We have all hear about buying ads on Face and Twitter. I have followed some surveys from different writers groups and the general consensus of opinion is don't do it. It just doesn't seem to work for books. I did take a coaching lesson from D.D. Scott, International best selling author and marketing coach - www.DDScottville.com She showed me a way to make Facebook work for authors and their books. It make perfect sense and we all should have thought about it for ourselves. Go where the readers are. I toiled away posting about my wonderful books on my Facebook author page for years. I paid for ads that went no where. I even had a shop on my page that cost me money and I sold nothing. Look at the genre of your book. I have children's books and adult mysteries. Let's take the adult mystery kindle version of my books. I went on my author page and searched eBook mystery readers. You get a drop down of several choices. I chose the one with the most readers, something like 10,000 readers. that where I posted about my Kindle book Broken Branches. I did this over the Halloween weekend because my story is set in Salem Massachusetts at Halloween time. I got a tremendous amount of downloads. Another thing KDP is they have a KDP Global Fund. The more eBooks that you sell and the amount of pages that are actually read put you in the running for a bit of this money. Right now it's over a million dollars. Now that's enough to get your marketing juices flowing. Something else I learn is bundling your books. I have four children's book in the Hayden series. I spent two days making them into one file to upload to kindle. I made a new cover and titled the bundle Hayden's Adventures on the Farm. Then I searched for children's eBook readers and again found sites with lots of readers. I posted to that site and got a few downloads. I'll do it again before Christmas. I usually post a free eBook and also mention another book that you pay for. It's a great hook for getting readers interested in your work. I'll be learning more and letting you in on the secrets of marketing your books. so check back and please leave a comment or a question. I
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Reviews for self-published authors like me are our only real way to know what you the reader thinks of our work. I have run across many people that have read one of my books and they say how much they really liked it and enjoyed reading it. They even passed it along for friends to read. While that is terrific and makes my day, I need to have it posted on Amazon.
Why post a review on Amazon? So others can read the review and decide if they want to order the book or not. If there is not one single review for a book then the person looking for that next good read will pass over a wonderful book just because they think, 'well no one has read this or it was so terrible that no one wanted to comment'. I love to read a book from a self-published author. There are some great books out there that never make it to a Traditional Publisher. Did you know that there are less than 400 agents that deal with the big five Traditional Publishing houses? I have also seen smaller independent traditional publisher springing up. Do I trust them? I'm reserving judgement until I know more about what and how they operate. I belong to several writing groups, Sisters in Crime is one. I very much enjoy reading my fellow members books. Another is the Sarasota Authors Connection. I don't read fantasy as a rule but was given a copy of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus. I started to read it and did not want to put it down. I will write a review on Amazon for this book with no problem. Writing a review takes about five minutes but means the world to an author. Did you know that the big name authors pay for reviews? Kirkus charges $495 for a review. I want review from real readers and if it's good, I'll do my happy dance. If it's not so good or down right terrible I'll dry my tears, pull myself together and learn from it and try to do better in my next book. I'm still learning my craft and I need readers to tell me how I'm doing as a writer. My last book, Honey Tree Farm - For the Love of the Bee Keeper's Daughter www.createspace.com/6227763 has not one review, yet I've been told it's my best work so far. So help us independent self-published authors out, try our books and right those reviews. We want to hear from you.
Reviews are wanted and indeed needed by every author. Self-published authors need to know what readers think of their books.
The writer has slaved over their work for months or even years to write and publish their work. They need to know how it is being received by readers just like you. Did you like it? did you read the first chapter and toss it away? Would you recommend it to a friend? Every author is looking for that glowing review that their book is wonderful, terrific characters, the plot keep the reader engaged and the pages turning. For authors just starting out that rarely happens. There are a lot of bumps in the road before and if that type of review comes along. There might be some soul crushing reviews coming the author's way. I've had a couple that made me doubt that I should be writing at all. Then I'll be at an event and a customer will come up to me and say how much they enjoyed my last book. That's the person I'm writing for. I ask every customer to post a review on Amazon. Very few do. "I need the world to know what you thought of my book." A lot of so called professional reviews are paid for these days. Kirkus charges almost $500 for a review. What if you pay the money and the review of your book is crushing? You have paid all this money and can't use the review to tell the world how wonderful your new book is. You pick yourself up and learn from it. Could your characters be better? Was your plot unique and different? Did you get a developmental edit or use a critique group to enhance your work? All these things make for a better book and will get you on the road to being a better writer. All reviews are useful, good and bad. Enjoy the good and learn from the bad. Please leave a comment and start a conversation. Have a question? I'll try and answer it. Yes it is a changing world especially for writers and authors. As you probably know already the big Traditional houses are merging with smaller imprints and it's getting harder to find a regular traditional publisher. You can't even approach one of them without an agent. If you are published by one you can consider yourself extremely lucky. Remember there are a lot of publishers out there. some good some bad. If you are paying to be published you are self-published.
