Have you ever seen authors sell well with their first book and then disappear from the radar with subsequent titles? I’ve seen a lot of that in the e-publishing world over the last year. Independent authors would pop onto the Amazon bestseller charts with a bang and sell thousands of copies a month of their first book or series, but then fizzle into nothingness. When they published new titles, nobody noticed.

Why is that? They failed to turn one-time readers into fans.

Now, I wouldn’t necessarily assume that’s a quality-of-writing issue (after all, something got them to sell in the first place), but you’ll probably agree that, in most cases, it takes you more than one exposure to an author to turn you into a rabid fan who will constantly check back to see if that author has published anything new.

So how do you start the process of turning a one-time reader into a fan? Naturally it helps if you have multiple titles out and the reader can go on to enjoy them all, thus cementing your name in his/her mind. But what if you’re publishing your first book?

You need to make an effort to get readers who enjoy the story to come find you online as soon as they finish. Most e-readers have web capability, so this is more of a possibility today than ever before. With ebooks, you can easily add your website and social media links to the end of the story and encourage the reader to stop by.

That’s not all you have to do though. You need to be doing something on those sites to get the reader to stick around and subscribe to your newsletter or blog feed.

Remember those successful-then-but-not-now authors? When I’ve looked at their online presences (what can I say… I have stalker tendencies), I’ve seen some common threads:

• Though they’ve been publishing for a while, they don’t have a substantial blog built up where they post often. Or they blog about things nobody cares about.
• They don’t have a newsletter (a way to email fans all at once).
• If they’re on Twitter and Facebook at all, they’re just digital billboards, constantly trying to sell you something.
• They may post often in some of the author-centric forums and communities out there, but they don’t seem to be out there where they can interact with their readers (Goodreads is one such place where it’s good to have a presence).

In short, these authors haven’t done anything to turn one-time readers into fans who want to follow their books and connect online.

If you want to have a career, then you need people to keep buying your books. I know, duh, right? But you can’t just assume this will happen. One key truth from the business world is that it’s easier to keep an existing customer than find a new customer. But you have to keep in touch with those customers, periodically reminding them that you exist and that they like doing business with you.

With those thoughts, I bring you…

How to Keep in Touch with Your Readers

Note: Before you start reading my suggestions, I want to point out that everything mentioned below is designed to let you write one message for many people, so you’re keeping in touch without spending hours a day doing it. I’m always happy to answer readers who send email (getting fan mail never gets old!), but I tend to direct folks to my blog, newsletter, and social media pages first, because lots of answers to potential questions are already there, and posting information in these places is the most efficient use of my time.

The newsletter

If you do nothing else I write about here, I suggest starting a newsletter and putting a sign-up form in a prominent position on your site (I have mine on my “book news” page and also in the side bar of each page — honestly, it could be even more prominent, and that’s something I’ll do when I get around to redesigning the site).

Why a newsletter? You can email your subscribers and let everyone know at once when you have a new release out. You can also ask your subscribers for a hand if you ever need it for something special. I wouldn’t do that often, but these folks are most likely going to be some of your most dedicated fans (the types of readers who not only buy your books but tell others to do so as well), and they may be open to helping you out. In return, you can reward them for signing up for your newsletter by giving them coupons or insider information on your books.

The best thing about newsletters is that messages go right to a person’s inbox, so your subscribers are almost guaranteed to see it. The other methods I’m going to list can have their place, but they aren’t quite as special as a newsletter (not only does a letter to your mailing list go right to someone’s inbox, but with some mailing-list services, you can even personalize it with the person’s first name). You won’t find a successful internet marketer in the world who doesn’t have a mailing list.

That said, there are other ways to keep in touch with people too. The newsletter may be king, but you’ll find that some readers prefer other ways of following you, so these methods can be worth pursuing as well.

The blog

I think most authors start a blog, but many fail to update it often (or at all) because they’re not certain what to write about. Others post less than scintillating material, such as positive reviews about the book the visitor has already read. Guys, you hang those reviews on the fridge; you don’t copy and paste them to your blog. You post interesting things to your blog (things that are interesting to other people, not just you).

The way to get blog followers is to inform or entertain. Maybe you can even do both.

I used to say that you should write posts related to your books (i.e. if you write science fiction, then you might review SF books and movies, interview genre authors, or talk about fun science stuff), and I still think that’s a good idea, but I also believe you can keep people interested by writing about less obvious topics as well, so long as your posts have value to people who buy books.

