Marketing Concepts for Authors: All You Need to Know on One Page

Do you need an MBA to be an author? No, but applying basic marketing concepts may save some time in building your platform.

The basic strategy for online book marketing is to lure potential readers to your site with useful or interesting information, and then pitch them your book. (Yes, it's a little gross.) You do the hard-selling on your site to people who have already shown an interest in you or your work. Don't hard-sell people you barely know using social media. (More on this below)

Here are some other concepts to keep in mind.

1) Who Are Your Readers?

Some experts will tell you to imagine a single reader, the perfect reader, their age, job, family, house, car, favorite TV shows, which hand they wipe with.

This can be tricky, particularly for fiction writers. As I've mentioned previously, my novel-in-progress is about a never-married hypochondriac who takes a trip around the world looking to change his luck with love. The story has several potential types of readers, including people interested in travel, dating, and humor. I've further subdivided these groups as follows:

- Travel: adventure travel, around the world travel, people who like to complain about travel, and sex tourists.
- Dating: bitter single people over 35, smug married people, miserable married people, readers of erotica.
- Humor: raunchy humor, humorous erotica.

How am I going to go after each of these groups? One group at a time.

2) Where Do Your Readers Hang Out?

Online
The usual suspects: Social media, Web sites dedicated to your topics, search engines

Join some groups, add some keywords to your site or most popular posts, see if your traffic increases. If not, try some others. 

After a couple of months on Twitter monitoring different travel hashtags and travel experts, I've found a few that appear to be useful and have produced either followers or clicks back to my site: #RTWnow (for people interested in planning trip around the world), #careerbreak (people considering a travel sabbatical), #bootsnall (a Web site for travelers.)

A tool like Hootsuite makes it easy to monitor and post to different groups and hashtags on Twitter. (click to enlarge).

Offline
Meet Up groups, lectures, organizations, trade shows, readings you give and attend, social events you attend.

To keep track of these people, I just started a simple monthly newsletter using a free service called MailChimp. I plan to collect cards and e-mail addresses from people I meet out and about who are interested in my book or my topics. When people ask what I'm doing with myself, I describe my book and what it's about. If they're interested, I'll ask for the order: "Would you like to be on my e-mail list?" Am I as shameless as a real-estate broker? Of course!

(Full disclosure: I just started this e-mail newsletter two week ago and only have three subscribers. Yes, I'm a knucklehead: I've been talking about my novel-in-progress at parties, giving readings, meeting people at lectures, and even giving occasional lectures -- for three years now -- and didn't collect a single card. Did I mention that I'm a knucklehead? But you have to start somewhere.)

Sample of a very basic newsletter I created using MailChimp. (It required a few hours of set-up and fiddling.) Click to enlarge.

3) How to Connect with Potential Readers

Online
- Don't spend all your marketing time hanging out with other writers, unless they are your audience.
- Don't make bald pitches for your book. (Sorry to keep repeating this -- but it's like screaming, "Hey, look at me, I'm a douchebag!" Sending a direct message with a book pitch to a new Twitter follower is a great way to lose that follower.)
- Do answer other people's questions, comment on their comments, like their comments, follow them.
- Do offer tips, links to news items, links to stories you've written, links to Youtubes of you reading in public or audios of you reading at home.

(Audios are relatively easy to make using a microphone and a free audio editor, such as Audacity. Spend an afternoon reading book excerpts into the mic and editing them. Do a bunch and upload them to a free site, such as box.com More on audio in a future post.)

Offline
- Pitch yourself as a reader at conferences, art festivals, literary open mics, folk-music open mics, story slams, poetry slams.

- But how can you pitch yourself as a reader if you don't have a published book or a book from a big publishing house? I don't have a published book; hell, I don't even have a finished book yet -- but these techniques have helped me get readings at decent venues:

*Read at a literary open mic over the course of a few months, do a good job, become a regular, graciously pay the $5 cover charge each time, buy some beers. Then ask the organizer if you can be a featured reader. Once you've been a feature, you can include that credential when pitching other events.

*Get a video. Some events and slams video-tape participants and will offer to sell you a video of yourself. Is it a rip off? Yes. Does it make you look like a pro? Possibly. Here's a video I've posted before that was taken at a story slam in Boston. It cost $10 to participate in the slam and I believe the video cost me about $35. Did I win the story slam? Of course, not. Would you consider me as a reader?

4) How Much Time Should You Spend on Book Marketing?

One well-know agent suggested that unpublished authors spend no more than 10 percent of their writing time on marketing.

I'm about six months away from finishing my book and circulating it to agents. Considering the long odds of finding an agent and a publisher, and the fact that agents and publishers want to see that an author can market his own books, I'm spending about 20 percent of my writing time on marketing. Is the marketing interfering with my writing? Damn straight. Would I spend this much time on marketing if I hated it? No way.

5) The Simplest Advice

One marketing consultant told me: "You don't have to do everything [online, offline, live readings]. Just pick something you like and become good at it."

My favorite marketing tip comes from U.K. author Jim Murdock: "Traditional marketing techniques don’t work very well online. Being a decent bloke who takes a genuine interest in other people and isn’t always selling at them does … but not quickly."

More Book Promotions Tips:
- Linked In Tips for Authors
- Tips for Reading Your Writing in Public

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Social Media for Authors: Groups and Forums

Posting in social media groups and Web forums lets you promote to large audiences with common interests. It can also be a huge waste of time.

Here are some tips for using groups on common social media (Linked In, Facebook, Twitter), book sites (Goodreads, Shelfari), and search sites (Google and Yahoo!). Web sites that target your audience may also have forums into which you can connect with potential readers.

General Tips

- Your book marketing goal is to post links and tidbits that will entice potential readers to your Web site. Even if your posts don't drive a lot of traffic, you are creating links back to your site (SEO) and currying favor with Google.
- Choose groups with lots of active members. A group with 10,000 members who never post or visit is useless. Also, check the date of recent posts. I've found groups with lots of members but no posts since 2009.
- Find groups in which members are allowed post. Some groups only allow the group owner to post which will defeat your purposes.
- Examine the posts: If the group is full of spam, porn, or authors pitching their books, you may want to avoid it.
- Again, if you're a non-fiction writer, finding groups is easier. For fiction writers, you need to consider sub-topics addressed in your book. My novel-in-progress involves travel, relationships, and erotica -- so I'm always searching for groups interested in these topics. (for more on sub-topics for novelists, scroll down to "Finding Your Audience" on this page about Twitter.)
- Create posts so they appeal to forum members -- not just promote your books. For example: "Buy my book!!!" won't do much for you. But "How to Avoid Being Ripped Off in Bangkok" should catch the attention in a group about travel.

Linked In Groups

Linked In allows you to join 50 or so groups. (The limitation is supposed to be 50, but for some reason, I belong to 51.) Most groups are professional groups -- people in the same line of work looking to network. But there are some consumer-type groups. So far, I've posted to groups interested in travel and have found groups devoted to my other topics, erotica and dating.

Once you join a group, it's easier to connect with people in the group who you don't know. When you attempt to add them as a connection, Linked In will ask how you know them and you can click the groups option.

Note: If you attempt to connect with a lot of people who either decline or say they don't know you, Linked In will first give you a warning, then it will remove the "groups" option, and you'll have to enter their e-mail, which you probably don't have. (click image to enlarge)

Busted! Invite too many people who say they don't know you and you'll be forced to provide their e-mail address.

Other tips:
- In the settings for each group, consider turning off daily e-mail -- or all e-mail except from the moderator and people who comment on your postings. This will prevent e-mail overload.
- Start your own group: If you're popular and a lot of people are asking you to connect, you may want to have them sign up to your group instead. Owning a group has another benefit: You can send e-mail to all members in one shot.
- Avoid Facebook LikeFests and Twitter FollowFests. In some groups, members will offer to follow you if you follow them. This is a great way to increase your likes and followers, but it's time consuming to Like and Follow everyone back, you'll get huge volumes of e-mails, and you'll be connecting to people more interested in increasing their stats than they are in your book. (For more quick and dirty tips for boosting your tips, see "Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing.")
- For some reason, I've had better luck using links shortened with Tinyurl.com than I have with Bitly.com. (Sometimes, when I enter a link created with Bitly, Linked In stalls. Entering the same link created with Tinyurl works. I don't know why or if my experience is unique.)

Facebook Groups

Facebook also offers a search function for finding groups and pages targeting a specific audience. But to join a group or Like a page, you have to do it from your Profile account -- not your Fan Page. Also, be sure the group or page allows you to post links.

Twitter

Search for hashtags related to your particular topics. Read my post dedicated to finding and managing hashtags on Twitter.

Goodreads and Other Book/Reader Sites

Many of these Sites have forums into which you can post links. These posts won't be as pretty as those you make in Facebook or Linked In. Typically, you can post a note and sometimes a link -- provided you use paste the HTML code for the link into your post. (Don't worry, it's pretty simple.) I have not been able to figure out how to post a link to Shelfari's groups beyond spelling it out. I.e. "For the rest of this article visit my site TheLoneliestPlanet.com." (If you figure it out, please let me know.)

A groups search on GoodReads for "erotica" produces a mixture of forums for authors and readers.

Other sites for authors and readers:
Library Thing
Redroom

Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups

These are mainly e-mail groups, which means your posts won't be as pretty as those you make in Linked In and Facebook, which both include a screen shot of your post and your photo. But one really nice feature: You can post by sending an e-mail to the group. You can even post to multiple groups at once from e-mail.

Note: You'll probably need to set up an e-mail account with Yahoo or Google before you can join a group. (You can still have e-mail from the group sent to your regular e-mail account -- even if it's not with Yahoo! or Gmail.)

Waste of Time Alert: I have yet to find a group on either of these sites that's worth the time and effort. Several travel groups on Google I looked at were full of ads and spam. A promising group wanted money (a membership) if you wanted to post. Several publishing groups I joined on Yahoo! have turned out to be worthless. I didn't do an exhaustive search on either site, so my experience may be atypical -- or not.

More Book Promotions Tips:

- Linked In Tips for Authors
- Is Online Book Marketing a Waste of Time? (Often, it is)

If you find my book marketing tips useful, sign up to have them delivered to your inbox each week:

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