What is a self-published author to do to get his or her book out there and noticed? First and foremost it must be the best it can possible be. After my first book was out for two years a customer showed me where I had spelled the same word two different ways. In the same paragraph. Ouch, that hurt. Here I was selling it and it's the first time anyone had showed me my error. Just this past weekend a friend was looking over another book and I'd slipped up and my dyslexic fingers had made a grammar error. The moral is to never edit your own work. I re-published the first book with a different illustrator and fixed my spelling error. The other book I've fixed and have to upload again. Authors are not perfect but our book have to be. The changing world of publishing has made it possible for authors to self-publish, by passing the traditional houses. Technology has made this possible. without this new technology most of the self-published authors would be waiting for years to see their book in print. I work with some very talented authors who will largely go unnoticed because they choose to go self-published. You have to do your own marketing. There is no way around it. Recently on a trip by plane up to Massachusetts i was sitting next to a woman who was listening to an audio book. I talked a bit to her and told her that I was working with someone to produce my first audio book and gave her a rack card for my recent book Everyone needs help publishing their work. There are so many ways to get your book out there.
There is traditional which I talked about in my last blog and self-publishing which I touched on briefly. What I'd like to do today is ask you to tell me what you want to know. That's what I like doing the best. Helping new authors find their path to having a published book in their hands. I started out with my very first book, Just Batty, in 2010. A friend I was visiting had written a children's story about her granddaughter and a dragon. It was cute. I went home and the next day I challenged myself to write one with my grandson in it. The south Florida Museum was having an exhibition on bats at the time and I love all creepy and misunderstood animals. So Just Batty was born. I decided to see if I could get it published. Boy was I in for a rude awakening. I went on the internet and looked up publishers. A few of the Traditional publishers were names I recognized. None of them were accepting submissions directly from the author. I then looked up agents and learned you had to send them a query letter first. I kept looking and fell into the subsidy publisher trap. I sent one my manuscript and they wrote back how wonderful my little book was and they would be thrilled to publish it. Great I'm on my way I thought. Next came finding an illustrator. A great children's book has to have a great illustrator, right? I quickly found that I couldn't afford a great illustrator. I settled for a college student at the local art college. I wasn't thrilled with the results but she was all I had. I sent all my files to the subsidy publisher and finally held my published book in my hands. I'd spent over $2000 and the publisher convinced me that I needed a book trailer, $400. Then I should put my book in several international book fairs at the discounted price of $600. Oh and you need to buy some advertising materials, $250. A cardboard display box and a few 11x17 posters arrived. I paid a ton of money I didn't have on a book that was not that good to begin with. A couple years later I had the book re-illustrated by a much better illustrator and I learned some of the technology necessary to self-publish my books. I've leaned a lot in the years since that first book. I want to help others avoid the mistakes I made. If you have questions about publishing, illustrating, copyrighting, anything at all please leave a comment or send me an email. If I don't have the answer I know someone who will. In the meantime I'm writing another novel. It's coming along slowly, and I hope to have another children's book out in the spring. Have a great day and spend some of it writing and planning your next step on the author's journey. Publishing 101 is a course I would like to give to all new writers that have a book in their heads or a manuscript written and don't know what to do with it. There are several questions you have to ask yourself before you hunt down a publisher.
