Select a page
      Choose Category
      RSS Feed Subscribe to email

      Category : Marketing and Platforms

      • June 12, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: Do Radio and TV Spots Sell Books?

        by

        2013amanda2

        Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

         

        A bestselling author wrote us to ask about the usefulness of TV and radio spots in today’s multimedia culture. The question was something like this:

         I’ve been approached by a number of radio and TV shows. They want me to go on air for an interview or guest spot. With radio this isn’t a problem, though I certainly am questioning the effectiveness of such a marketing strategy in today’s culture, but with the TV opportunities, they never want to help me with travel costs.  And I’m simply not going to spend $1000 in travel costs for nine minutes of air time when I know for a fact that my sales have never spiked after such an appearance. Am I wrong in my thinking here? What’s the value of this kind of old school marketing?

        TV and radio spots on well-known networks or shows seem to make publishers happy. They like the notoriety, and frankly, authors like it too. But you’re right. It can get very expensive and like most marketing, there isn’t a guarantee that your sales will increase. In fact I’d say that in nearly all cases of the author going on TV or radio to promote a book, the sales stay relatively the same.

        I blame this on a few factors:

        1. Readers are being more stingy with their book money, and
        2. This kind of marketing doesn’t carry the weight that it once did because we live in an age in which consumers are being targeted nearly every single moment of every single day.

        It’s that

        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Do Radio and TV Spots Sell Books?"

      • June 5, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: The Extroverted Writer

        by

        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

         

        Well, I’m at conference (again!) and so this Thursday, let me leave you with an FYI that The Extroverted Writer is now available in print!! (Not everyone knew this!). 

         

         

        And here are some places around the web, worth checking out:

        FRONT Business_Card_Vertical

        Estimating Kindle Sales from Amazon Rankings

        Are You Boring Your Social Media Followers?

        Nine Unconventional Writers Residencies

         

        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: The Extroverted Writer"

      • May 29, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: Everything You Wanted to Know About PPC Advertising

        by

        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        Some weeks ago, I talked about keywords and PPC advertising. My husband, who used to be Google-certified (before he switched gears to work in the hobby game industry!), agreed to answer whatever questions you could throw at him to the best of his ability. Remember, his knowledge base is a few years old, and I’m sure things have changed. But I’m also sure that his insight is valuable for any author thinking about doing a PPC ad campaign!

        1. Can you talk about what you did for clients?
        To sum it up, I managed PPC advertising campaigns for several different clients to achieve specific goals. But what does that mean? Here are some definitions:
        What is PPC?
        PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising are those ads that are at the top and/or to the side of the search results page on Google (Bing has it too, but I didn’t work with theirs very much). I created and managed these ads for my clients using the Google AdWords program.
        How does it work?
        Every time anyone uses Google to search for something, PPC ads are triggered based on the words they used to search, also known as keywords. A keyword then tells your Google AdWords account to show the ads that you have created that are linked to that keyword. Each time someone clicks on an ad, you are charged for that click based on the bid you have put on that keyword.
        2.  How much does a solid PPC campaign usually cost?
        It really depends on how competitive
        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Everything You Wanted to Know About PPC Advertising"

      • May 28, 2014

        What comes first, the platform or the contract?

        by

        I had several people send in marketing questions recently…

        “In publishing, which comes first — the chicken or the egg? Do we need to have a book published before we start building a platform? Or do we start building a platform before we have a book to push?”

        If the platform is the chicken, it’s definitely the chicken that comes first. If I walk into a publisher’s office with your nonfiction book, the FIRST question he or she will ask is, “What’s her platform?” I can sell good writing and a good idea from an author with a great platform. But it’s tough to sell even great nonfiction writing that comes from an author with no platform. So that’s easy — start building your platform NOW.

        “In laymen’s terms, can you tell me what a marketing platform is?”

        Your platform is a number. In simplest terms, your platform is the number of people you can influence to buy your book — and these days your publisher is going to expect the author to be responsible for about half the overall number of copies sold of your nonfiction book. So add up the people you can influence — the number of people you speak to at conferences, the number who read your blog, the number who get your newspaper column, the number of people in your organization, the number who listen to you on the radio or watch you on TV. All those media contacts you have can be turned into a number — and that’s the number the publisher will look to when they think about selling your book. If it’s a smaller house, they might be hoping to sell four-to-eight-thousand books. (That means you’d have to sell between two-and-four-thousand copies — which is a lot of books.) If it’s a medium sized publisher, they’re looking to sell twelve-to-twenty. If it’s a large publisher, they may only be interested in

        Continue Reading "What comes first, the platform or the contract?"