For example, in the beginning, my blog here was all about e-publishing and nothing about fantasy. Oddly enough, I did sell quite a few of my fantasy novels through the site (I use affiliate links so I can track which sales originate from my blog). As I sold more books and actually started having fans stop by who wanted to hear about my upcoming projects, I grew worried that those readers wouldn’t be interested in the e-pub talk, so I tried following my own advice and started blogging about fantasy-related topics. What happened? I started getting less traffic to this site and was selling fewer books!

Now I do a mix of posts. Some are about fantasy and my books (I’ve got a contest going on right now where readers can help me name a character), and some are about e-publishing. Book sales from my blog are back up again.

You just never know what kind of blog posts might work for you, but the important thing is to a) make sure there’s something in it for the reader and b) be passionate about what you’re talking about (maybe that’s part of why I didn’t do as well blogging about fantasy — even though I’ve been a fantasy reader for more than twenty years, I’m more obsessed with e-publishing and book promotion right now, so it’s more fun for me to blog about this stuff).

No matter what you do with the blog, make an effort to get people to subscribe (I need to be better about this myself). You can’t assume that people will remember to check back often, but if they have your blog in their feed aggregator, they’ll see any new headlines you post.

If you pay for web hosting and have your own WordPress blog, there are numerous plug-ins you can get that throw in a tagline, suggesting people subscribe to your feed. If you’re on a freebie blogging site, you can choose a theme where the subscription buttons are prominent.

The Twitter account

I’ve been a fan of Twitter for a long time. Something about only being able to type short messages appeals to me. I can make updates quickly and check on people without spending a lot of time on the site. And (this is what matters) lots of other people like Twitter too. You might find, as I have, that you’ll find readers who follow their favorite authors on Twitter even if they don’t necessarily go into subscribing to blogs or newsletters.

Once you have followers there, they can help you promote your books. Because people can “retweet” your updates, and those RTs can spread far and wide, Twitter can be a great way to drive traffic to your blog or get the word out about freebies (I hardly ever plug something that costs money, as I figure people are there to socialize, not to whip out their credit cards, but I’ll often link to free ebooks or excerpts). I know I’ve gained blog readers and book buyers that way.

Note: if you find yourself overwhelmed as your Twitter followers grow, try sorting people into lists. I’ve been using lists forever, but it only recently occurred to me to start one specifically for “tweeps” who have read my books. I should have been doing that from the beginning, because it’s easy to use a program like Tweetdeck (I prefer this for my iPhone) to watch the conversations on a certain list. Then I can send someone an @ message if they say something that brings a comment to my mind. (I don’t know about you, but I’d be tickled if my favorite authors sent messages to me!)

The Facebook fan page

I wasn’t a huge Facebook fan before I got into publishing, so I was slow to get involved on Facebook, but I’m glad I finally did create an author page there. I have people who comment and “like” my updates there who aren’t newsletter subscribers, don’t follow my blog, and don’t know why on Earth anyone would want to “Twitter.” Facebook is their chosen place to hang out and interact. By being there, I can keep in touch with them. If I wasn’t there, I’d miss out on a certain group of fans (Facebook has hundreds of millions of members!).

By the way, did you know that you can run advertising campaigns on Facebook that only target people who have liked your author page? If you get a lot of fans there, but find they’re not checking back often, a quick advertising campaign would be a way to let all of them know about your latest book or series. (Advertising within Facebook — i.e. sending folks to a tab on your author page instead of off-site — is quite affordable as well.)

I could go on about places to be and ways to keep in touch with your fans, but these are my main ones. Also, this post is getting long, so let me address one last concern:

How do you get people to subscribe/follow you to start with?

If you’re just starting out, this may be what’s on your mind. Of course you want to do a newsletter, blog, social media, etc., but how the heck do you get people to follow you or subscribe to your feeds?

Lots of folks try to do this in a backwards way. They try to build the online presence (i.e. building a platform) first. That can work fantastically if you write non-fiction. But with fiction…the proof is in the pudding, eh? It’s possible to get random readers to follow your blog (especially if you’re writing useful posts), but most people have to read your stories before they can decide whether or not they’re fans.

If you write fiction, you can try to post some stories or do a web serial, but I think the fastest way to find fans in this day and age is to put your stuff out there in ebook form and get it out on Amazon, iTunes, B&N, Smashwords, etc. Those are the huge marketplaces where people already are, where they’re actively looking for new things to read.

