Tag: in your corner

elizabeth speaks, Holidays, in your corner, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: A Soulful Christmas

happy holidays

This is the time of the year when there’s snow on the roads in my part of the world, the days are short and dark by five in the evening, and everyone’s going a bit stir crazy.  Tensions are at a fever pitch, but so too is that special brand of optimistic cheerfulness which washes over and around the people I care about.  Some people may not celebrate the religious aspect of the Christmas holidays, but you can’t help but love some of the perks they bring with them: hot cocoa and cider to drink, quilts and kittens and friendships to keep us warm, generosity to celebrate in giving and receiving.

It seems almost callow, perhaps, to talk about marketing in the midst of all this good-feeling.  What does the commercial machine have to do with empathy and generosity?

Here’s the thing: What’s good for you as an author and what’s good for your relationships is also good for business.  

I’m not just talking about the “family-friendly” or “family-owned” propaganda issued by big businesses like Starbucks or Chipotle or REI; I’m talking about your relationships on a personal level, and starting from the ground up.  The real revolution in how we do business has to start with actual human connection rather than the cold and soulless opportunism that we’ve been taught is the marker of successful companies and their high-level officials.

So this Christmas, I’m not going to encourage you to break out a couple of new strategies for self-promotion success for several reasons–including the fact that we’ve already done so in past Christmases: here, here, and here––but rather to refocus on what you consider the most valuable and worthwhile aspects of your relationships.  I guarantee you this: if you put your friendships and your loved ones first, the rest will fall into place.  Friends want to hear about what each other do and love and are working on, and when your relationships are in tune you’ll know instinctively when it’s a good and natural and 100% organic moment to do so.

Who you are as a writer fits within a broader framework of who you are in connection to the other people in your life.  Authenticity isn’t just nice; it’s imperative.  It just makes sense that what’s good for your relationships would be good for spreading the word about your book, and the ingredients for a joyful and happy holiday season would also be the perfect recipe for a productive time for you as a self-publishing author!

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 20 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Outskirts Press. The Sales and Marketing departments are composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, 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: Putting the “Thanks!” in Thanksgiving

give thanks

This year, as you settle down for the Thanksgiving holiday, it’s worth considering all the ways we can and ought to say “thanks” to our readers, especially during the holiday season. Giving thanks is a fantastic way to connect with people and show them you care and that they matter to you—just as you matter to us here at Self Publishing Advisor!

  1. Social Media. There are always good ways of making use of social media for establishing that personal touch and intimacy with your readers—especially in responding to comments with personalized tweets, Instagram comments, or Facebook posts—but in the week of Thanksgiving, it’s worth going all-out. Put together a small (or big) post making direct reference to those early reviewers on Amazon, Goodreads, and other websites so crucial to your book’s sales and success. It doesn’t have to be some massively big deal (although it certainly can be if you want!), just a quick: “Dear Julie K., Seth M., and Erica G., thank you so much for being willing to read and review my book on Goodreads! Your comments meant so much and had a profound impact on me.” Or something along those lines … make it your own! And if you can include photos of the readers with your book, all the better!
  2. Actually give them something! There are lots of ways to actually give your readers something tangible. You can do this by A) giving them a discount, B) distributing freebies, or C) throwing a giveaway. Some artists do this by creating graphics that their readers can use for free. Some offer special freebies when readers either sign up for a newsletter or purchase a copy of their book; simply ask them for proof of purchase and a mailing address, and you’re on your way! You don’t really need to give away expensive items but readers often appreciate something and useful. Alternatively, you can host a giveaway of your actual book on Goodreads or Amazon (we’ve written a how-to for Goodreads here). These giveaways are a great way both to say “thanks!” to your readers and raise awareness about your book’s publication.
  3. Throw a party! We’ve talked about the benefits of book readings and signings in countless (COUNTLESS) other posts on this website (we really can’t love on them enough!) … but have you ever considered throwing a Thank You! Party? Consider this: turn a book reading or signing event into a party for those who have read your book, supported you along the way, and helped you throughout the publishing process. It’s still an event which will raise awareness of and the profile of your book, but it has a much more human touch (and in our experience, people are much more likely to come!). This serves as a bit of a parallel or substitute for those customer appreciation parties that local businesses often throw for their guests, or a library’s annual volunteer breakfast and so forth. Put together some light refreshments, and maybe even turn it into a potluck with a bonus reading & signing at the end! You can generate a lot of excitement around the idea of saying “thanks!” to your readers (past, present, and future) by having this kind of party. But as always, remember to promote it! Contact your local newspapers and publish press releases in all the right places, including newsletters and on social media.