      • May 27, 2014

        What advice would you give to an author thinking about marketing?

        by

        A longtime friend in the industry said she had been reading my blog for years, and decided to put a bunch of thoughts of mine together into an article for her authors who were asking about marketing. This was all built from things I’ve said on my blog numerous times, and I liked what she created, so I decided to reprint it here. Here’s the advice I give to authors wondering about marketing…

        First of all, your publisher isn’t going to do that much marketing. They love you and have invested heavily in your book, and they certainly want to see you succeed, but most of their marketing budget is earmarked for their current bestsellers. So that means YOU, the author, have to take charge of the marketing of your book. You’ve probably heard me say this before, but if you’re waiting for your publisher to create a great plan that will take you to the next level, you may be waiting a long time. Publishers are investing in fewer books to market, and they’re not hiring more marketing people… and that means the poor publicist who is working on your title is also working on 20 other titles. Show her (or him) some love, and say something about how much you appreciate her work, but plan to invest in your own marketing. Decide right now that you’re going to take charge of marketing for your book.

        Second, you’re probably wondering, How do I do that? Well, you need to become familiar with the process of marketing, so that you can begin to create an actual plan. To start, that means you may have to do some research. Let me suggest a couple books to consider. To understand the basics of marketing. Consider reading Guerilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Ries and Trout, or a marketing textbook like Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing.

        Continue Reading "What advice would you give to an author thinking about marketing?"

      • May 16, 2014

        Should I hire an outside marketing specialist?

        by

        I’ve had a number of write to me and ask when I’ll get back to writing about marketing books, and several have wanted to know, “When should I consider spending my own money on having an outside marketing person work with me?”

        The answer is probably, “When you feel the marketing people at your publishing house aren’t doing enough,” except that NO author ever really believes the marketing types are doing enough for their book. (It’s true. I’ve seen bestselling authors who are getting full page ads whine about the lack of effort from the marketing staff.) I suppose all of us would like to see the marketing department try harder, do more, be more creative, and get away from doing the same things that don’t work, all for no cost. But the publishers are all trying to do their best. One young publicist might simply have 20 or 30 books she’s working on, so you might not get a ton of attention. And though no one seems to admit it, you might just get a copycat version of everybody else’s marketing plan. (It’s still a mystery to me why publishers bother doing the same thing time after time when the plan has failed with previous books. Seems like it would be obvious that “this isn’t working” — but it’s not, apparently. I’m probably missing something.) So let’s just work on the assumption that YOU are in charge of the marketing. Anything your publisher does is great, and by all means you should express your appreciation for them sending out review copies or setting you up on some blogs to talk about your book. Hey, at least they’re doing SOMETHING. But yes, it’s possible your book may need an outside person doing the publicity if it’s really going to grab some attention.

        The bad news is that, in most cases, that “outside” person is you. It bears repeating: YOU

        Continue Reading "Should I hire an outside marketing specialist?"

      • May 15, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: What Do You Want to Know About PPC Advertising?

        by

        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        I often get questions about ads. When to do them. Where to do them. How to do them. And the biggie, do they even work? 

        For a short while my husband worked in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. He was Google-certified and everything. Since I just talked about keywords, which I believe to be a vital part of any ad campaign, I figured it may be worthwhile to shoot some questions at my husband and see what he has to say.

        SO LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT TO KNOW! I WANT YOUR QUESTIONS.

        If you’re a bit fuzzy on PPC ads, simply go to Google or Yahoo or even Facebook. Those text-based ads that you see on every page are generated by individuals who pay the host (Google, Yahoo, etc) every time someone clicks on the ad. Sometimes they pay $0.50 per click. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. And you’ll notice that the ads that show up for you aren’t the same ads that show up for others. This is because the ad owners have chosen who to target with their ads. They’ve tagged the ads with keywords. Once you do a search that matches, the appropriate ads start popping up.