I also think you’ll find the rows much easier to hoe if you have at least something available for free (short stories are fine). At the end of that freebie, you can plug your other non-free books, and you can also encourage readers who enjoyed the story to visit your site and subscribe to your blog, newsletter, etc. Remember, not everyone will be into doing each thing (some might follow you on Twitter while others want to subscribe to your newsletter while others want to track you on Facebook), so it’s good to be follow-able in a number of places.

All right, now I know I’ve talked for too long! If you have comments or questions or want to see me cover something in more depth, please let me know below.

A few years ago, I watched a YouTube video from an internet marketing guru (yes, he did try to sell me something at the end) that talked about why Coca-Cola was such a good brand name. Among other things, it had alliteration and rhyme, two elements that help people remember things.

I guess my parents didn’t know that I’d one day be working to brand myself as an author, because they didn’t use alliteration or rhyme when choosing my name. Heck, my first and last names aren’t even easy to spell (as attested by the tons of variations people type into Google to find my site). If I were smart, I might have chosen a pen name that would be easy for people to remember, but I’m stubborn and I like to do things my way.

If you hadn’t already guessed, the topic for today’s post is branding, specifically author branding, because we’re more interested in selling books than syrupy soda beverages, right?

What is a branding anyway?

Wikipedia tells us the American Marketing Association defines a brand as a “Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” (emphasis mine)

So, basically, it’s about setting yourself up to stand out in a crowded field, right?

As an author, you can brand your name (Stephen King) or your books (The Twilight Series). You might even brand your main character (maybe your parents didn’t give you an easy-to-spell and memorable name, but that’s no reason why you can’t think things through a little better when it comes to your heroes!).

I’ll admit it: I wasn’t thinking of branding or any type of marketing stuff when I wrote my first novels, so you won’t find good examples in my book titles or character names. It is something I’ll think about with the next series.

This is honestly the sort of thing the publisher usually thinks about (did you know authors don’t necessarily get to keep their chosen book titles?), but as indies it’s up to us to do it all.

If you can choose a catchy pen name, series title, or hero name, it might help with branding, but mostly becoming a recognized name in the field seems to be a matter of…

• selling a lot of books
• being around and publishing for a while
• popping up every time your audience turns around

The first two things are tough to influence when you’re starting out, but you can work on number 3.

The secret?

Be everywhere.

Okay, okay, I don’t mean everywhere. We’re not going to run ads on the sides of buses or pay for billboards in the city, but you want to be in as many places as you can where your potential readers hang out.

That sounds time-consuming, but it might be less so than you’d think at first blush. A lot of people equate being everywhere with spending hours on Twitter and Facebook and forums. It is worth it to build a Facebook Fan page and hop on Twitter to interact with folks for a few minutes a day (I’m less enamored with forums, because you’re one little tree amongst a forest there, and threads where you participate quickly get pushed off of the front page), but both sites will probably only be a small part of your branding strategy.

I suggest we put a large portion of our marketing effort into things that we only have to do once, but that can continue to provide benefits (i.e. help with our author brand) down the road. Here are some of the things I’ve done:

