work? Because they're in the business of connecting readers to the books they want. Their target market isn't authors.

Now that you know, what the heck are you waiting for? Again, numbers speak for themselves.

Blog tour companies would be wise to follow that business model. Build a list of blogs that target specific readers, have been around a long time, and who are trustworthy. Guarantee you'll put the author's book into the hands of people who enjoy their genre, and, for the love of all that's good, have some sales numbers to back up your business.

Rethink what you're doing.

I'm not compensated by anyone for my thoughts and opinions on my blog. I'm just tired of seeing Indie authors waste their money. We don't have a lot to spare to begin with. Will I be gracing Book Bub with my business very soon? You bet your butt I will.

Guess what else? You have a pretty good author clique going, right? Why not organize your own tour if you want/need exposure? It'll take about the same amount of time and it's free.

I know that was long. I'm sorry. But I hope you were paying attention. I do speak my mind.

What have your experiences been? Did this post help? Leave me a comment and let's talk about it.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo

Flipboard

Happy Wednesday, good people of the blogosphere! Boy, do I have some amazing news for you today. Do you remember the Winter Author Blog Challenge and all that social media stuff we were talking about? If you have a mobile device, I'm about to make your millennium oh so much better! I've been holding off discussing it until now because I was waiting for their upgrade to be announced.

I got the e-mail this morning.

What is Flipboard? Well, it's a nifty little app that lets you keep all your social media accounts in one place and helps you find stuff you may be interested in. If you listened to my interview on Sandi Tuttle's radio show, you heard me talk about this awesome tool. If not, then you missed out. Sorry. Like I said, I was waiting to do a post on it until they updated to add this awesome feature I'm about to discuss. Let's get going!

Grab your mobile device, download the FREE Flipboard app, get all signed up with an account, and take a tour with me while I show you how to promote yourself!

Follow along carefully:

• Go subscribe to your own blog via RSS/Atom
• Add it to your Google Reader
• Open Flipboard and add your Google Reader as one of your tabs. Then follow the directions below:

See that little red bookmark looking thing on the top right? Click on it and choose your tabs from there. Right now, we're focused ONLY on Google Reader. So add that one.

Next, click on the green square that says Google Reader and you should get a page that looks like this but have all the blogs you subscribe to.







Click on the title at the top of the page and select feeds and folders.

Select your blog from the list.

You should now have a page that looks like this but with your blog posts showing.







Now we get to how this can help you. Flipboard just added the coolest feature ever: Magazines of your curated content. See those little + signs in the top right of each post? Click on one and create your first magazine with your blog posts. You should add a description and categorize it. Then, go add all your posts to it and make it public!

Others can now find your magazine and browse it with ease. Be sure your image is your logo or branding headshot. Boom! You just reached millions of potential new followers! Best of all, you can also add Facebook content, Twitter content, and many other things to your magazine that concern you and your brand! You may thank me now. Hehe!

Go curate for others, too. Remember, sharing is caring!

Did you use Flipboard before now? Did you know it existed?

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo