author marketing

Nice year-end gift for your clients and more tweets

12/30/2011 By Joan Leave a Comment

Here are my Top 10 tweets from this past week, great for retweeting! If you missed these, follow me on Twitter.

Prevent the “lago effect” from dooming your CEO who tries to “help” during a crisis. http://paper.li/clayedwardspr/pr-pros-paper

How Restaurants Are Using Social Media to Their Advantage. http://tinyurl.com/8xbuyuo

How to Use Great Testimonials, Once You Get Them. http://ow.ly/8b2LS

Get Blog Results for Business | Writing On The Web by Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad | Writing On The Web. http://tinyurl.com/7dzodzr

Top 50 Women Entrepreneur Experts to Follow on Twitter. http://ow.ly/8dj2U

Nice year-end gift for your clients. Free ebook with 2 dozen publicity/social media tips. http://ow.ly/8dj8Z

5 clever uses of LinkedIn’s brand new “group polls” feature. http://ow.ly/8dkJL

5-part strategy for cashing in on content and social media marketing in 2012. http://ow.ly/8dTU6

Freelancers: Pick up some extra cash in 2012. Pitch articles to these paying markets. http://ow.ly/8dUTu

Authors: Compare major print-on-demand companies. http://ow.ly/8dV2u

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Blogs, Crisis Communications, Social media marketing, Social networking, Twitter, Writing Articles Tagged With: author marketing, Blogging, free publicity, LinkedIn, pitching journalists, Twitter

What Taylor Swift can teach you about book marketing

9/5/2011 By Joan 1 Comment

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

This guest post was written by Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the author of the multi award-winning The Frugal Book Promoter (now in an updated and expanded second edition). Also part of the HowToDoItFrugally series is the booklet The Great First Impression Book Proposal booklet, that helps authors convince agents or publishers of their understanding of spin-offs, retailing and marketing in general. She also is the author of a series of books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions.

* * *

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson

I can’t tell you how often I’ve thanked my lucky stars for my retail experience now that I’m an author. My husband used to say (ahem!) “Retail is 90 percent attention to detail!” If he’s right—and he always is—then the other 10 percent is marketing.

To reinterpret this, you need a great product—that’s the attention to detail part—whether that’s the store itself or the merchandise you sell. They’re both your “products.” (For authors the product is our book or books.)

But all the detail, product, merchandise, publicity or anything else—all that other stuff we’ve poured our little detail-oriented hearts into—goes for naught if we don’t do the marketing.

So how does Taylor Swift fit into this?

Well, the L.A. Times reports on her products (the way she is branding herself which is part of marketing). She has a signature fragrance, a poster by Peter Max (That’s Peter-the-Greatest-Artist-Marketer-Of-All-Time-After-Warhol!), a back to school package, a limited edition combo of a CD single and a souvenir T-shirt, headbands, a songbook, a tin box of guitar picks, boxed greeting cards, a keychain, and a journal. Yes, I’m out of breath!

So, we can learn a lot from her about branding, a big part of marketing. Each of these products fits with her image. But we can also learn that we just need to do it.

How to Brand with Spin-off Products

Your book proposal, as an example, might include a list of products (other than your book) that could be spun off from your book. Taylor’s journal idea is a good one for memoirists. T-shirts work for just about everyone. But each author’s list of possibilities will be different, just as the list would differ for different businesses on Main Street USA.

One of our stores was in Palm Springs and we had adorable little souvenir pin boxes made with “Carlan’s, Palm Springs” and palm trees hand-painted on them. They worked because they were more personal and specific than the usual souvenir with only “Palm Springs” machine stamped on them.

My poetry partner, Magdalena Ball, and I might someday have art posters of the covers of our poetry chapbook series featuring our collaborating artists—Jacquie Schmall, Vicki Thomas and May Lattanzio. Framed, of course! Learn more about how we promote that series (including a special holiday card offer for the Christmas chapbook).

What About YOUR Idea?

So, what do you do with your product idea? Well, the obvious first choice would be to get a manufacturer with a HUGE customer base to make your product; they, in turn, get their sales representatives to sell them to retailers who then sell them to the general public.

But what if you’re eager to get started now? Try these ideas:

• Use your products as thank you gifts.

• Use your products as souvenirs or parts of promotions, like gift baskets or contests.

• Use your products as walking, talking advertisements. As an example, every time someone compliments you on your rose-scented cologne, that’s an opportunity to mention your romance novel and maybe give them a bookmark. Your T-shirts are walking billboards. So are your totes.

• Use your products as part of the media kits you leave in the press rooms at tradeshows.

• Use your products as an integral part of parties and events you plan, like a store opening or a book launch.

• Offer your products to charities for their drawings or other fundraisers.

So, put your thinking cap on. What kind of a “Seller” can you be? What fits with your product, your store, your title—whatever that is?

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Business Promotion Tagged With: andy warhol, author btanding, author marketing, book marketing, magdalena ball, spin-off products, taylor swift, taylor swift guitar picks, the frugal book promoter

Promoting fiction: Should authors fake a memoir?

8/30/2011 By Joan 6 Comments

Magdalena Ball

This guest post was written by author Magdalena Ball, whose most recent novel, Black Cow, will be released by Bewrite Books later this year. She lives in New South Whales, Australia. Visit http://www.magdalenaball.com for more information on her work .

* * *

We all know that fiction is a harder sell than nonfiction.

A perfectly valid selling tactic for fiction writers is to pick out the nonfiction elements in their work—to talk about the subject matter (eg my upcoming novel Black Cow is about a family that downshifts from a high flying life to a simpler more self-sufficient existence—there’s a big movement around that and these people might be a good target audience), or to appeal to readers who might mirror their characters in some way.

However, a more controversial “tactic” is to actually pretend that the events in the work are real.

That might involve calling your novel a “memoir” even if it’s not—such as James Frey’s notorious A Million Little Pieces, or Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea. If you’re a fiction writer, should you consider faking a memoir? Even if you’re caught, is the scandal itself a promotional tactic? After all, Frey would never have been featured so prominently on “Oprah” with a mere novel.

Here are three reasons why you might consider faking your memoir, and three reasons why you shouldn’t.

Why fake a memoir?

1. Readers prefer “facts” to truth.

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case, nor, being primarily a fiction reader myself, do I subscribe to it. However, as a fiction writer, I’m well aware of the public’s insatiable hunger for “what really happened” and the flow-on effect this has with publishers, who are generally more willing to take on memoirs than fiction. ”Reality” sells. We want to listen in and peep through the keyhole.

2. There’s bound to be an element of fact and fiction in whatever you write.

Memory is complex, unreliable and subjective. We don’t all perceive reality in the same way. Any type of writing involves the creation of episodes and storylines—a creative, and primarily fictive process. All fiction is ultimately born out of perceptions and observations. There’s no memoir that is 100 percent factual, just as there is no fiction that is 100 percent made up. The very notion of a re-telling involves exaggeration and construct.

With such a fuzzy distinction between nonfiction and fiction, why shouldn’t genre be determined by the author and publisher as a marketing exercise?

3. Media coverage

That’s buzz, the thing that everyone needs. Buzz doesn’t only equal sales, although there is that.

It also equates to appearances on guest shows, potential film interest, and social media ratings. If you base your story on “true events,” there’s a built-in sensationalism that provides a greater chance of buzz.

3 Reasons to Not Fake It

1. Reputation

This may seem unimportant to those with no reputation at all. After all, we have all heard of James Frey. But there is that little thing called integrity. If you put out a book under the guise of memoir, you’re asking for your facts to be checked. You’ll be caught out. Will it hurt sales? It might, if your publisher decides, as they did in the case of Margaret Selzer’s Love and Consequences, to recall all copies of the book and offer buyers a refund. It might also diminish your chances of a future book deal, a future readership, or indeed, a future as an author. Of course it might not, but treating readers with disdain is a risky business.

2. It erodes the truth

This is a moral point. The truth is a slippery eel, but we have to aim for it. If you subvert ethics in favour of marketing you diminish the whole notion of what is and isn’t real, and the world becomes a worse place. That’s a subtle thing, but no less powerful an argument for it. As authors, we have to try to focus on the notion of truth, in fiction and in nonfiction. If you begin by swearing that your work has a basis in fact that you know it doesn’t, then you are lying deliberately. That’s not a good thing for an art that has its basis in meaning making, whether or not you get caught or whether or not you get more press coverage from the scandal.

3. Truth has to trump fact

I’m biased of course. When I read and write, there is really only one thing that I’m looking for and that is some kind of truth. Truth is not the same as fact. This may be something that the general public has yet to cotton onto, but I know you know.

Reality television and talk shows don’t always show us the truth. What constitutes truth—that deep underlying sense of what rings a chord with readers—is far richer than “what really happened.”

Sharing the real meaning of events, whether real or imagined, is the heart of the writing process. This, of course, is where our promotional efforts should lie. If, at the moment, mass media is hungry for sensational events over deeper truths, that shouldn’t matter to those of us struggling to create truth. Use the medium that serves your real story (whether factual or imagined) best, and you’ll be able to promote it with the kind of conviction that only comes with truth.

So in summary, I wouldn’t advocate faking a memoir, but rather promoting your fiction and the underlying truth of what you’re saying, with the reverance it deserves. Because the real problem with faking it, is that it makes a fundamentally mistaken assumption that fiction is a less powerful form of art than memoir.

Both are perceptions of the truth, and both have equal promotional value within the context of their stories. That reality is where your promotional efforts will have the biggest impact, because people will recognise and respond to the innate truth.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers Tagged With: a million little pieces, author marketing, book marketing, Book Publicity, fake a memoir, Greg Mortenson, james frey, magdalena ball, three cups of tea

Authors, 7 things will keep you out of the poorhouse

10/6/2010 By Joan 5 Comments

If you’re writing a book, or thinking of writing one, please don’t take the quickest path to the poorhouse.

Don’t start writing your next book unless you can identify multiple ways you’re going to make money from it.

The answer “I’m going to make money when people buy it at the book store” doesn’t count. That revenue is quickly wiped out from what it cost you to publish the book.

Sadly, thousands of authors view the book as the end product—the one thing that’s going to bring them fame and fortune and make them rich. When the book doesn’t sell, they call me, sobbing because they can’t park in their garages that are filled with unopened boxes of books they can’t unload.


What Smart Authors Do

Smart authors use their books as calling cards. The book “upsells” readers to a variety of other products and services. Those can include small-ticket items like board games, calendars, coffee mugs and information products to really pricey services like coaching programs, boot camps and membership sites.

After working with more than 9,000 authors over the last 20 years, Steve Harrison has learned that the most successful authors simply do seven key things differently than poor authors. Some of them are very famous bestsellers, like the creators of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Others are happily not-so-famous but quietly raking in high six- figure and even seven-figure annual incomes without ever being on Oprah or hitting any bestseller list.

Steve is hosting a free teleseminar at 2 and 7 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, Oct. 7, on “How to Achieve a Lot More Success as an Author by Discovering the Seven Things Rich Authors Know That Poor Authors Don’t.”

To learn what wildly successful authors know that poor authors don’t, join him for the 75-minute call. There’s no cost to participate, except for your normal long distance charges, so go here now and sign up.

Even though the call is free, I promote these calls as a compensated affiliate if you buy other products and services later because hundreds of authors have told me they regret the day they ever decided to publish a book. I hope you aren’t one of them.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Information Products Tagged With: author marketing, book PR, Book Promotion, publishing, upsell from a book

Sell books by the truckload: Free call explains how

9/21/2010 By Joan Leave a Comment

Dr. Neil Baum, a urologist in New Orleans, tried lots of ways to promote and distribute his book, Marketing Your Clinical Practice.

Most of them bombed. And like many other authors, he felt stuck.

Then, he thought that perhaps a big pharmaceutical company might want to buy his book in mass quantity and give it away to doctors as a gift. Pharmaceutical companies have very strict regulations on what they’re allowed to give to doctors. But giving them educational products wasn’t a problem.

So Dr. Baum contacted Bayer, the aspirin company, and asked if they’d like to give his book away to their customer doctors as a way of showing appreciation for their patronage. Within a week, Bayer bought more than 120,000 copies and sent it to doctors throughout the U.S. Today, his book is on the shelf of virtually every medical clinic in the U.S.

Just One Phone Call

And it all happened from just one phone call.

These kinds of deals happen all the time. But few authors understand the step-by-step process of how to make that happen.

Matthew Bennett, a self-published author who’s relatively unknown to the general public, has had even greater success than Dr. Baum. He has sold more than 5 million books in quantity to Fortune 500 corporations, including Disney, Reebok, NBC, Abbott Labs, Pfizer, US Healthplans, Subway and many others.

Want to learn how he does it–and how you, too, can get started selling your books by the truckload to big companies?

You’re invited to a free telephone seminar on Thursday, Sept. 23, to hear Steve Harrison interview Matthew about his proven methods and system for selling tons of books. Register here.

Time Inconvenient?

If you can’t attend because the time is inconvenient, recruit someone to attend and take notes for you. Replays are seldom available.

I promote these free teleseminars as a compensated affiliate because the techniques work, but only for authors who are willing to do the legwork.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers Tagged With: author marketing, book marketing, sell more books