Category: in your corner

Book Marketing, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Marketing Your Self-Published Book, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: The Voice in Your Ear

Or, When to Call for Help

“Your book isn’t just a product,” wrote my fellow Self-Publishing Advisor blogger Kelly back in February.  “It is, in every way and shape and form, an investment.”  She was in the middle of her Marketing B.A.S.I.C.S. series (which holds up well over time, I have to say) at the time, and put together an eloquent defense for those of us who feel the sting of the stigma wrapped around the whole notion of seeking help and advice within the self-publishing world.  We all have felt it, that little itch at the back of our mind, that but you were supposed to be D-I-Ying this! protest sparking our neurons into a frenzy of self-doubt.

There are a lot of myths about seeking help, which Kelly did a pretty good job of dispelling; I want to talk a little about what form that help might take, and specifically I want to talk about a little job title called “Personal Marketing Assistant.”  Or at least, that’s what they’re called by my employer, Outskirts Press (which I feel compelled to be transparent about).  I don’t know what some other companies like Dog Ear title this position, but they’re fundamental to our self-publishing model: in short, they’re the person you talk to on the phone when you’re trying to figure out which service bundle best fits your needs, and what the next steps are to put together a really kicking marketing campaign.  The difference is, perhaps, that at Outskirts we recognize just how vital this voice in your ear can be–so we offer 30-minute to 5-hour conversations with one of our Personal Marketing Assistants as a dedicated service.  There are a lot of reasons why this is a good thing, but ultimately they boil down to: it’s good for our PMAs themselves (to receive public recognition as integral parts of our work) and it’s good for our customers (who can be assured of reaching someone as committed to their project’s success as they are).

A Personal Marketing Assistant comes in most handy, you might have guessed, once you already have your book put together and ready to go.  They are the sort of person you want by your side when you’re putting together a marketing plan or arranging a book signing, developing your author platform or following up on marketing campaign leads.  But a good PMA–no matter which company you elect to self-publish with–will do far more for you than just talk.  A good PMA gets his or her hands dirty with your project, and does a lot of the heavy lifting for those of you who need and ask for the intervention.  This is because you don’t pay them for inspiring words or even just plain good advice.  You pay them to help, and sometimes helping looks like direct involvement.  They are your extra arms and legs, fan extension of your vision for your book.  For the most part, they’re truly gifted and empathetic individuals who got into this business because they thrive on coming alongside others and helping get the job done–helping others realize their dreams.

Q: So when do you call for this kind of help?

A: Whenever you need to.  Whenever you want to.  The stigma associated with asking for help makes it difficult for a lot of us to admit we need help, and it more or less silences those of us who simply want help.  Maybe we can do the job all by ourselves.  But maybe we don’t want to.  Maybe we have the skill set to market our book, technically, but we know we could get a lot more done–maybe around the house, maybe starting our next book–if we cede some of the workload to an expert who is paid to be an expert.  I don’t just want to kick the stigma of asking for help when we need it; I want to bring us back to that foundational self-publishing ethos that says ‘We’re here and self-publishing because we want the power to do exactly what we want without being policed by an agent or publisher.’ Want is as critical a component of self-publishing as need, and I think we forget that.

So: do a little research.  Does your self-publishing company offer the chance to talk to a Personal Marketing Assistant?  Good.  Now, do you want or need a little advice on what to do next?  You go and get it.  And I’ll be right here to cheer you on!

marketing assistant

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
amazon, elizabeth speaks, in your corner, search engine optimization, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Optimize your Amazon presence!

Amazon is, for all intents and purposes, the powerhouse when it comes to the book distribution process.  It doesn’t seem to be a temporary thing, either; authors and publishers alike simply must acclimate to the fact that to sell a lot of books, they first must tailor their Amazon presence to be an attractive one.  And Amazon seems to have good intentions insofar as providing resources goes: its architects have dedicated incredible resources to creating better ways to connect authors with their readers.

There are a lot of ways to promote your book on Amazon, and since sales through this website may very well account for a large percentage of your overall book sales, it’s worth making sure you’re aware of all of the options!

amazon warehouse

The first step, of course, is to figure out what you’re doing right.