Do you have a children's book or an adult book? Different publishers work with different books. What is your objective with writing the book? Is it a cozy memoir for just the family. A novel you know will be on the NY times bestseller list. Does your children's book hold a message the whole world should learn from or is it just for fun. After you answer these questions you can think about how you want to publish. You have two basic choices. You can go the traditional route. You need to find an agent to represent you. How do you find an agent? You send out a couple hundred query letters and hope that one of them will like to give you book a chance. After you have an agent you have to wait while he shops your wonderful book around to publishers who may or may not think your book is worth their time and money. If you find one, wonderful, terrific, all the best. They take your book and maybe do another edit on it and make all kinds of changes. They pay you an advance of a couple thousand dollars and whoopie, you are a traditionally published author. You get no more money until the publisher makes back your advance. You still have to do a lot of the marketing yourself. The other choice is self-publishing and it's becoming more and more common. Self-published authors have to be better than their Traditionally published counterparts in order to stand out. Do not go to a publisher off the internet that wants to charge you thousands of dollars and leaves you with a garage full of books you can not sell. Do not pay thousands or even hundreds of dollars to any publisher you have not researched, asked about, and checked out 'publishers and predators' on the internet. Ask your fellow authors how they publish, How much did they have to pay ? What are the royalties like and how often do they get paid? I have heard lots of horror stories from new authors about the money they paid and then the publisher went out of business. I have a friend that paid $20,000 dollars for her book to be published several years ago and still has cartons of unsold books in her garage. Please do your due diligence and think about what you are doing. I would like to recommend using a micro publishing company similar to mine. They are springing up all over the place. It's usually an author that has learned the ropes the hard way and wants to share that information with new authors. Since they only produce a few books a year, you get individual attention and no question is too small. Contact your local writers organizations and ask if any of their members are publishers. Micro publishers know people in the business and can find you editors, formatters, cover designers. All the things you need to make your book the best it can be. Some charge by the project, page count, word count, or time spent. I charge by the time actually spent with my fingers working on the computer keys for you. I have terrific editors, illustrators, formatters all working for you and your book. Another good thing about a Micro publisher is that you are working with another author, Someone that shares your passion. Their reputation rests on the quality of your book. Finding a writers group is not that hard. Especially down here in the Sarasota area. In fact I belong to four. Finding the right one for you is sometimes more difficult.
In 2012 I met with a small group of writes and we founded ABCBook4Children&Adults, Inc. We started out exchanging information on everything to do with becoming an author, from finding a publisher to marketing after. We had all made expensive mistakes. We paid much too much to get our books published. Our group was not interested in agents, query letters and finding a Traditional publisher. I didn't write my first children's book until I was in my sixties. I couldn't wait around for what might be years to see my book in print. A lot of writers feel the same way. Along came self-publishing. It's come a long way from the old vanity press day. I read some of those and they were terrible. They contained stilted dialogue, punctution and grammatical errors. Does it still happen today? Yes, and even in the Traditionally published books. What has changed is the quality of the work being published by self-published writers. They know that to be taken seriously they have to produce the best product they can. That said what type of writer's group do you want to join. Do you want a critique group. A group that will help you refine your work. They will meet in libraries and coffee shops. There are some like the Sarasota Authors Connection, that have great speakers come and you listen and hopefully take home some words of wisdom to use in your writing. The Florida fictions Writers group has conferences and workshops. They have agents come to these and you can pitch your work and hopefully get and agent to help you get traditionally published. Then comes the writers group I'm most proud, of the ABC Group. We try to help with the marketing of your book. No one will buy your book if they don't know it's out there. You have to use every trick in the book to let readers know about your book. social media, go to events, set up book signings. We attend at least ten events or more as a group. All the writers groups are great to belong to. Authors are willing to share what they know. If you are serious about being an authors try to find one in your area. You will make friends, talk books, exchange information and have fun. Book fairs and Arts and Craft shows are a great way to get out there and introduce your book to the world. Most authors do not like to go to events. I know of several really good writers that all they want to do is write the book and hope someone will discover them.
I try to tell them it just doesn't work that way. You have to promote your work somehow. They don't even use social media. I know that the world has changed and older people don't like and can't use all the technical stuff out there. I'm 68 and had to learn a lot. I'm one of the exceptions I guess in that I love to learn new things. We had a wonderful speaker at one of the groups I belong to and helped to found ABCBooks4children&Adulta, Inc. our website is www.ABC-Artisansofbooks.com The speaker was Dee Dee Scott, DD.Scott@live.com ,She was traditionally published and now is self publishing her books. She told us that even traditional houses are cutting back on the amount of publicity they do for their authors and the advances are getting smaller. So authors have the choice to stay home and write their next great novel and wait to be discovered or get your butt out there and promote your book. I love to go to events. I know I'm nuts. but I have made some wonderful connections with fabulous people. Marketing your books is not easy. It takes time and a bit of money. I'll give some ideas next week. Living in Florida is fun. you have all summer to get that next book written, work on your social media and get ready for "SEASON" which runs from October to April. that's when the Snow Birds come down to the Sunshine state and spend their money at book fairs and arts and craft shows. I'm already booking myself for things in March of 2017. Maybe we will meet at one of them. August 27 & 28, 2016 I'll be at Fiorelli's Winery in Bradenton FL. In my last book, Honey Tree Farm - For the Love of the Beekeeper's Daughter, two of my main characters got engaged and bought some wine to take home. I'll promote my book and see if they would like to carry it in their shop. They expect a couple hundred people so hopefully I'll sell a couple books. If you are in the area come out and just say hey! |
AuthorFrom the active mind of Brenda M. Spalding Archives
February 2020
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