No matter how you say “thanks!”  … whether you use one of our ideas here or come up with your own … there are so many reasons to just “go for it” and make sure that your readers know you care!

And while we’re on the subject ….

thank you

Thank you, thank you, thank you, dear readers. I usually end my posts by saying “You are not alone” … but this week, I want to thank you. Because with you out there in the world, doing good things and self-publishing along the way, I always know …

I am not alone. ♣︎

happy thanksgiving

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 20 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Outskirts Press. The Sales and Marketing departments are composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, 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.
Alternative Marketing Methods, elizabeth speaks, Facebook, in your corner, Social Media Marketing, twitter, Uncategorized

In Your Corner: Nixing the Social Media

I know, I know, who cuts social media marketing in the modern era?

Well, consider the question. It is entirely possible in the age of social media saturation that many people are at or past a tipping point into social media exhaustion. After all, we’ve been exploiting the digital sphere in every possible way we can imagine ever since it was invented, practically speaking, and people are growing weary of quite a few “overdone” mainstream marketing moves, including holiday sales. Consider REI’s “opt outside” program, a push-back and against Black Friday insanity.

(Incidentally, this is nothing new. The Puritans banned Christmas/Yuletide carols back in 1600s, claiming that to sing them was a political act and an embrace of a “‘popish’ and wasteful tradition […] with no biblical justification” and we all know how far, literally, they were willing to go to enact their beliefs … so, you know, there’s nothing new under the sun.)

Back to book marketing. One of the very good reasons why some authors are pulling away from social media is that they’re over-extended. That is, they’re trying to do too much with too little (time, energy, money) and need to refocus on areas where they see good traction and meaningful engagement. Spending lots of time on maintaining a Twitter account with a following of 25 is a waste if one has truly tried all of the tips and tricks of the trade, particularly if one has, say, a robust following on Facebook.

Growing up, my father always told me time is money. He wasn’t wrong.

time is money

As author and blogger Delilah Dawson writes on WhimsyDark:

We are glutted with information, and yet our answer to “How do I get people to buy my book?” is social media marketing, which is basically throwing more information out into the void.

She’s got a point, too. More information isn’t always what’s needed; meaning and value are what’s needed, and most appreciated, by readers and book-buyers today. Just tweeting or blogging is not enough … each tweet and blog post must provide something the reader can’t get anywhere else, and which adds in some measurable or immeasurable way, to the book-buyer’s life.

Otherwise it’s just white noise. And as Nancy Peacock writes, there are a lot of small ways in which social media can eat away at our happiness and our productivity as authors:

Something was going on in my brain and I knew it. I knew I was in trouble because I could not focus on the book I was trying to write. There’s always self doubt with writing, but this was different. This was more than the question of whether or not I’d be up to the task. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to even enter the flow. My mind was fractured and splintered, my spirit in constant agitation. I felt like I was failing at everything.

I think we’ve all been there, and we may even be there more often than ever now that our computers have become hubs for all manner of distractions, including (as Peacock details later in her piece) social media in all of its forms.

Srinivas Rao, in an excellent piece for The Mission, writes that quitting social media can actually improve quite a few aspects of the author’s life in addition to providing more meaningful content. Says Rao, the benefits include “less anxiety and more happiness,” “presence,” “increased focus,” and “improved productivity.” I don’t know about you, but this month those benefits are sounding preeeetty fantastic.

So, this November, take a moment to consider the possibility of nixing social media. If your immediate knee-jerk reaction is “but I have such great followers!” and it feels like shutting down something vital and important to your creative recharge process, then maybe this isn’t a move you need to make. But if your response is more along the lines of “well, I don’t see much engagement there anyway” or “I probably won’t miss it” … then maybe it’s time to take a step back from marketing your book on social media, or at the very least refocus your efforts on platforms where you have a good toehold.