• Giving away free ebooks (short stories or novels — something in a series seems to work best) and putting them everywhere you can upload free stuff — For starters, Smashwords, Scribd, Feedbooks, etc. And it’s possible to get free ebooks listed at Barnes & Noble and Amazon too. I did this with my Ice Cracker II short story way back in February, and it was one of the first things that made a real impact on my (at the time laughable) sales.
• Being active on Goodreads — This is a huge reader community, and your future fans are there waiting for you. Yes, you can join the discussion boards and be active that way, but that’s a lot of work. I prefer to do book giveaways (you need to have a paperback copy) and let my ads run there. I first set up an ad campaign for EE and Encrypted back in January (if you read the post, please keep in mind it’s almost a year old — everything from my book covers to my sales numbers have changed a lot since then), and it’s never cost me more than a couple of dollars a day since I made the ads highly targeted. The campaign runs day after day, month after month, without me having to do anything. For giveaways, you get a lot of eyeballs on your book for the price of one paperback plus shipping. I had close to a thousand people sign up for my first giveaway, and I intend to do more soon.
• Being on iTunes with a podiobook (a series is even better) — I’ve written about my adventures in turning The Emperor’s Edge into a Podiobook before, and I know it’s already helped with sales (lots of cool folks have told me they first found my books through iTunes or Podiobooks.com). I’m positive it’ll continue to help into the future, long after all the episodes have been published. Why? Audiobook lovers are readers too, and there’s less competition in the podiobook sphere (because it’s a lot of work to record an audio of your book!). It’s easier to stand out on iTunes and Podiobooks.com than with an ebook on Amazon. If you want to give the first chapter of my book a try (for demonstration purposes, of course), you can listen at Podiobooks or on iTunes.
• Being on Facebook — I already linked to my post about building a fan page, and that’s all I think you need to do here (though you can put time into interacting with others if you enjoy the platform). Why bother? 600 million+ people are on Facebook. Lots of them are readers. Once you have fans, some of them will look for you there. And some of them will “like” you and share your links, thus helping others find you. It doesn’t take long to put up a Facebook page either. Basically, follow their wizard, add some excerpts or links to freebies, and post fun stuff to your wall now and then. Here’s mine for example purposes. Someone’s actually in the process of doing a custom logo and design for me over there, so look for that in the new year.
• Being on Twitter — Twitter is one of those places where your “tweets” will quickly fall off of people’s radars, but it is one more place where you can have a little bio with links to your site and your book page at Amazon. If you network with others, you can build traffic to your blog with Twitter too (through people’s retweets), and it’s a good place to mention your freebies (it’s less good for trying to straight out sell things to folks).
• Guest blogging — A post you write for someone else’s blog can continue to bring traffic to your site for months and years to come, and it exposes you (your brand!) to the readers of that blog. Writing for a high-traffic blog can be particularly helpful. Make sure the post informs (maybe even entertains) and, for the purpose of search engine optimization, contains links back to your site and your freebies. If you don’t have freebies, link to your book pages on Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, etc. (I really like to send people to my freebies, because there’s no monetary obstacle to keep them from trying me, and, if they enjoy the stories, they can always go onto the non-free books.)
• Being out in the real world — Yeah, I’m a hardcore introvert, and this isn’t my strength, but you can get a lot of mileage out of going to conventions and get-togethers with readers and writers in your genre. It’s on my to-do list. In the meantime, I’m having business cards made, so I can at least hand them out to people I meet in my travels. Robin Sullivan over at Write2Publish has a good  post on how she made up her husband’s (the author) awesome business cards.

There are more places where you can be, but I’ve listed some of the biggies here. One I didn’t mention is YouTube, in part because it’s less of a reader hangout than a people-who-prefer-videos-for-entertainment hangout, but I’ve heard of authors connecting with their fans through regular vblogs (video blogs) posted there. It is possible to reach your target audience and build up a fan base there. Book trailers aren’t the way, but if you can answer questions or otherwise inform people through that medium, you can do well. Maybe I’ll give it a try in the future (because my to-do list isn’t long enough now!).

Remember, it’s best to do things today that can continue to pull in readers down the road, whether you ever touch those projects again or not. If your idea of marketing is spending 15 minutes contributing here, here, here, and over there every day, you’ll get burned out quickly.

If you have any thoughts or suggestions for more places to work on branding, let us know below.

When this blog was only about three months old (and my self-publishing career was even younger), I interviewed science-fiction author Nathan Lowell, a man now making a living off of his ebook income, and a man who got his start releasing his novels as podiobooks. (For those new to the term, podiobooks are audiobooks that come out in installments and are available as free downloads for people’s mp3 players.)

After three years of releasing his novels that way, all entirely for free, Nathan jumped into e-publishing and became an instant bestseller. Why? Thanks to his podiobooks, he’d built up a huge fan base over the years, people who eagerly awaited each new installment in his audio stories. His fans accounted for those initial sales that sent him to the top of the science-fiction bestseller lists on Amazon and elsewhere, and at that point others who had never heard of him before saw his books and gave them a try. He’s been selling dozens (maybe hundreds) of copies a day ever since.

But, if you’ve read the interview, you already know about his story. You’re wondering if it can work for someone else. Someone who starts today, someone who might have done things in the opposite order (ebook releases first and then podiobooks). So, let me tell you how things are going for me.

How my first podiobook is doing

After that interview, I thought the podiobook thing sounded like a great idea, and decided to try it myself. It took me a while to get all the ducks lined up to make it happen. The first few episodes of The Emperor’s Edge Podiobook went live at the end of August. Now, in November, we’re up to Chapter 16 (out of 21 or so).

So far, there have been 25,000+ combined downloads of episodes (that’s a far cry from Nathan’s millions, but remember he got his start years ago and has an entire series of podiobooks out there). For the first month, mine was the #1 podiobook (as far as new subscribers go) in the Podiobooks.com directory, and it still pops into the Top 10 now and then.

