This month has been a quiet one on the self-publishing front, at least in terms of news from the top. (Next week we’ll be giving over more page space to the many fantastic authors who, as always, inspire and encourage us.) But here comes an interesting article by Shana Lebowitz of Business Insider on eleven CEOs and business founders who somehow managed to save their companies from complete failure; true to form, one of these CEOs has a self-publishing connection. Twitter founder Evan Williams was also the founder of Blogger, now a subsidiary of Google. But early on, Blogger ran into trouble–enough trouble that Williams was forced to lay off all of his employees. How did Williams–and Blogger–pull through? A whole lot of elbow grease, as it turns out: Williams worked on his start-up alone for three years before Google started paying attention … and making noise about buying the start-up. The other founders in this list have fascinating stories, too, but it’s refreshing to know that at least at Business Insider, self-publishing platforms are one of many platforms giving voice to the average person that is getting serious treatment.
The short answer is … yes. Yes, the hashtag #Bookstagram, most popularly used on Instagram and Facebook (which owns Instagram), is indeed changing the way that we read. According to this article by Veronica Walsingham for Inverse, over two million posts have been tagged with this hashtag, which for many Instagram users is as much about aesthetic as it is about the books themselves. But make no mistake–it’s also definitely about the books! For those who haven’t used hashtags before, the humble pound sign (#) has become an engine of discovery on social media platforms as diverse as Twitter and Tumblr and YouTube and Instagram. It serves as a collector, a kind of vehicle for ideas, in that anyone who tags their post with that hashtag will be gathered together into a separate feed when users click on it. Walsingham’s article is interesting, of course, not just for its exploration of the kinds of content which makes it into the #Bookstagram hashtag, but for its identification of who, exactly is using it. And guess what? Self-publishing authors and the companies which get them onto the shelf are among the many! Read the full article for more.
As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.
The title might be straightforward, but as Forbes contributor Adam Rowe wrote this week, the recent history of self-publishing is anything but, unless you’re looking at sales numbers … and if you are, those numbers tell a very simple story, one of rapid exponential growth in both production and publication as well as readership and market share. As Rowe puts it in the opening to his article, “In September 2014, there were “perhaps two million” titles in the Kindle Store, according to digital publishing expert David Gaughran. Today there are seven million.” Rowe interviewed Gaughran for his article, unspooling his origins in the self-publishing industry as well as his thoughts on where things have gone (and how they’ve gotten here). Says Gaughran, “It’s not just that the market has swelled; the tools we have for reaching readers have evolved at an incredible rate. It’s harder today, in some ways, and easier in others. But definitely more complex overall.” Complex is our forté! We highly recommend you check out the full article on the Forbes website.
Looking to take the next step in self-publishing your book this February by branching out in your marketing? The best deal around seems to be this one from Outskirts Press, which offers 15% off their Global Book Tour service package. For those unfamiliar with book tours, we can’t recommend them enough (no matter whom you choose to incorporate into your team) here on Self-Publishing Advisor. Interested in knowing more about book tours in general, and what they can do for your book? Check out Elizabeth’s brilliant blog post on the subject, and check out the Outskirts Press website for more information on their February deal.
Remember Medium? It’s been going through a lot of changes lately (some of which we’ve documented on our blog in various news posts), some of them significant. This one seems to be less dramatic than the usual, just a change in chief editor (as if that weren’t still an incredibly significant change!). But Siobhan O’Connor comes with an experience portfolio to rival the best, with experience at Time Inc. and a number of other important traditional print institutions, and many think she has a real chance of making the company finally turn a profit. Medium, a Twitter platform dedicated to longform self-published articles, has struggled to find a financial model which might do so. We’ll be watching closely!
As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.
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.
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. ♣︎
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.
Well, it’s been quite a project, this social media primer of ours! I hope it’s proven as useful to you, our readers, as it has been enjoyable for me to write! I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to take a lingering glance in the rear-view mirror, and write a bit of a retrospective on what it means to carry out a social media marketing campaign–and how a primer fits in.
“We’re here,” I wrote in that initial blog post,“first and foremost, to talk about how to market your self-published book.” And therein lies both the value and danger of social media as a marketing tool. If you really are using social media effectively, as a natural and organic extension of your existing work and personality, then you’ll most definitely benefit, and your book sales will most definitely benefit as well. If you approach social media as an all-purpose tool and the only tool you need in your toolbox–or if you present yourself falsely, inauthentically, or otherwise find yourself at odds with your fans–or if you bite off more than you can chew–or if you find yourself slipping into social media as just another time-waster–then you’re missing the point of being an author on social media. These are the pitfalls, or at least a few of them, and they should not be taken lightly or underestimated.