To do this, locate your book listing on Amazon by searching the title or ISBN.  Once your book listing is fully loaded, make sure your cover is showing.  If it isn’t there yet, make sure to upload a quality image for your readers to view–preferably at a high resolution.  Double-check that all of the information on display is accurate, and check back every few weeks to make sure it stays up-to-date and glitch-free.  This all is predicated on the assumption, of course, that you already have your book for sale on Amazon … but what if you don’t?

Create an Author Central account.

This account differs from the normal customer account you may already have on Amazon as a result of buying something (or many things).  An Author Central account allows you to better manage your books, and the process is free, so there are zero reasons not to create one.  To begin, navigate to authorcentral.amazon.com and register your profile, following the on-screen prompts to add your books to your bibliography, create a blog, edit or revise your online descriptions, and use a number of other tools on offer.

Returning to your book listing page, it’s vital that you include only relevant and compelling sales information with a positive marketing slant that will increase both your exposure and the number of people who actually buy your book.  That’s money in the bank!  Streamline your page to avoid the clutter of white noise (information that distracts from what’s really important) and reassess regularly.

Go for those reviews.  Go for them.

Amazon rewards activity on your Author Central profile page and on your book page listings, to the more reviews you have–the more people who will be directed to your book via Amazon’s search algorithms, and the more people who will buy and review your book.  Interesting Factoid Alert: This is the definition of a positive feedback loop!  You want your book’s activity to outweigh the activity on all other books of comparable genre, content, and publication date–so in a sense, it is a bit of race to rack up the reviews.  To get these reviews, it’s a good plan to:

  1. Write online reviews for other books.  This gets your name out there, establishing you as an authority, and will occasionally be reciprocated by those authors you review.
  2. Entice people you know to review your book.  And if you don’t yet know a host of eager reviewers, consider hosting giveaways or offering discounts to potential reviewers.
  3. Mark positive reviews of your book as ‘helpful.’  There’s a link attached to each review on your book that allows other viewers to gauge the review’s usefulness (and accuracy).  You can ask your other friends and followers to do this, too.

Books without reviews are like books no one is buying–Amazon’s algorithms tend to leave them out of search engine results and “If you like this, you might also like this” recommendations.  It’s unethical (and fairly easy for others to spot) to give your own book a five-star review, but you shouldn’t shy from asking others to.  The worst they can say is ‘no,’ and there are plenty who will say ‘yes.’

Share your book using Amazon’s built-in features.

Picture this: sending an Amazon-branded email to all of your friends and acquaintances.  Imagine that the email contains a large image of your book cover along with its retail price, star rating, and an enormous inviting button saying “Learn More”!  Well, this option exists, is free, and is almost ridiculously easy to use.  All you have to do is locate your book on Amazon, look at your sales detail page, find the “Share” button (usually on the right-hand column).  Click “Share” and crack open your list of email contacts.  You can enter the email addresses for anyone you know who might like to know about your book, following the on-screen prompts to enter up to four hundred people at a time.

Amazon also makes it easy to share your book listing on social media.  You don’t have to copy the link manually; just click the Twitter, Facebook, and other social media icons on your book listing page–and again, just follow the prompts to log in and post the link to your followers.  Easy peasy!  And the best part is … every ‘hit’ on your book listing page boosts your online presence and optimizes your Amazon page within their complicated system.  Give yourself a leg up and explore all of your options!

amazon warehouse

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.

 

elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Taking it to the Big Screen

It probably isn’t news to you that video is an important tool in your toolbox as a self-publishing author, so I’ll skip the part of this blog post where I laud the benefits of using video in addition to written means of promotion in order to sell your book, as well as the part where I defend the book trailer as an indefensible part of your self-marketing strategy.  What you’re interested in–and what we’re all interested in, really–is how to use that video to stand out.  How to actually put it to work.  And since we’re sliding into a new month right now, I thought I’d take August as an opportunity to do some serious work when it comes to this whole self-promotion thing.

video trailer promotion

A Miniature Soapbox

Because let’s face it, those “X for Dummies” books have a point, even if they simultaneously belabor the point (thus falling into the whole “defense of X” rut I’ve said I’ll skip, above) and insult readers’ intelligence while at it.  Sidebar: My father gave me the “Photography for Dummies” book almost a decade ago, but I still haven’t really touched it, even though he insisted he didn’t actually think I was dumb.  The real problem with the “X for Dummies” books is that they assume their readers are insecure in their sense of self-worth when it comes to whatever task or object they’re seeking to learn more about.  But let’s be clear: You’re not a “dummy” just because you want to get down to the nitty-gritty of how to make something work.  A lack of information is not a lack of intelligence.