About 1,500 people are following along faithfully, downloading the new episodes each week, and more people are finding Chapter 1 each week and just getting started with the book (about 500 new subscribers so far in November). The episodes have been downloaded in more than 60 countries so far (I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty cool to think of people listening to my story in India, Turkey, Japan, Finland, and other places that I’ve never been).

I’ve done a little to promote my podiobook (occasional posts on Twitter and Facebook), but not much. I imagine most of these folks simply came across it because they were surfing around, looking for some new fantasy to listen to.

When I did do my promotional blurbs, I was originally sending people to the Podiobooks page, so they could subscribe any way they wished, but I’m trying to promote its iTunes page now, since the Apple Store gets a lot more daily visitors than Podiobooks.com itself (I’ve had an iPod since the beginning, and I hadn’t even heard of Podiobooks.com before I interviewed Nathan). From what I’ve read, if I can get more subscribers through iTunes and more reviews there, the book will start showing up closer to the top in the Literature section of the podcast directory. (So, if you enjoy listening to fantasy, and want to help a gal out, please subscribe in iTunes and leave a review if you like what you hear!)

Has my podiobook helped me sell books?

I can’t say that my books have made any great leaps up the bestseller charts, but I have had folks let me know that they found me on Podiobooks.com or iTunes and went on to buy the books, not just The Emperor’s Edge but the following novels in the series as well. That’s good enough for me. I’m in this for the long haul, and I know the podiobooks (I’m planning to do my whole series) will be out there for years, inviting new listeners into my characters’ world.

I imagine that for everyone who sends me a note, there are more people who buy the book and don’t say anything about it. But even if people don’t go on to purchase any of the books, there are still benefits to having these folks as fans of the free stuff.

If someone with a couple hundred followers on Twitter posts, “Oh, yay, new chapter of Emperor’s Edge is out,” there’s a chance that one of their followers will say, “Huh, what’s that?” and check it out. That someone might be a kindle addict and go on to buy the ebooks.

And, as I mentioned, just by being subscribers, people help you out in iTunes, because the number of subscribers and reviews both play a role in visibility there. The easier your podiobook is to find over there, the more people will stumble upon it, and since there is a big crossover between book buyers and audiobook listeners, there’s a good chance that some of those people will want to buy copies to have forever.

Why a podiobook can be effective for book promotion and author branding

There are more things to think about than immediate sales. As you guys know, I’m a fan of giving things away for free. You can’t give everything away for free if you want to make a living as an author (or at least recoup your production costs!), but having free stories out there lets people try you out at no risk.

A podiobook, in particular, has some extra perks:

• The serialization aspect lets you create a long-term relationship with listeners – If you read a book in a couple of days or even listen to a book-on-tape over the course of a couple of weeks, it’s not the same as having something new from the author every week. If the story is good, you start to look forward to those new installments, and the book sticks in your head because you’re exposed to it again and again over time. Imagine if an author puts out a whole series with the same characters. You could be listening for years, and those characters could become like real people that you like to hang out with.
• iTunes – I don’t know if you’ve looked lately, but the iTunes store is a pretty popular place, particularly for people who want audio versions of things. Anyone who has sold anything online will tell you that it’s a heck of a lot easier to sell where the people are (eBay, Etsy, Amazon, etc.) than trying to build up your own marketplace (i.e. your site). Day and night, people are browsing iTunes, looking for new things to listen to. And once all the chapters have been published, your podiobook can remain online and in the iTunes store indefinitely; people could stumble across it four years from now and find out about you and your books for the first time.
• Less competition – A lot of work goes into creating an audio version of a book, and there’s a learning curve that many (most?) people aren’t interested in tackling. If you outsource the creation to professionals, you save yourself some of the time and hassle, but the trade-off is that you must pay a significant chunk of money, and that’s a barrier in its own right. These obstacles mean that fewer authors create audiobooks, so there’s less competition out there than there is for ebooks in the Kindle store. Ultimately this means that, if you have a good story and good production quality, it’ll take less marketing effort to get people to find your podiobook.

Cost of producing a podiobook

As those of you who have been following this blog for a while know, I decided to let the folks over at Darkfire Productions handle the creation of my podiobooks because I knew it’d take a lot of time to do it myself, and the quality of the end product wouldn’t likely be as good.

I believe Nathan did it all himself (from what I’ve heard, you can get respectable recording equipment for your computer for a couple hundred dollars). That’s definitely a cheaper way to go, but not everybody is interested in learning the ropes and spending hours recording and editing an entire novel.

