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      Category : Marketing and Platforms

      • January 9, 2012

        Can a novelist market herself?

        by

        Christine wrote and asked, "Is it really possible to market yourself as a novelist?"

        I definitely think it's possible for a novelist to market himself or herself. Over the past couple years, I've tried to share some thoughts on how novelists can market themselves, so you may find it helpful to meander back through my posts in order to look for ideas. But here's the big picture: In my opinion, a novelist has to begin seeing herself not just as an artist (which you, as a writer, most certainly are), but also as a brand name or commodity that deserves marketing. And that means creating a well-thought-out plan for marketing yourself and your work. (Okay, I'll admit that part of me hates writing that. I don't like talking about words as "commodities," and treating the writing arts as though they were cans of corn. But let's face facts — I'm talking with writers who want to make a living writing, and that translates to selling books.)

        Non-fiction writers find it easier to do some basic marketing, since they have a topic or hot-button issue that is clearly discernable. If you were to write a book on losing weight or making money or raising kids, the potential audience for such a topic is easy to recognize. You can go onto radio programs and talk about the problem and the solutions you're offering, or write articles for magazines and e-zines that explore your particular approach to the issue. With fiction, it's tougher. Good stories are not about one topic, but explore numerous threads. And no radio or TV program wants to invite you on to re-tell your novel. So instead of focusing on the story, most fiction writers find they have to focus on the author or the genre. In other words, you and your voice becomes the focus of your marketing. This is why it's essential

        Continue Reading "Can a novelist market herself?"

      • January 9, 2012

        Can a novelist market herself?

        by

        Christine wrote and asked, "Is it really possible to market yourself as a novelist?"

        I definitely think it's possible for a novelist to market himself or herself. Over the past couple years, I've tried to share some thoughts on how novelists can market themselves, so you may find it helpful to meander back through my posts in order to look for ideas. But here's the big picture: In my opinion, a novelist has to begin seeing herself not just as an artist (which you, as a writer, most certainly are), but also as a brand name or commodity that deserves marketing. And that means creating a well-thought-out plan for marketing yourself and your work. (Okay, I'll admit that part of me hates writing that. I don't like talking about words as "commodities," and treating the writing arts as though they were cans of corn. But let's face facts — I'm talking with writers who want to make a living writing, and that translates to selling books.)

        Non-fiction writers find it easier to do some basic marketing, since they have a topic or hot-button issue that is clearly discernable. If you were to write a book on losing weight or making money or raising kids, the potential audience for such a topic is easy to recognize. You can go onto radio programs and talk about the problem and the solutions you're offering, or write articles for magazines and e-zines that explore your particular approach to the issue. With fiction, it's tougher. Good stories are not about one topic, but explore numerous threads. And no radio or TV program wants to invite you on to re-tell your novel. So instead of focusing on the story, most fiction writers find they have to focus on the author or the genre. In other words, you and your voice becomes the focus of your marketing. This is why it's essential

        Continue Reading "Can a novelist market herself?"

      • January 5, 2012

        Thursdays with Amanda: How Big Should a Writer's Platform Be?

        by

        NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.

        You've heard it before…if you really want to impress an agent, make sure you have three things: a great idea, supported by great writing and a great platform.

        But let's be honest, either you're born with a knack for words or you're not.

        Either a great idea drops into your head one day, or it doesn't.

        But platform…platform doesn't happen by chance. Platform is all about hard work.

        I think it's funny that we dedicate entire conferences and workshops and critique groups to the very components that we have the least control over (You can't make great writers out of bad writers, and no classic American novels were written by following a novel-writing template), while the the third component–the one that really can be taught into existence–gets ignored.

        This really bugs me, because we've turned platform into this mysterious entity that's somehow more difficult to achieve than writing a best seller. Somewhere along the line, we've decided using social media is more nebulous than developing a plot destined for the silver screen and that growing a readership as an unpublished author is more far-fetched than an agent offering on-the-spot representation.

        How we became so dillussional is lost on me, but I'd like to begin to set things straight and pull platform out of the doghouse it's been sitting in for so long.

        So first things first, what do impressive social media stats look like? (Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride…)

        The cold, hard truth is that solid author platforms come in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

        Let’s get more specific…

        If you have a website or blog, your monthly unique visitor count should be at least 30,000

        If you have a

        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: How Big Should a Writer's Platform Be?"

      • December 21, 2011

        The Last Step: Go Back and Evaluate

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        Some people have twenty years of experience. Some people have one year of experience twenty times. The difference? The former keep track of their progress and learn from their mistakes as well as their successes. The latter keep trying something new, and have to re-learn the process every time. 

        Make it easy on yourself — mark your trail. Make a point of writing down everything that works and everything that doesn't as you work through your marketing plan. That will help you focus on the good ideas and eliminate the bad ones the next time you're doing marketing for a book. Give yourself some evaluations. Figure out if you could do something better next time, or tweak an unsuccessful effort in order to make it successful. 

