Marketing a Book and the Author

Children's Cottage at Forest Grove McMenamins

I had a fun time this past weekend attending a symposium put on by the Northwest Independent Writers Association in Forest Grove, Oregon.

When I wasn't teaching a workshop on craft I sat in on the Marketing workshops. I feel this is an area that I'm lacking. I came away with some wonderful ideas. The first ones I picked up from author Chanda Hahn. She writes for the teen audience and has science fiction and paranormal elements in her books. Her philosophy is not how many people she can acquire as friends on Facebook but how many comments she can get for one question. And the way she does that is by giving away something if people answer a question on FB. The methodology behind that is the more comments one post gets the higher in the algorithms the comment goes and more people see it. Chanda also mentioned a site called Pic Monkey that allows you to edit photos and use them to make online banners and ads.

Danita Cahill and I teaching a workshop

The second workshop that helped me was Indie Marketing 101 by authors Delilah Marvelle, C. Morgan Kennedy, and Therese Patrick.  I've sat in on C. Morgan and Therese's workshop on Author Marketing 101 and Delilah is always full of wisdom and humor. This workshop opened my eyes to some things I could do to show readers what is coming next by having covers up of  the whole series with the publication dates underneath and provide a printable book list, listing the books in the order of the series.

And the best thing I learned that should make my readers happy, is give your loyal readers new release alert and allow them to purchase the book at a reduced priced when it first comes out. That my readers is something I can pass on to you for being loyal and something I've felt bad about in the past and now know how to do.

So keep your eyes peeled to this blog and my website to find out how that is going to work!

What did you do this past weekend? Anything fun?

Friday Five- Internet Promotion Presence

YEEHAW! The DH headed to Elk camp this morning!! If I didn't have a list a mile long of things to do BESIDES writing, I'd be dancing a jig! But I do plan to get as many writing hours in as I can. I want this latest project done! The characters from the next Halsey brother book have been haunting me. They are ready to jump onto the paper, and I can't unleash them just yet.

I had grand hopes of unveiling a new format on this blog today, but I have two little glitches I'm trying to work out. I'm hoping by Monday to roll out the new look.

It is kind of ironic that I was asked by the Willamette Writers organization to put together an article on how to do a virtual tour (a member noticed, on my website, the list of places I've been this month promoting the release of Outlaw in Petticoats ) Then last night at the local writer's meeting our speaker, George Byran Wright, talked about Marketing Strategies. And one of the things he stressed was an Internet presence. So here is a list of ways to make an internet presence when marketing your work.

1) Website: spread the word about the website through friends, colleagues
2) Attempt to link website to book letters, blogs, and other internet sources
3) Have an e-mail newsletter
4) Revise and update website on a regular basis
5) Create a professional press release and send it to websites that promote books like yours

Friday Five- Agents

We are winding down. I have info for today and next week then I'll move on to different Friday Five topics.

Today, the Five things I heard agent, Natasha Kern talk about at Nationals was Going Beyond the Deal. What the agent should do to make the partnership work.

1) Good Team- Talk to one another and believe in each of your skills.
2) Put together a marketing and business plan
3) play off of other materials that relate to your book
4) Do long term planning
5) support the author

As I am getting closer and closer to sending a partial out to an agent, you can bet I'll be keeping a eye out for all the things I've been posting on this blog.

Promo Wednesday

Finally! I'm going to talk a little about things I learned at the workshops by Penny Sansevieri of Author Marketing Experts, Inc at the EPICon in March. I know, a little long in coming, but there have been other good things going on.

Today, I'll reveal what she considers the best format for your website home page. There was a study done about how the eye tracks the screen on a computer. And that is the basis of where information needs to be on the screen.

1) According to authorities the eye goes first to the upper left hand corner below the banner. In this spot you should put the most important thing you want people to see. Your latest book is good or your latest/best product or happening.

2) The eye then travels to the top middle- Again this should be the next most important thing you want them to see.

3 & 4) and the eye continues to travel on down the middle of the page. So put the main content info in this section.

5) Is on the left right below your #1 info. You can make this a brief bullet of things to come, other books with purchase buttons.

6) Is in the upper right hand corner of the banner. Here she has the buttons to the other pages.

7) The final spot the eye travels is the right hand side of the website.

You can to to her site: http://www.amarketingexpert.com/ and take a look at how her site is set up and even sign up to get her free marketing newsletter.

If you go to my website, you'll notice my webmistress and I tried to incorporate the info, but sometimes it just doesn't work well with what you have.

The biggest things she stated over and over- your first page should be just that- A page! visitors shouldn't have to do a lot of scrolling to read what's on the page.

Do you take care to make your website visually appealing as well as easy to navigate? Or are you just excited to have one and have info up? What is the most appealing/infomative website you've come across? I like Brenda Novak's, mostly because of the animation!