If you want to go the route I did and hire someone else, expect to pay $1,000 and up for a novel. If you write 150,000-word epic fantasy novels, it might be more like $2,000-$3,000.

I’m planning to write six books in my Emperor’s Edge series, and I’d like to go on to turn all of them into podiobooks. If costs remain the same, that’ll end up being about $9,000 for me. That’s not an insignificant sum by any measure, but it’ll be stretched out over about three years, and, as I mentioned above, once the audio recordings are done, they can stay out there in iTunes and on Podiobooks.com for years and years. In addition, they will belong to me, so there’s nothing to keep me from creating special CD editions (maybe with some bonus extras) and selling them on my site eventually. I haven’t looked at Audible.com yet to see if it’s possible for an independent author to get one’s audiobooks listed in their marketplace, but that is definitely something I’ll be checking out in the future.

Who should consider creating a podiobook?

Well, are you getting excited at the idea of creating a podiobook? Or are you thinking, “Enh, I’m not sure… It sounds like a lot of work…”

Either way, it’s okay. This isn’t necessarily for everybody, and if you’re already selling lots of books, maybe you don’t need to look into time-consuming (or money-consuming) extras like this.

It’s still early for me, so it’s hard to say for certain, “Yes, I’ll definitely earn back my investment and then some.” I do believe it’ll happen though. I’d be less certain if I was creating one podiobook and didn’t have plans to do any more.

I think the real power here lies in doing a series where people can get more and more connected to your characters (and you!) over time. You’ve also got more work out there for people to stumble across in iTunes or on Podiobooks.com (at Podiobooks.com, they post on the front page whenever new chapters are added, so every time your book is mentioned there, it’s a chance for someone new to see it and decide to check it out).

I also suspect some genres may lend themselves to podiobook fandom more than others. You tend to find a lot of science fiction and fantasy fans geeking out on their computers and knowing where to look for things like podiobooks. If you do westerns or cozy mysteries, your target audience may be less likely to spend time perusing the iTunes store. I’m sure you’d still get some followers, but maybe not as many.

You’ll need to run the numbers for yourself, but, in the end, if this sounds like a fun way to promote your books and your name, I say, go for it.

When I first released Encrypted and The Emperor’s Edge at the end of last winter (yes, I’ve been doing this almost a year now!), I signed up for a couple of blog tours. This is where you guest post or answer interview questions on other people’s sites. It can help with promotion if the sites have a decent amount of traffic. I ended up paying a little bit for someone else to organize things, but if I were to do it again, I’d probably save myself some money and set up the blog tour myself.

That’s exactly what up-and-coming fantasy author, Darke Conteur, has done. She’s here to talk about how she set things up (and to plug her new ebook–The Watchtower–of course).

Setting up Your Own Book Blog Tour

I want to thank Lindsay for allowing me to take over her blog for a day. I’ve been a fan of hers for a while now, and yeah, I’m the one that did the video reading of her first novella FLASH GOLD (sorry about the cleavage shot, it was just so hot that day!).

When I first heard of a blog tour, I literally thought it was someone driving around blogging while they visited holiday destinations. I know, stupid, right? I couldn’t understand why someone would do that. Wasn’t there better things to do than blog while on vacation? That was then, this is now, and I so totally get it!

If you’re a regular follower of Lindsay’s site, you know there are a pile of new authors coming out of the woodwork on a daily basis; all clawing and scratching to get your attention. Some of their self-promotion is good, and some, well, let’s just say it isn’t and leave it at that. Granted, what works for one person doesn’t always work for another, and if you don’t feel comfortable doing something others say worked for them, then fine! That’s them, not you. For instance, when I posted the video of FLASH GOLD, I had a few people state there was no way they could do something like that. One woman said I was brave for doing it. Brave — no. Crazy — maybe.

I saw videos as a unique way to promote myself. Sure, it took a while to get comfortable in front of the camera, and I must have sent a dozen emails to Lindsay fretting over one thing or another, but I didn’t give up on the idea because I thought, and still do, think it’s a good idea.