        It’s a science, really, and like I said, my husband had to pass a test in order to be Google AdWords certified, and thus write and manage PPC ads for his clients. So he has plenty to say on the topic, even if his advice is three years old.

        What do you want to know about PPC

        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: What Do You Want to Know About PPC Advertising?"

      • May 8, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: The Art of Keywords

        by

        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        When I first started working in marketing, I had one task. Read. Absorb. Learn all I could about…parenthood. Well, it was actually strollers and carseats that I was specifically supposed to learn about, but in order to understand the product, I needed to understand the lifestyle.

        And I was 25. No kids. No husband. No interest in the topic of parenthood whatsoever.

        I remember this time of life so0ooo very vividly because I was completely bored out of my mind. I had gone from a job that involved travel and presentations and sales to one that felt as though I were a trapped bird within a computer screen cage.

        Four months later, I was an Internet-smart parenting whiz. I knew the struggles and the panic and the don’ts and the things that they fail to tell you about childbirth. Granted I never actually put my knowledge to use, but that wasn’t the point. The point was for me to speak the parenting language. To learn the jargon and the trends and more importantly…to learn the needs. The desires. The wants.

        And that’s when my boss had me put together a keyword chart. This chart would be the backbone of all of the marketing and writing we did on behalf of our client (who happened to be an internationally-known baby gear manufacturer). It would give us the words to use in our online copy (back when wording was fairly heavily weighted in SEO) and would allow us to position our client as a company that “understands” parents and their

        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: The Art of Keywords"

      • April 28, 2014

        Having a Nite-cap with a Literary Agent

        by

        We’ve been taking the month of April and inviting writers to send in the questions they’d like to ask a literary agent. So if you could sit down one night, over a nite-cap, and ask a literary agent anything at all, what would you ask? These are the questions I’ve received recently…

        How important is it for my agent to be knowledgeable about the specific genre I write in? If he or she have the same contacts at publishing houses as most other agents, is it important to find an agent with genre-specific connections? For example, let’s say I typically write women’s fiction, but want to do a New Adult series, and my agent says she knows nothing about NA. Should I be concerned my proposal won’t get the right treatment from editors?

        Agents tend to work in certain genres. So we make connections with editors who work in those genres, and develop great relationships with people and publishers. So yes, it’s nice if you can work with an agent who has relationships with editors in the genres in which you write. That said, most agents are also willing to grow their business. So if you came to me with a really good proposal for a genre I’ve not worked before, I would admit that to you, and either say, “You might want to find another agent to do this one,” OR I might say, “You know, this isn’t a field I’ve done much work in, but I love this proposal — let me do some research, make some calls, and I’ll come back to you so we can develop a plan.”

        I noticed you were highly critical of agents who sell services to authors. I approached an agent I met at a conference to discuss my book. He rejected it for representation, but said they had an editor who could work on it, and I paid about $700 to

        Continue Reading "Having a Nite-cap with a Literary Agent"

      • April 24, 2014

        Thursdays with Amanda: The Future of Publishing According to Me

        by

        2014AmandaAmanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

        After spending the past number of weeks talking (and hailing) hybrid publishing (see posts here, here, here, and here), it begs a very important question…

        What is the future of publishing?

        As self-publishing continues to grow, as authors are offered more options to achieve their dreams, as traditional publishers continue to try and crack the e-publishing code, as start-ups focus primarily on e- and POD- publishing for their books, and as America’s reading habits evolve…where does that leave us?

        Where does that leave the book? The bookstore? The library?

        I’m no Predictor of the Future (well, okay, maybe I am a little), but I do have a few thoughts about where we’re headed…and I think it’s going to be an interesting ride.

        1. Eventually, it’s going to be fairly easy to get successful self-published books into bookstores. Someone, somewhere, with a ton of the right connections and enough money to give it a go is going to start a company that finds the best of the best in the self-publishing world and then presents those books to the buyers at B&N, Books-A-Million, Wal-Mart, etc. And because of this individual’s reputation and their product list of tried-and-true Amazon bestsellers, those stores are going to buy. And they’re going to shelve those books. This means that successful indie authors won’t ever have to partner with a publisher again to get their books into stores. They’ll just have to partner with an indie-friendly distributor. It‘s worth saying that there ARE venues that promise this kind of service,
        Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: The Future of Publishing According to Me"