{"id":524,"date":"2016-11-20T00:10:02","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T06:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interestingauthors.com\/blog\/?p=524"},"modified":"2017-09-27T09:20:34","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T15:20:34","slug":"perpetual-vs-flash-marketing-pt-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/interestingauthors.com\/blog\/publishing\/perpetual-vs-flash-marketing-pt-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Perpetual vs. Flash Marketing Pt. 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

One thing which doesn\u2019t cease to amaze me is the email marketing a person gets when they decide to write a novel. Maybe it is because we tend to go into groups for writers and ask a few questions? Maybe they just have some direct link into government thought monitoring? Whatever the case you get spammed. Much of this spam will be for marketing. It will be for Twitter or Facebook or some other social media marketing and it will feature words like:<\/p>\n

AMAZING EXPOSURE<\/p>\n

UNBELIEVABLE EXPOSURE<\/p>\n

Yes, it will be in all caps. Yes they will claim thousands (usually hundreds of thousands) of Twitter followers, FaceBook followers or whatever. The final hook will be you can get this PHENOMENAL EXPOSURE for under $100. I\u2019m generally mystified as to why they didn\u2019t include a set of Ginzu-2 steak knives as well.<\/p>\n

True, at some point you should do some kind of marketing on social media, but it needs to be limited unless something you did went viral. Before you are ready for this type of flash marketing, there are several things you need to have completed, not started or thinking about, but completed:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Write a book someone else would like to read.<\/li>\n
  2. Send your book through multiple rounds of professional editing using multiple editors.<\/li>\n
  3. Get a good cover design.<\/li>\n
  4. Print review copies. Yes, print. You need at least 50 copies but I recommend at least 100. Grab and sell as well as \u201cfreegifting\u201d are now rampant on the \u201coffer free copies for honest review\u201d sites.<\/li>\n
  5. Create a Web site for the book with a URL you actually own, not a page under some other site. You need to be able to move your site when you are no longer satisfied with the service provided by the current host.<\/li>\n
  6. Get a blog set up and linked to your book site.<\/li>\n
  7. Have at least 5 reviews posted in legitimate places.<\/li>\n
  8. Jumped through the hoops to get your book on Net Galley to get industry attention and potentially reviews in actual respected magazines.<\/li>\n
  9. Have issued a press release via one of the major on-line press release sites which keep press releases on-line perpetually.<\/li>\n
  10. Get your title listed on the Barnes & Noble Web site.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It should come as no surprise that steps 1-4 are where authors fail abysmally. There are no shortcuts here. If you only give lip service to any of those first 4 steps the only thing which will help your sales is to start having sex with some fake reality celebrity and get caught at it. That won\u2019t make you a better author, but it might make you enough money.<\/p>\n

    Steps 5 and 6 are absolutely required if you plan to do any social media marketing. No, your Amazon page does NOT count as a Web site for your book. Neither does linking to the item page at Uncle Bob\u2019s Fish & Tackle. You need your own Web site with a URL you actually own. You can create one site per book\/series OR you can try to cheap it by creating an \u201cauthor\u201d Web site. The author Web site focuses on you, not your titles, but it does list your titles, show covers, and provide some sales sheet type blurbs about each title.<\/p>\n

    A blog is absolutely mandatory. Developing content for a blog can be both time consuming and draining. Your blog needs some kind of visitor stats plug-in for you, even if you choose not to display stats to other visitors. You need enough changing content to push visitor traffic well past 7K unique visitors per week. That\u2019s right, week. Ideally you need enough new content to get a combined RSS subscription + UNIQUE visitors north of 100K per month. The same person coming back 100K times isn\u2019t building your brand or raising market awareness. If all they have to do all day is surf your blog, odds are they don\u2019t have any friends to begin with.<\/p>\n

    If your book wasn\u2019t a complete train wreck, you will get at least one of your needed reviews from Net Galley. Of course, even if your book towers over Harry Potter in writing quality, it won\u2019t get the slightest bit of interest if your pitch & synopsis are written poorly.<\/p>\n

    Don\u2019t skip around or change order on these steps!<\/strong> DO NOT send out a press release until you have the reviews in place. Do not send out the press release until your time on Net Galley has ended. The world\u2019s most perfect press release is wasted when its readers cannot find reviews both on your Web site and on retail Web sites. You also need blog content before you issue such a release. Not just one post either, several dozen at minimum. People will take a look at your blog to see if you have a voice they like to hear. They may not care for your warm fuzzy love story set in New York (who would, really?) but they might like the way you speak on other topics. A few will either RSS feed subscribe or bookmark your site. If content doesn\u2019t change regularly, no matter how much they like you, they are lost. The one shot you had with the press release is spent. Those particular customers won\u2019t pay attention to any further press releases from you or for your titles.<\/p>\n

    Step 10 is more important now than it ever was. Yes, there are a bunch of genetic misfits who believe Amazon is everything, but, they will never make it in this or any other field so no need to listen to them. There is a massive ground swell against Kindle content in the consumer world. Most will only look at titles which either come from one of the major publishers OR titles they find listed as \u201cstocked\u201d on bn.com. There are forms to fill out, agreements to sign, most importantly, your POD book isn\u2019t ever going to appear as \u201cstocked\u201d on the Web site. It will have something like \u201cusually ships in 2-5 days\u201d appearing in its listing if you went through one of those POD service sites.<\/p>\n

    Getting listed on bn.com as \u201cstocked\u201d is really important. Without saying as much, it is a stamp of legitimacy. It means you really are a publisher and not one of these no money down Amazon lottery ticket players who tried to put an unedited blog post up for sale.<\/p>\n

    Once you have done ALL of this, then and only then are you ready for any kind of social media marketing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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