Another good idea to promote oneself, is what I’m doing right now — a blog tour. When I first started talking about it, I had a lot of people ask me what it was. Seems it’s a new thing, but I’m seeing more and more authors doing it. Think of it as a virtual book tour, and I think they’re great. If you’re planning on a tour of your own, here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. What kind of tour do you want to do: There are a number of ways you can go about this; author interviews, character interviews, post about what your book is about, or the genre, or a mixture of all three. I’m doing a character interview tour, but because Lindsay’s site is about marketing, she asked me to do a post along that line. Being prepared for sudden changes in the lineup. Not everyone may want an in-depth analysis of your genre.
2. How many ‘stops’ should you do: I’ve seen some authors talk about doing thirty to fifty posts on one tour. That’s a lot! Might I suggest a number a little more manageable, say ten to twenty? Especially if this is your first tour. My only concern with doing high numbers tours, is that after a while you may run out of things to talk about. It’s always good to have a fresh post for each blog. It entices the reader to keep an eye out for your next post, and in the end, isn’t that what the tour is about? Gathering interest in our work?
3. Who should I ask? This is completely up to you. Right now, there aren’t that many people other than  authors/writers who would host a blog tour. This is still a new marketing tool, but I’m sure as it gains more in popularity, more options will become available.
4. Offer to return the favour. Karma, my friends, is a good thing. With each blog tour stop you make, you’re exposing your work to new and potential followers, but this isn’t just a one way street. Offering to host blog tours will bring in more potential followers, and if they like what they see, they may stick around.
5. If you’re hosting a blog tour, might I suggest that you inform the guest blogger of any comments on their post. This will allow the guest blogger to reply in a timely fashion.

Alas, my time has come to an end. It has been a privileged to be here today, and an honour to have Lindsay’s blog as a stop on the Paranormal Pit-Stop Blog Tour. So remember, just because it’s dead, doesn’t mean it’s not alive!

* * *

You can read more about Darke Conteur’s ebook, The Watchtower, on her site, or you might want to download it from Amazon.

A lot of writers are introverts. If we weren’t, we’d probably be too busy doing extrovert things to get any writing done, right? For many of us, it’s against our nature to put ourselves out there and sell our work. But we’re told that being an author is a business (if you want to make money, anyway), and that we have to learn the marketing side of things. So, what’s an introvert to do?

Well, I’m not going to tell you to change who you are. In fact, I particularly loathe books that try to teach introverts how to be more extroverted. I subscribe the George Bernard Shaw philosophy: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Thanks to the rich and widespread online world that exists today, I think you can succeed as an author without forcing yourself into uncomfortable public venues like conventions and book signings (situations that don’t historically sell many books anyway).

For example, if my sales remain steady (and I get a couple more novels out there, which is the plan), I’m about six to twelve months away from being able to quit the day job and write fantasy as a full time gig. I’m already making what would be considered a full time income in less expensive parts of the country (or world). Granted, I’m an indie ebook author, which means I earn more per book than my traditionally published peers, but I did just get started in December 2010, so I think there’s hope for anybody!

In that time, I’ve never done a book reading, gone to a convention, handed out a business card, or (shudder) pitched myself to anyone. If you like doing those things, then by all means do so. It can only help. But this post is for my hardcore introvert colleagues who cringe at such notions. Here’s the good news: you don’t have to do any of that any more.

So, how do you get the word out about your books?

Here are a few random, scattered thoughts tips:

Use social media sites intelligently

Believe it or not, introverts can get a lot of mileage out of “social” media.

Ignore the people who try to be everywhere (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, every forum, etc.), using these platforms as billboards for their stuff, sending out grating sales pitches all the time. If they’re selling books, it’s in spite of what they’re doing there rather than because of it.

So, what do you do?

1. Start a blog (if you’re like me, you’ll be most comfortable sharing your thoughts, and maybe throwing in a post or two about your books, on your own site because it’s a place people have voluntarily chosen to visit — you’re not bugging anyone in a “public” venue).

2. Pick one or two social media sites to get involved on (I’ve been on Twitter for ages — I like it since you’re forced to keep messages short so it’s not a big time sink — and I’ve recently started doing more with Facebook, since much of my target audience hangs out there).

3. Use those sites to get to know your fans (or people who, based on their profiles, might become your fans!), and also use them to promote interesting posts on your blog. People are a lot more likely to click on a link to a possibly-useful-to-them blog post than they are to click on a buy-my-book link. Then, through your blog, people can get to know your writing style and what you’re all about. (I use affiliate links to track sales that originate from my blog, and I sell more than I’d expect, given that I write about e-publishing instead of fantasy or something specifically for my target audience.)

Be generous

This isn’t necessarily an introvert or an extrovert thing, but it’s a way to promote your books without ever having to “sell” anything.