Here’s the trick to being a self-published author on social media: You must always remember that you are, first and foremost, a writer. And as we’ve said before here on Self Publishing Advisor, the absolute best decision you can ever make in marketing your book is to write another book. If social media helps you spread the word, and helps you keep writing, then it has a place in your campaign. If it distracts you, or distresses you, or eats into time you would otherwise spend writing, then you should revisit the expression “effective marketing.” There is, however, a great deal of value to trying something new, especially when you hit a roadblock. It is my hope that, by providing a primer guide to each of the major (and some of the minor) social media platforms, I may take some of the guesswork and fear out of launching yourself into the world of social media. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to bypass some of the misery and second-guessing and mistakes that I myself have made over the years–and find a new home, a new community, and an engaged readership in some unexplored corner of our digital universe.
Thank you for helping me build this Social Media Primer! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com. And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of marketing musings. ♠
ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.
“There’s a lot more to using social media for book promotion,” I wrote last week, “than simply knowing the names of the most popular sites or even how to set up an account with and update each one.” Twitter is no exception. This social media platform is often described as a “microblogging” website, a descriptor which implies that Twitter users manage their feed and profile content the way they would a blogging website––only in smaller chunks. This is only partially true, in that some Twitter users who also have blogs may use the same parameters to manage both platforms, or in that some Twitter users treat the site as a tool for unspooling narrative.
If you spend any quality time on Twitter, however, you’ll rapidly discover that terms like “microbloggers” or “microblogs” only describe a small fraction of the feeds out there; some users compile data and statistics while others use their feeds to start conversations, and still others mostly neglect their own feeds while spending their time watching other peoples’. Back in 2013, Steve Faktor deconstructed and described ten types of Twitter users in a 2013 Forbes article that still, for the most part, holds up beautifully. For the indie, hybrid, or self-published author, Twitter can be a minefield––rife with potential rewards for the daring and discerning user, yes, but a minefield nonetheless. This is, in part, becausethe fundamental operating assumption out there about Twitter––that is actually preached by its own PR team––is that it is awash with activity, engagement, and avid disseminators of information. This is simply untrue.
Debunking the Great Twitter Myth: “If I tweet regularly, followers will appear.”
Twitter, like any other website, has its active users and its passive users. Many people set up Twitter accounts and then forget about them, or never really learn how to use them, or find that the website isn’t as cozy and endearing as it was made out to be. (Lady Gaga doesn’t respond to every tweet her followers tag her in? What?! And your most engaged followers turn out to be spambots? Uh-oh.) It’s actually rather difficult to “break into” the Twitter community, which largely relies on name-recognition and a blend of appealing content, interactivity, and incentives to keep people coming back and checking their feeds. As Faktor writes in his article, “Of the billions of tweets sent, 71% get no response, only 36% are worth reading, and a majority is generated by a tiny fraction of users.” This isn’t to say that it’s pointless to try and become “Twitter Famous,” but it is important not to tie your entire book-promotion strategy back to a mythical welcoming Twitterverse. “Twitter is a personal announcement system,” Faktor tells us, “that captures the collective pulse of a world screaming for attention––or revolution, or discounts, or Kanye.” There will always be an element of unpredictability, as well as social utility, to what “makes it big” on Twitter.
So, how do we ensure that our time on the site isn’t wasted in producing content no one will ever read?
Top 5 Best Practices:
1. Set it up––all of it––correctly. Most Twitter accounts are “dark,” which means they’re either in hibernation––that is, they’re only rarely updated, if ever––or were never set up properly and are therefore the amputated leavings of someone’s digital footprint. Your first task is to make yourself “findable,” which means that you use every detail of your profile––picture, avatar, short biography, and yes, even your Twitter name or “handle”––as a marketing opportunity. A polished photograph of you and/or your book, a tagline that includes keyword-rich phrases that will show up in search engine indexing, and a distinctive yet readable handle (I.E.: neither “jane-doe17” nor “sweetROMANCEauthor4u”) will go a long, long way toward rendering you findable.