I know this isn’t a terribly popular sentiment, especially to the companies (like Twitter and Facebook) who monetize your access to social media and turn a profit off of the free content you’re posting on them, but not everyone needs to use every tool in the toolbox. It’s always, always about picking the right tool for the job. Let the other tools wait for authors who will find them better suited to their work, and focus on being “you” and the “best you” possible, in branding as well as other efforts. And as always, we’re here to help support you in your decision!

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 20 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Outskirts Press. The Sales and Marketing departments are composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, 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

Survey + In Your Corner: Supporting Future Thinkers

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For the last month, I have been taking a close look at what it means to be a visionary, or a future-thinker–specifically as regards self-publishing. (You can read those posts here and here.) We first looked at what future-thinking is, then ways we can become future-thinkers. But I also posed the question, which has yet to be answered, of how we might support future thinkers.

This week I’m here with a couple of possible answers.

But first, why should we care about supporting other self-publishing authors? The simple, moral answer comes from Abraham Lincoln, who I believe was quoting a certain text many of us hold to be, well, super important:

abraham lincoln a house divided

We ought to care about other authors because of the Golden Rule, because we ought to treat others the way we want to be treated. And interestingly, this moral reasoning also has a certain practical result: if you support other self-publishing authors, you create a community upon which you too can rely when needed.

So, the ways:

Networking is crucial. Through networking, you can make important connections with other authors that can lead to new insights for marketing strategies that the two authors, before meeting, may never have considered. Sharing ideas is the first way to join forces with another author.

If, through sharing ideas, you decide that you could benefit one another’s work, start strategizing with them. Two heads are always better than one. Working with someone else can open up possibilities that might seem too daunting to take on alone. If you want to host an event but don’t want to (or can’t) do so alone, joining up with another local author who will help with the logistics, social outreach and hosting of the event, it becomes a much more reasonable task.

Team up when creating discounts and/or giveaways. Strategically place your books on sale and promote one another’s at the same time during the holiday season and beyond! You then both gain access to one another’s readership that you would not have had otherwise. The readers won’t mind … they like having more books to read and authors to follow.

Utilize digital space and host one another on each of your blogs and/or websites, social media pages, etc. You can do this by featuring a review of that author’s book on your blog and then asking them to do the same for you in exchange. Or simply write up a bio of them with a link to their website page as an equally effective means of promoting them (and in turn, yourself). You could also promote a vlog style interview of that author and vice versa, featuring them as an author in general or asking them specifically about their latest or greatest release.

Whatever you do, always make sure that the joining of forces is mutually beneficial, not parasitic on one end or the other. It is equally as important to make sure you hold true to your end of the plan as it is to hold the other person accountable for their own contributions. Support is always a two-way street, isn’t it?

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 20 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Outskirts Press. The Sales and Marketing departments are composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, 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: How to Become a Future-Thinker

Last week, I started this series on the subject of visions and visionaries, and what it means to be a future-thinker as an author. I teased at the close of that post that I’d be returning to the subject this week with some key pointers on how to become one of these people who manages to “think different” (as Steve Jobs might say) and change the world, or at least the publishing industry as we know it, while at it. I’m here to deliver on that tease!

If you go out and Google “how to become a visionary,” you’re liable to run up against a wall of more clickbait than you’ll know what to do with. I know that I did. And worst of all, very little of the advice doled out by heavyweight publications Inc, Psychology Today, Forbes, and Business Insider apply to us, as overextended self-publishing authors (often exhausted, or limited in terms of emotional, energetic, and financial budgets to boot), in ways that are both tangible and possible to achieve. Either that, or the points just don’t make sense.

Some of their points, however, we like. I’ve condensed down a list of my top 6 suggestions for steps any self-publishing author can take (or leave, depending on schedule and other constraints). Mix and match to your heart’s content, and know that even if you just make gains on one or two of these points, you’re still making progress towards becoming that great and majestic thing: a visionary.

