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Self-Publishing Made Me Do It: How My Novel Birthed My Marketing Business

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (8)

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

This guest blog post by Phyllis Zimbler Miller of Miller Mosaic Social Media Marketing describes her leap from learning how to promote her self-published novel — to teaching others how to use social media to promote their creative offerings.

* * *

In December, 2007, as I approached my sixtieth birthday, my novel, Mrs. Lieutenant, had been turned down by several publishers. So I decided to self-publish with BookSurge (now known as CreateSpace, owned by Amazon), and then enter my novel in the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition. Happily, it was chosen as a semi-finalist.

Amazon gave each semi-finalist a page on their site, instructing us to gather votes for our novels from our many connections. At that point in time, I had zero online connections. So how was I going to garner a zillion votes?

Then I noticed one semi-finalist using something I’d never heard of – a blog. That did it. I plunged into educating myself about blogs and related online marketing strategies. Soon after, I asked my daughter, Yael K. Miller (who’d graduated three years earlier with a degree in English from my alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania – for me, Penn’s Wharton School of Business), to be my business partner — since by then I’d decided to start my own marketing firm. Everything we learned, we implemented for ourselves first and then for our clients — including building WordPress websites.

Fast Forward to 2011

What I soon realized was that I’d made a major mistake by not promoting my book with social media long before it came out. And in many ways, I’ve spent the last two and a half years making up for that oversight. I’m just now beginning to see a return on my time-and- energy investment.

A few days ago, Google Alerts notified me that Mrs. Lieutenant was the first book chosen for a new book club launched by the site, Best Army Wives. I contacted the site’s owner, Irion Arce, and offered to use my social media contacts – as well as contacts from my online efforts to support our troops – to get the word out before the March 1^st book club launch date. I also offered to do four webinars, one for each week’s discussion, using the webinar software my company likes best (gotowebinar.com).

In the last few days, I’ve put into practice all that I’ve learned since my book appeared — and made use of all my appropriate contacts — to ask for assistance in promoting this new book club’s launch, featuring my novel.

(A case in point: Laurel Marshfield very kindly offered me this guest post opportunity. How do I know Laurel? We were both panelists for a BookBuzzr.com webinar on book marketing using Twitter. Afterwards, we continued to email and discovered that we shared several Philadelphia writing-community connections.)

Why was I on the BookBuzzr panel? Because more than two years ago, I created a connection with the site’s community manager, located in India. I offered marketing advice for her book-reader software site, and she and I have continued to exchange information ever since. “You need to give, in order to get” is especially true in online marketing. But, as writers, we have one very strong advantage in pursuing this kind of marketing: We know how to write.

What Are the Elements of a Good, Basic Online Presence?

Create a self-hosted WordPress website/blog for your writing projects. (If you’re the author of a novel, but don’t know what to blog about, see this free article co-authored by me and Carolyn Howard-Johnson [note: see a previous post about Howard-Johnson on this BHC blog]: www.FictionMarketing.com )
Share helpful information on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn
When your book is published, put part or all of it on BookBuzzr.com
When you are comfortable with these social media activities, create a Facebook Page (formerly known as a Fan page, now referred to as a Page; not the same as your personal Profile page) for your book, or your blog, or your writing projects. (Facebook has just made major changes to the functions of a Page; you can read about the changes at: www.MillerMosaicSocialMediaMarketing.com )
Leave insightful comments on others’ blog posts (if you don’t have a website yet, use the URL of one of your social media profiles), and write guest posts. (Sign up for free at BloggerLinkUp.com to get listings of blogs looking for specific guest posts.)

Everything I’m suggesting takes time away from your writing, I know. But what good is writing, if no one reads what you’ve written?

However you ultimately decide to promote your work, do participate in the social media community while you are planning and writing your book. It’s never too soon to build your social networking presence.

That said, want to help me spread the word about my book? Here’s the link to the March 1^st book club launch info featuring my novel, Mrs. Lieutenant: http://www.mrslieutenant.com/march-book-club/

Categories : Your Book Promotion

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Do Authors Need to Build Brands? (You Don’t LOOK Like a Box of TIDE)

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (3)

Wednesday, December 8th, 2010

Brands are those vague but persuasive associations we conjure up whenever we think of any well-known product. Mac computers. TIDE laundry detergent. Nike running shoes.

Brands are also the far more complex associations that come to mind whenever we think of well-known authors. Often, they’re a flash of images mixed with a dominant feeling, or a scene from a particular book montaged with memory fragments.