2. Set yourself a daily and weekly Twitter task. In addition to being findable you have to be visible. If you are competing with other Twitter users who are selling similar products (READ: books) and therefore producing similar content, then you absolutely must differentiate yourself from these other users. Celebrities can get away with taking a haphazard approach to what material they post and when and how often, but you can’t. Set yourself a routine, and stick to it––and you’ll develop a dedicated group of followers who know they can rely on you to produce, week in and week out, something that they wish to read. Whether this means you post a link to a longer blog post every Monday, a revived “From the Archives” post every Tuesday, a “What I’m watching or reading or listening to now” post every Wednesday, or something else each day of the week is up to you. Make sure you respond to all (legitimate) direct messages and public tags (when someone else uses your Twitter handle to mention you) on a set schedule, also, and that way your followers will know you care!
3. Use a third-party website to schedule your tweets. There are plenty of options out there, these days, and it doesn’t matter which one you use so much as the fact that you are willing to use them. (I personally have used the very simple TwitterFeed website, but I recommend looking at a couple before you decide. Kristi Hines over at KissMetrics has reviewed quite a few of them, and several look like they show promise. But first: What does it mean to “schedule” your tweets? It means that you write them all at once, but spread out when they actually post to your feed so that other people can read and respond to them. You can go on vacation, for example, and rest easy knowing that your Twitter feed will run smoothly in your absence, without interruption. The best part of scheduling your tweets is that you can develop better personal time-management skills––you can write all of your tweets for the week on a Saturday night, and that frees you up to chase as many bunny trails and respond to as many questions and maybe even spend more time offline than you would otherwise.
4. Listen to your followers, and don’t overdo it. A lot of people, including myself, are tempted to give up Twitter because it can quickly devolve into a hot mess of confusing data, links, conversations, and other disconnected tidbits. There’s quite literally way too much to keep up with going on at any point in time on Twitter––we live in a restless world, and everyone wants to announce their place in it. Don’t be afraid to trumpet your own fine product (READ: book), but be aware that an effective tweet isn’t always a simple declaration of “here’s a thing you should buy.” An engaged and interested follower will be far more likely to plonk down the money for your book or ebook than someone who just sees that “here’s a thing” tweet without any context. Especially if that tweet is buried amidst a whole bunch of other content that isn’t interactive, and isn’t encouraging them to enter your world in a personal and fun way. Before you know what constitutes “too much” and “just right” for your followers, you have to listen to them. Don’t pile on tweet after tweet without pause, without taking a breath, and without waiting for followers to retweet, reply, or “favorite” your last tweet. Don’t waste your time; time is a precious commodity when it comes to shaping your digital identity. Save it for tweets that matter––and that speak to what your followers actually respond to.
5. Remember to incentivize. Incentives can be tangible (like a giveaway or a discount), or intangible (like special “insider” or “behind-the-scenes” content), but they perform at least two vital functions: they make your followers feel valued, and they keep your followers coming back for more. One of the greatest failings of the “here’s a thing” tweet I mentioned above is that there’s absolutely nothing to it that hooks a follower and reels him in. There’s no privilege or sense of inclusion or outright benefit to someone reading that tweet, much less deciding to follow through and buy your book. Twitter, at its best, is a conversation. At its worst, it is a one-sided conversation.
Most Overlooked Feature:
Twitter’s most overlooked feature is its hashtags. I’m not saying that people don’t use hashtags––believe me, they do, and they do and they do and they do and they do––but they rarely use them effectively. The best hashtags will group related tweets together so that when you click on one (like #weneeddiversebooks), all tweets with that particular hashtag will show up in a separate but continuous feed. If the hashtag is too common (like #love, for example), far too many tweets will show up and it will turn into a big bowl of nonsensical mishmash. If the hashtag is too specific (like #ramennoodlesareforqueens), then it’s unlikely that anyone else will ever tag their tweets with that same hashtag––and while that can definitely be useful, if you are up for the challenge of starting your own hashtag movement, it effectively excludes everyone else from the conversation. (And, well, there goes the “social” part of “social networking.)
The current trend is, of course, over-tagging. (There’s even a hashtag for that!) You can end up with a hilarious Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake skit, but you can also end up with a whole lot of confused or disinterested followers. (In real life. The skit is hilarious.)
Build your own hashtag(s), absolutely. Build them wisely. And shape them, as you do all of your Twitter habits, to structured and intentional ends. I have every confidence you can use Twitter effectively to promote your book(s)––but it’s not the only way to do so, and we’ll be examining many other ways as the Wednesdays roll around!
I hope you’ll join me in building this Social Media Primer! If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or contributions, please use the comment field below or drop us a line at selfpublishingadvice@gmail.com. And remember to check back each Wednesday for your weekly dose of social media know-how. ♠
ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.
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