How (& Where) to Use a Book Trailer

  1. Upload your video to your website & on your YouTube channel

Creating a YouTube channel is free, and it happens to come along with a bundle of customizations.  Take a look at the YouTube channel of your favorite musician if you’re looking for inspiration–and then take a look at a variety of different artists’ and musicians’ channels for comparison–and note what customizations work: banner images, layout alterations, etc.  It’s easy to Google templates and tutorials.  Sometimes the simplest changes are actually the most impactful, so don’t overthink it.  Making your YouTube channel beautiful is secondary to making people aware that you have one, so make sure you not only upload your video, but that you promote it too.

  1. Tweet about your book trailer

Fans accessing links to online videos via Twitter watch, on average, an extra minute of video compared to those who stumble across your book trailer via a search engine.  After uploading your book trailer to YouTube and your personal website, tweet about it!  And don’t just tweet about it once, either.  Spread the word across all of your social media platforms–Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and everywhere else you have a digital presence.  This will serve as part of your promotional strategy for raising awareness about your book video trailer, but it also will serve as a boost to your overall digital footprint.

  1. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Before you distribute your book trailer on YouTube and elsewhere, you should understand the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). There’s simply no point in creating a website or book trailer or any other content online if that content can’t be easily found. Which means, when push comes to shove, that you’ve got to start thinking like a search engine.  Each website page or blog post should be optimized so that search engines can find it.  And in the same way you optimize your blog, you need to optimize your book trailer so people can find it.  We’ve written about SEO before, in detail–and it really is worth it to take the time to do this right.

You are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner : Summer Goals (Pt 4)

Three weeks ago, we started our summer goals blog series by laying out our writing goals–or at least, by talking about a few of my own.  And with the understanding that every author lives a very different life and faces very different challenges from the next–an therefore my goals should not necessarily be taken as anyone else’s without first affirming they make sense to that author’s circumstances–I listed them:

  1. Write, and
  2. Structure my writing … loosely.

(These goals make much more sense in context, I promise.)  And two weeks ago, we discussed energy and energy budgets, looking into how we wake up each moment with a finite amount of the stuff and have to use it and conserve it much as we do other finite resources.  I made an argument that we ought to take care of our bodies as much as we do our work and our minds–and that all three of these are actually part of the same struggle.  This argument that bled through to last week’s post, in which we concluded that if we don’t keep our bodies healthy, our writing will suffer.

Which brings me to today’s topic:

What to Do When You Achieve Your Goals

 

First of all, congratulations!  Meeting your goals is a big deal!  Secondly, we have to pose the question: what next?  This is the hardest part of the authorial process, coming up with a plan for your next step.

achieving goals

It’s easy to get lost here, in the in-between, because it’s just so easy to enjoy the afterglow, the freedom to binge on Netflix and Masterpiece Theatre.  It’s easy to allow the well-deserved relaxation period to last just a little too … long.

If I have one recommendation for what needs to happen next once you’ve achieved your goals, it’s that you be proactive.  Don’t surrender to inertia.  Watch the clock, and time your “down” period (or periods, as may be).  Draw up lists.  Weigh the options: is it time to write a sequel?  Or should you start with a new original idea?

Don’t kick yourself if you’ve reached a point of burnout, either.  Being an author isn’t all about writing books, in the end, and there are plenty of things you can do–as an author!–that don’t involve writing.  If you are looking for a break or a change of pace, consider switching gears and spending some weeks or months focusing exclusively on perfecting the aesthetics of your book–and of course, on marketing it.  It’s worth blocking out a few days on your yearly calendar for this sort of thing anyway, but it fits beautifully as a next step after you’ve reached your writing goals.