Here’s a small demonstration: Does the name Stephen King conjure something different for you than the name J.K. Rowling? What about Dan Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jodi Picoult? Or Malcolm Gladwell, Joan Didion, Seth Godin? What association appears for a second or so when you first see each name?

People Brands Aren’t Product Brands

Whatever that instant of recognition is composed of, it’s there because that author’s brand put it there. Each association is complex and meaningful — unlike the association you’d experience for a brand of laundry detergent.

In fact, it’s that much-ado-about-nothingness which characterizes many product brands that makes it easy to imagine authors rejecting the B word as too schlocky, too commercial, too huckster-esque. So let’s substitute the word “story” instead – the “author-identifier” story, if you will.

Brand: Author-Identifier Story

The author-identifier story (aka brand) refers to the complex messages authors put out into the world about themselves and their books — which we then absorb and retain in a highly individual way. Suppose that you, like author Michael Cunningham, were interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” You talked about your struggles with writing, as well as your then-recent book, The Hours (later made into a movie starring Meryl Streep). You were articulate, charming, fascinating — someone any listener would want to know more about, because what you had to say was vivid and substantive.

So, you think, is that Cunningham’s brand? Not exactly. What any given listener will remember of that “Fresh Air” interview is very little. Instead, there will be a vague feeling, a positive association, a sense of being charmed and entertained. The specifics of what was said will fade over time to almost nothing. And what is left will contribute to Cunningham’s brand, but it won’t be his brand.

That intangible entity exists like an earth-orbiting satellite, constantly receiving and broadcasting new data – a new book, a new interview, a new movie. Over time, its signal stabilizes into something more defined, but it’s still subject to change. Just not as much as it is in the beginning.

How Do You Get One?

You may be thinking, All very interesting, but what about me, how can I do this, too? To send out your own earth-orbiting satellite — where it will pick up and broadcast your author brand — you need to consciously make use of the intersection between your personal life story and the story your books tell. And then, you need to use that intersection to dialogue with interested readers.

An Author Who Dialogues with Her Readers

Take a look at author Jodi Picoult’s website: http://www.jodipicoult.com. Here’s a novelist who eagerly dialogues with her readers: her satellite both broadcasts and responds.

Broadcast: She shares family videos and author-interview videos; podcasts about her books and what it takes to be a writer; and posts revealing where the subjects of her novels and her personal life are connected.

Response: She has an active message board, allowing readers to ask questions and get answers (which makes them feel as if this author is really listening to them). There’s also a static Q&A page with info on subjects she’s often asked to comment on. Finally, there’s a confiding note in the border of her site explaining that it wasn’t her choice to wait six months to release the eBook version of her latest novel. Her publisher made the decision, and she’s angry about it, too. In other words, she’s on their side.

You can’t spend any time on Picoult’s site without knowing who she is, how she lives, what she cares about, what she’s accomplished, and where she’s going as an author. You also can’t help but feel welcomed. There’s no schlocky sales pitch, but the welcome mat is out. In short, Picoult’s site builds her brand — her author-identifier story — consciously and abundantly, though it doesn’t constitute her brand.

That complex flash of association only resides, dear reader, within the softly lit privacy of your mind. Much the way reading a novel does.

Categories : Your Book Promotion

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Bestselling Author Wannabe? Lynn Serafinn Can Show You How

Posted by: Laurel | Comments (6)

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

She calls herself a Personal Transformation Coach. But Lynn Serafinn can help you do more than transform personally, life-changing as that may be.

She can help you transform professionally — by showing you how she became a well-promoted, best-selling author. Here’s the big-picture overview:

Stage One: Pre-Launch

Using largely online tools, Serafinn wisely constructed a far-reaching and supportive author platform — well before her book launched in April of this year.

(Your “author platform” is your existing audience: the number of people who already know you and want to buy your book. Media contacts who know and will feature you are an integral part of your platform, as well.)

Stage Two: Launch

Serafinn used social media to find twenty-two joint venture partners, with whom she created an Amazon bestseller campaign on the day her self-published book launched — both in England, where she lives, and in the United States, where she was born.

Stage Three: Post-Launch

She implemented creative ongoing strategies for promoting her book and her business.

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Now that you know the overall strategy Serafinn used — a near-perfect model of savvy book promotion — here are the specifics for all three stages:

When she began writing her book in the spring of 2007, Serafinn soon made it a point to educate herself about self-publishing and book promotion — by taking every seminar she could fit into her schedule.