As I’ve mentioned many times, one of my first early breaks came because I turned a short story into an ebook and made it free on Smashwords, Barnes & Nobe, iTunes, etc.. I’ve also done lots of little promotions where I’ve given away 100%-off Smashwords coupons. This has resulted in lots of people going on to try my non-free ebooks.

Note, giving away freebies works especially well when they’re linked to your other books (i.e. Book 1 in a series or maybe a short story featuring characters from your first book). It’s also more useful if you have a non-free book already out and ready for people to buy. If you don’t, at least try to steer fans toward your website (and maybe an email newsletter they can sign up for, eh?). Don’t count on folks to remember your name and check back on you later. Readers read a lot, and unless they’ve read a whole series by you, it’s unlikely they’ll remember you from the dozen other authors they tried that month.

In the vein of being generous, you may want to think about pricing too. I often see new authors calculating what they have to charge and how many books they have to sell to make minimum wage or some such. (They seem to forget that most authors who make a living writing have a large body of work out there, not one or two ebooks.) Likewise, there are a lot of people fiddling with price every week, trying to figure out how much they can get away with charging without hurting sales.

I’m not going to say that’s wrong (one can argue it’s just being a good business person), but one of the benefits of the e-reader revolution is that you can make a living doing this while providing a great value to your readers too. Because of the royalty structures, it’s tough to make it selling 99-cent ebooks, but anything from $2.99 to $4.99 is still a good deal (for a full-length novel) and earns you $2+ per sale. Sell a couple of thousand books a month, and you’re making a full-time income (that sounded like a lot when I started, but the more titles you get out there, the more achievable it seems). Want to make more than that? Work on selling more.

Start a newsletter

I did a post on why authors should have newsletters, so you can check that out for more details, but essentially this is a way for you to keep in touch with your fans (especially important when you’re not the speediest writer and it can be a year or more between books) and keep your name in their minds.

It’s also something you’ll probably be comfortable doing, even if you’re an introvert. Why? As with the blog, you’re talking to people who volunteered for your newsletter (you’ll put a sign-up form on your site, and presumably it’ll be your fans who fill in the blanks), so it’s a lot easier to talk to them than random people you might meet at conventions or somewhere in the real world (again, shudder). They share your passion (your stories!), and they want to know about your books and the funny things your characters are doing.

Promote without being blatant about it

I know, I know, if you read any books about marketing, you’ll learn that you have to include a “call to action” in any newsletter or blog post you do, otherwise people won’t buy your product. Well, I don’t think that’s particularly true when it comes to fiction (do make your book covers and book sales links prominent on your site/blog), but even if it is, it’s not something we’re particularly comfortable doing as introverts. We don’t want to be pushy and bother anyone, right? I get it. Trust me.

Fortunately, you can do well with more subtle promotional techniques. If you cruise through the various posts on this blog, you’ll find a lot of articles about how to do certain things related to e-publishing and book promotion and you’ll find others about my experiences and what’s worked well for me. In the latter types of posts, I’ll always mention my own books (often with a link to the sample chapters). It makes sense because I’m using my own books and my own experiences as an example, but it’s also a sort of promotion. If someone stumbled onto my site because they wanted to know whether short stories sell better than bundled short story collections, they’ll just happen to come across a link to my novella, Flash Gold.

Sell from within your ebooks themselves

Do your ebooks stop at THE END? If so, you’re missing out on more sales. The perfect time to recommend your next book to people is…right after they finish the last one. It doesn’t need to be a hard sell either (‘cuz we introverts aren’t into that). You’re just saying, hey, if you liked this book, you might want to try my others. This reader already bought the first one, so they’re going to be much easier to “pitch” than some random reader off the street (or Twitter-o-sphere).

Here are things you can add in your afterword material:

• A list of your other books (some high-speed e-book authors even put live links to the appropriate store’s sales page — i.e. Amazon links for Kindle ebooks)
• An excerpt from the book that follows the one the reader just finished.
• Your website and/or email.
• Your social media links (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
• The link to your newsletter sign-up page (and a quick note on why it would benefit readers to sign up). I just started doing this with the release of Hunted, and I’ve had as many signups in the last month as in the previous four. Kind of a “duh” moment, I know.
• A polite request for reviews. Most people aren’t into reviewing, but if you ask, some folks who wouldn’t otherwise bother will take the time to leave one. I’ve done this since the beginning, and I know it works because I have lots of reviews from readers who hardly review anything on Amazon, but they were kind enough to leave a write-up for me.

All right, this post has moved into novella-length territory, so I’ll turn the rest over to you all…

Do you have any promotion tips for introverts?