  1. Examine your routines. Often habits of the mind reflect habits of the body, and while some things simply can’t or shouldn’t be disputed (such as school drop-off or pick-up times, doctor’s visits, mealtimes), quite a lot of the average person’s schedule is occupied by arbitrary space. And the first step to becoming a visionary is being willing to examine the way things have always been … and take steps to break out of that. Maybe your schedule works … but it doesn’t empower you to write as much as you like. Consider what all can go, and lay out some ideas for new routines. Start with some ideas for what you can do next week, some others for next month, and so on.
  2. Take a minute for mindfulness. This can look different for every person, but it’s a consistent component of every breakout author success story that they have found times to sit for a moment each day and think. Just think. Maybe you need to clear your mind. Maybe you need to just focus on one thing for a while—like your book. Maybe you need to work through some steps. If you don’t know what works for you yet, then I have good news: there are plenty of mindfulness strategies to try! I personally prefer to do mine at the end of a day, but I can definitely see the value to switching that up and doing it in the morning, before things get started. I use a mindfulness app, like Headspace, because it’s easy and came as a built-in app on my phone. But YouTube is packed with resources for people looking for guided meditations or mindfulness activities.
  3. Keep nothing sacred. That is, when someone says or suggests something new, and your first reaction is to think “no way!” or “that won’t work for me,” consider why you think that. And keep nothing sacred—because nothing is, not really, except for of course certain cultural or religious things to which I’m not referring here. I’m thinking more about habits, and ways of thinking, and so forth. And reconsidering one’s assumptions is incredibly difficult, since they’re very often, well, assumed. And implicit, under the skin. Drawing out what you assume to be true about yourself and the world—and your book!—is vital to becoming one of those people who can “think different.”
  4. Think of an ecosystem, not individual “things.” Nothing exists in a vacuum, right? Including your work-in-progress. Including this or that writing habit which you’ve picked up somewhere along the line, or this or that routine you’ve decided to follow. Including the publishing industry! When looking to cultivate some of those future-thinking or visionary possibilities, remember that every “thing” or behavior or system exists as part of a network or relationships, like an ecosystem of plants and animals. Take away the top-order predators and the system collapses. Take away the simple single-celled organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the system collapses. But it also works in reverse: tweaking the little fiddly bits of how you think and how you write and how we publish can strengthen the ecosystem as a whole. The key is to boost the vitality and flexibility of every part of that ecosystem, not just to look at the “top” (big decisions, like where to publish) or the “bottom” (little decisions, like what pens to buy).
  5. Expand your list of futures. What will the future look like? I mean, to you specifically. Well, it can look like a lot of different things, and the list keeps growing and shifting with each and every passing day. I recommend exposing your mind to the voices of as many future-thinkers as possible, either by seeking them out on web forums or in podcasts or in the science fiction section of your library. Publishing, especially self-publishing, is tied up with all sorts of cultural, societal, historical, and technological trends. Read up, listen up, and absorb. It will enrich your idea of what’s possible, and possibly even encourage you to dream up some of your own ideas—ideas you can act on. I recommend the “Future Thinkers” podcast, BBC Future, and the “Ideas” page on FastCompany.com—just to start. There are loads of other resources out there!
  6. Do the leading thing. Becoming a future-thinker means becoming a leader, although there are so many kinds and varieties of leaders that it doesn’t mean you have to become a CEO or a General in the Air Force (though those would be cool things and you should go for them, if you want to). But what is it that all leaders do? They share and guide others. Find a way to share your ideas that fits with who you are and what you already want to do as an author. Whether that’s starting a Twitter account or a blog dedicated to sharing tips and tricks to writing, or signing up to start a writer’s group in your local area, or volunteering at the library to help develop programming for authors and speakers in your area—there are ways you can be a leader.

And we’ll always be here to support you while at it.

You are not alone. ♣︎

Elizabeth

ABOUT ELIZABETH JAVOR: With over 20 years of experience in sales and management, Elizabeth Javor works as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Outskirts Press. The Sales and Marketing departments are composed of knowledgeable publishing consultants, 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.