Set up some book readings and signings at your local indie bookstores and libraries.  Network with your fellow authors and other industry professionals who can help you further along the path to self-publishing success.  Attend a conference.  Keep writing fun by keeping all of your options open–and by choosing the ones that help you define and redefine your own goals.  It’s okay for the “next step” to be a bit messy and vague, for a while–as long as you find your forward momentum.

It’s never wasted time if you consider all of your actions a part of one single whole!

You are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.
elizabeth speaks, in your corner, Uncategorized, Writing

In Your Corner : Summer Goals (Pt 3)

Two weeks ago, I started my blog series on summer goals by talking about writing goals–or at least, by talking about a few of mine.  And while I think it’s important not to slavishly apply another author’s goals to your life without first taking into account the very important fact that you probably live very different lives and face very different challenges.  Which is why, in the end, the goals I shared were both few and fairly general:

  1. Write, and
  2. Structure my writing … loosely.

Anything more specific would automatically render my goals into something else: A how-to guide for success at writing that assumes every author shares the same background and experiences, the same struggles and schedule…and the same lifestyle.

This last point provided a segwey into the second post in this series.  Last week, I talked about energy and energy budgets–how we wake up each moment with a finite amount of the stuff and have to use it and conserve it much as we do other finite resources.  That is, with care and restraint, with an eye for treating our bodies well.

Which brings me to today’s topic:

A Writer’s Lifestyle

And look, this is dangerous territory as well.  I couldn’t possibly project my own lifestyle onto yours without recognizing that A) you’re a very different human being, that B) I am not exactly anywhere near perfect myself, and that C) there are a million different ways to live healthy lives, and claiming any one of those ways is the *BEST* or *THE ONLY* way is in fact a complete and utter lie.  A tabloid-worthy lie.

Bear with me a moment:

Let’s consider for a second what might happen if we try to be authors out of the context of our bodies–if we, like Plato and many of the Ancient Greeks, divorce the workings of the human mind and the human body.  We can try to perfect each of these things separately from the other, but our minds and our bodies make up parts of a whole–and neuroscience is constantly revealing just how interconnected the mind’s activities and the brain’s physical structure are, and if we place work of an author within the realm of the mind then we must also recognize that it is affected by the physical structures of the brain, which are in turn affected by the other physical structures of the body.

Conclusion: If we don’t keep our bodies healthy, our writing will suffer.

Common sense, right?  Healthy body >> healthy brain >> healthy mind >> healthy work.

lifestyle

The real struggle is how to get there, and how to sift through the tabloids and the magazines and the blogs and the Pinterest boards and the well-intentioned advice we’re constantly stumbling into.  And as a woman, I also have to recognize that it’s easy to confuse “beauty standards” advice with “health and wellness” advice.  But those two things are not the same.  Attaining 18-inch waist isn’t the same thing as eating right and eating food that feeds the brain, for example.  But low-impact activity three to five times a week–say, walking down to the park or mowing the lawn–is a great way to stimulate brain and body alike.  Anything that gets your heart rate up, gets you breathing, and breaks up the monotony of sitting at home.

Three things show up as common threads to every respectable writer’s advice column when it comes to lifestyle:

  • eating well
  • sleeping well
  • getting out and about

If any one of these components presents a challenge for you, it may be time to try something new.  Play around with integrating more protein-rich foods into your diet, like avocado and pinto beans.  Move things around in your schedule for a week or two to try out some new sleep hygiene habits or some new activities out and around the neighborhood.  Nothing dramatic–nothing drastic–just a little short-term experiment.  You’ll find out pretty quickly if one of these changes is sustainable and makes a difference to your writing.  I promise!

You are not alone. ♣︎

ElizabethABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 18 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Manager of Author Services for Outskirts Press. The Author Services Department is composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, pre-production specialists, customer service reps and book marketing specialists; together, they all focus on educating authors on the self-publishing process to help them publish the book of their dreams. Whether you are a professional looking to take your career to the next level with platform-driven non-fiction or a novelist seeking fame, fortune, and/or personal fulfillment, Elizabeth Javor can put you on the right path.