The upshot? She realized that a well-orchestrated campaign was essential, if her book was to attract the attention of vast numbers of readers who didn’t yet know she existed.

::: Stage One // Pre-Launch:

A year before her book — The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self – appeared, Serafinn chronicled her book-writing progress in the online newsletter for her coaching business. Readers responded so enthusiastically to her book diary that it built “buzz,” word-of-mouth excitement about her upcoming release.

Eight months prior to publication, Serafinn created a free article series which attracted hundreds of new people to her mailing list. Once signed up, they also got her newsletter — with its book updates in each issue. Many of these new subscribers bought the book when it came out, because they’d become fans through her free offerings. (Meanwhile, the article series became the basis for Serafinn’s second book, coming out later this year.)

Next, she created multiple venues for a growing audience of potential readers to interact with her — for the most part, on line — because she knew that relationship-building was key:

· Becoming active in groups and forums that targeted her mind-body-spirit + coaching market on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ning, she also joined Twitter, following and being followed by people in the same niche.

· Ramping up her social media activity even further, she started her own groups on Facebook and Ning, wisely christening both with the title of her book, “Garden of the Soul”: http://www.gardenofthesoul.ning.com/

· Months before launch, she created a blogsite for her book: http://www.give-receive-become-be.com

· Around the same time, she created her own Internet radio show — “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul” — built around her book’s content: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Lynn-Serafinn She invited many of the mind-body-spirit professionals she’d met on social media sites to be guests on her show.

· Leaving no online media “unturned,” Serafinn next created sensuous promotional book videos — book trailers — in which she used her own well-trained voice to read selections from her book (a professional musician earlier in her career, she presented her work with consummate skill and a charming English accent): http://www.youtube.com/user/gardenofthesoul

· She hired a publicist to help coordinate a virtual blog tour with fifteen blog stops, as well as pre-launch interviews on six Internet radio shows.

· Finally, she created a simple but buzz-building Twitter contest, offering a free book to the lucky person who sent the winning tweet.

::: Stage Two // Launch:

Amazon Bestseller Campaign

Three months before her book’s launch date, Serafinn found twenty-two joint venture partners — all business owners in the mind-body-spirit world — through her social media sites.

In April, she and her partners coordinated three separate email “blasts” to their respective mailing lists, offering free bonuses from each one (http://tinyurl.com/lynn-bonus) — with the purchase of Serafinn’s book on Amazon.com.

Serafinn’s campaign was wildly successful. Within hours of her book launch on April 7, Garden of the Soul was a bestseller on Amazon’s UK and American sites (number 89 for all books, in every category, in both countries).

::: Stage Three // Post-Launch:

Promoting Her Book to Promote Her Business

Some might be forgiven for assuming that a book’s promotion ends the minute it enters the marketplace — when, in fact, what went before merely represents the beginning. Why is that?

Promoting an expertise book is itself a vehicle for promoting the service business that gave rise to it. In other words, the book’s value (from a marketing perspective) lies in its unique ability to attract buyers for everything else an author provides: services, workshops, other info-products.

As a result, Serafinn is now managing an ever-growing constellation of promotional strategies and activities, upcoming events, and future plans. Here are her main efforts, post-launch:

· After creating an online media kit for her book’s blogsite, she began using a press release service (offered by her self-publisher) to attract radio interviews, articles in newspapers and magazines, book reviews, and requests by magazines and blogs for her bylined articles.

· At the same time, she began doing a lot of public speaking — at libraries, mind-body-spirit fairs, and through chapters of her organization for holistic practitioners, the Global Wellness Circle (http://www.global-wellness-circle.com), as well as for International Women’s Day, and other special interest groups.

· In her future are plans for a week in-residence at the One World Festival in west England, where she’ll present workshops on the principles of her book. She’s also planning one-woman shows that combine performance and coaching.

These public engagements attract people who not only buy her book, they sign up for her coaching services, weekend workshops, and longer retreats, as well.

But there’s one other plan Serafinn is ready to unveil: a retreat, later this year, aimed at helping would-be authors use her book’s teachings to become “the hero of your own life.”

For if it’s true, as the aphorism says, that “You teach what you need to learn,” then Serafinn might agree that it applies to her, too. Because — and though it’s beyond the scope of this post — she most assuredly has learned to be the hero of her own life.

To discover why this is so, please read Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self. You can buy a copy, or contact the author about book promotion strategies, at her book’s blogsite: http://www.give-receive-become-be.com

Categories : Your Book Promotion