        If you keep track of everything you do in your marketing plan, you'll discover it moves along much more quickly the next time you need to do it. So make lists of your activities. Keep track of names and emails and phone numbers. Grab contact information to the producers and hosts and editors you're in contact with. Make notes of the ideas you found helped you sell books. Send thank you's to the people who really assisted you along the way. If you don't keep track of your work, the next time you have a book releasing you'll have to do all this stuff over again. 

        If possible, talk through the plan with your team — perhaps someone from your publishing house, as well as someone who helped you get the work done. Get their input into the ideas that worked best. By focusing on the best practices, you'll find yourself improving at the marketing side of the business, therefore allowing yourself more time to WRITE in the future. 

        That's it — my ten steps to creating a marketing plan. I hope you've found it helpful. 

        Continue Reading "The Last Step: Go Back and Evaluate"

      • December 20, 2011

        Step Nine: Execute Your Plan

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        Now that you've done all your research and planning — you've figured out WHAT you need to do, WHERE you need to do it, WHEN you're going to get it done, WHO you're going to be reaching, and WHY you're going to all this trouble — now you need to go do the work. If you created a calendar, this is easy… you simply look at the calendar, figure out what needs to be done, then go get the tasks accomplished. Instead of worrying about what steps you need to take in order to market your book, you can begin working through the plan you've spent weeks creating. No more seat-of-the-pants, no more guessing what activities to do. You've done all the background work; now you need to put it into practice.

        Authors tend to come in two types when it comes to marketing… Some will want to take several weeks and just market full-time. They'll set their current writing projects aside, and suddenly become marketers. Others will want to set aside a chunk of time each day for marketing, leaving themselves with a few hours to continue writing. There's no "right" way to plan this — it depends on what you're comfortable doing. 

        I'm frequently asked how much time an author should spend on marketing each day or each week, but of course the answer lies in what your plan calls for. If you do the things that are on your plan, the amount of time required will become clear to you. Some authors set aside an hour or two each day to do some marketing. That time can increase as you have a new book come out — so you might find yourself spending half your time on nothing but various marketing activities. If you're focused on a new release, and there are a dozen things to do each day, your marketing efforts could suck up your entire day. 

        Continue Reading "Step Nine: Execute Your Plan"

      • December 19, 2011

        Step Eight: Create Your Calendar and Budget

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        At this point, you're probably wondering what else there is to do with a marketing plan. Take heart — we're almost to the end of the process…

        Once you've written down everything you want to do, you need to tie each activity to a calendar and a budget — or, as I like to say, every activity has a date and a dollar sign. So, for example, if you are planning to send out a bunch of copies to a "big mouth" list in order to get people talking about your book, you pick a day when you're going to write the notes, address the envelopes, and get them in the mail. Then you figure out the cost of envelopes, mailing labels, and postage. If you're planning to write several freelance articles to support your book, you mark down the days you're going to write them, the days you're going to query and send them, and the days you're going to check back on them. If you're going to hire a freelance marketing consultant to help you schedule radio interviews, you pick the days you're going to be available for the interviews, you mark the dates you're going to talk with the consultant, and you write down the costs involved with hiring him or her. 

        Again, for EVERY activity, you choose a date and, if applicable, the dollar amount it will cost you. So if you're going to try and schedule a blog tour, you write down on your calendar the dates you plan to fill up with blogging conversations, as well as the dates you plan to contact bloggers in order to schedule those visits. There may not be any dollar amount tied to this activity — that's fine, but you want to make sure to track EVERY date and EVERY dollar, so that you have a record of what you've done to market your book. 

        Why write out

        Continue Reading "Step Eight: Create Your Calendar and Budget"

      • December 16, 2011

        Step Seven: Write Your Plan

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        Okay, you've come to the point in the process where you really get into the details… you've done a bunch of research. You know who you are, and what it is you want to say. You've figured out who your audience is, and done some research on how to reach them. You've made choices about the general strategies you'll use to get your words in front of potential readers, and you've decided what your specific plans are — where you'll go and what you'll say. Now you've got to write it down. 

        Put down on paper all the things you want to do. All those tools you were choosing yesterday? Write them down. All those places you want to reach? Write them down. Get down on paper everything you want to do. Force yourself to get everything in one place, since it will make it much more real (and therefore more likely that you'll actually DO it). 

        So if you're going to do a blog tour, and visit 30 blogs in 30 days, here is where you write down the goal, the blogs you intend to target, and make notes on what you're going to talk about. If you're going to be focusing on talk radio, here's where you right down the places you want to hit — the cities, the regions, even the shows and stations if you know what they are. Write down notes about what questions you expect to be asked, and how you plan to answer them. Prepare stories — both long and short stories, that will get your point across and entertain listeners. If you're going to be sending out copies of your book, write down who you plan to send them to. 

        Don't leave anything out. In fact, you're better off writing too much, and having to delete some aspects of your plan later, rather than not planning enough. Again, perhaps only one-third of

        Continue Reading "Step Seven: Write Your Plan"

      • December 15, 2011

        Step Six: Choose Your Tools

        by

        Now that you've figured out which basic strategies you're going to use, you need to select that actual "tools" you'll use — that is, the actual WORK you will do to help you market your book. For example, if you decided that three of the strategies you were going to use were (1) sending out review copies, (2) writing articles to support your book, and (3) doing blog tours, then in this step you will list…

        1. Who you're sending those review copies to,

        2. What articles you're going to write, and who you're going to send them to, and

        3. The blogs and groups you're going to reach on your tour. 

        In other words, you start to create the details of your marketing plan. Remember, every choice you make at this stage reflects your earlier decisions. The core of marketing is to figure out where your audience is, then go stand in front of them, so you want to go back and remind yourself just where, exactly your audience is going to be. If you're doing a nonfiction book on lowering cholesterol, you do your research to discover where those interested in the topic go to seek information, then you target those magazines, websites, blogs, e-zines, journals, associations, chat rooms, etc. If you're writing an Amish novel, you do your research to determine where those interested in Amish culture and Amish stories go, then you make those destinations the focus of your marketing.

        Fortunately, the world wide web has made this process MUCH easier than it used to be. Instead of having to snail mail things, or go to a marketing research company, or spend your day at the public library (like we all used to do), the information is all available, right there on your screen. It just takes some work to dig it out. So choose your tools to hit that target audience, focus on using your

        Continue Reading "Step Six: Choose Your Tools"

      • December 13, 2011

        Step Five: Map Out Your Strategies

        by

        Now that you know what your brand is, what your strengths and weaknesses are, what goals you're trying to reach, and who your target market is, you need to make some specific choices. What are the basic strategies you're going to use to market your book? There are a million things you COULD do. Maybe you've picked up a couple of marketing books that offer "101 marketing ideas," or you've attended a seminar and heard other authors talk about a bunch of ideas they've tried. You can't do them all… so what steps will you choose? 

         
        Will you focus on blog tours? Give away a lot of copies? Talk with reading groups? Redesign your website? Do some conference speaking? Distribute press kits? Try to get on a bunch of radio programs? Spend a lot of time placing articles with magazines and e-zines? Develop podcasts? Solicit dozens of reviews? Dig deep into the various Amazon tools? Network with key people? Focus on your blog readership? Use your associations or groups to get the word out? Develop a bunch of give-aways? Focus on broadcast media? Spend a lot of time at libraries? Visit targeted groups around the country? Participate in direct mail? Get involved in trade shows and conventions? Rely on key endorsements and recommendations? Do an author tour? Buy advertisements on the best websites? Try to steer sales to your website? 
         
        You can't do them all. In fact, you don't want to do them all, since they would't all prove effective for your book. So as you think about your target market, what are the basic strategies that make sense? As you think about your strengths and weaknesses, what are the strategies you definitely need to consider? What are the strategies you probably need to forget about? At this step, you're simply picking the basic area in which you plan to work. 

        And remember, most marketing gurus will remind you to
        Continue Reading "Step Five: Map Out Your Strategies"

      • December 12, 2011

        Step Four: Know Your Audience

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        If you were taking a class in marketing, this is the process you'd go through in order to create a marketing plan. So once you "know yourself," "know your strengths and weaknesses," and "know your goal," the fourth step you'll need to complete is to know your target audience. 

         
        Who are your readers? What are they like? What is their age? Their sex? What are their interests? What do they like and dislike? What do they find interesting? If you could describe your readers, what words would you use? What do they all share in common? What you're trying to do here is to identify the similarities among those who will be interested in your book. Beginning writers tend to say, "Everyone will like my book! It appeals to young and old, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, religious and nonreligious…" Except marketing has proven that's not true. Groups of people tend to like a product, while other groups tend to ignore that same product. So who is your group? How would you describe them? As your grandma used to say, "Birds of a feather flock together." So… who is your flock?
         
        And where are they? (Geography can have a lot to do with marketing your books.) Where do they congregate? If they tend to reside in the South, that dictates where you'll market. If they tend to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, that helps you know how best to market your work. If they tend to travel a lot, that says something about where you'll find them, and how you can reach out to them. So don't skip this part of the plan — spend time thinking through who your reader is, what he or she is like, and where they tend to go. 
         
        Think through the question, "What are their needs and wants?" Most fiction is written to entertain, so
        Continue Reading "Step Four: Know Your Audience"