Learn to Blog in 90 Minutes!

Courtesy of yours truly and Writer's Digest. I'll be teaching a webinar about all the essentials and best practices for author blogs, including shedding some light on how agents use the blog to troll for potential clients. Then, I'll take a look at your own blog to tell you how to optimize for the most traffic, getting readers to come back and, of course, how to tailor the blog to help you get noticed by an agent.

Check it: http://bit.ly/x5MvJs

I've got my talking points, but I wonder: what are the most pressing questions for you? You can get as specific as you'd like.

Let me know in the comments! And, of course, you should also sign up for the webinar to learn the answers!!

Makin' Facebook Fancy

DO YOU KNOW how hard it is to integrate custom code into a Facebook page? VERY. Particularly if you're sort of making up/Googling the code as you go along. Which, most of the time, I am/do. But pretty well, I must say.

Working to customize Facebook is like that rule with chefs: you know that they're leaving at least one ingredient out if they agree to tell you a recipe--the most important one, usually. Yeah. That's what Facebook's instructions are like for coding on their platform.

But, just to prove that stubbornness and several sleeves of Ritz crackers will get you just about anywhere, behold. My custom Exclusive Excerpt tab for THE MARIA PARADOX. http://on.fb.me/wKPrOO

A Great Overview of How To Use Twitter...and Have a Job

I hope this sheds light on the fact that, while a lot of tweets from me and mine are organic, many are also posted ahead of time so that the pressure's off me during the busy work day.  I'm not slacking. I'm maximizing.

Which means you can't use "no time" as an excuse not to self-promote anymore. :)

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/5-twitter-secrets-to-become-highly-visible-in-your-niche_b7645

Viva Maria Contest!

You've probably noticed that I've been feeling very sassy and Latina lately here on ze blog. That'e because our authors, Carmen Vazquez and Rosa Gil, have a new ebook out: THE MARIA PARADOX (confetti!)

We had such a great time with this other contest that I thought I'd repeat for our friend Maria. But the stakes are going to be much, much higher.

The prize: Query critique, first 30 page critique, and a 20 minute Skype call. 

Tha's right.

Here's how to get it: 

• Like and/or send people to like The Maria Paradox fanpage on Facebook.
• Follow and/or send people to follow The Maria Paradox on Twitter 
• Blog, tweet, post on Facebook about either of the above or about the Maria Paradox ebook (use this link: http://bit.ly/yDClFm)

Keep track of where you post/tweet/blog about the book--please help these authors promote their Facebook and Twitter pages. 

There will be THREE WINNERS. How do you win? Well, you do the best job. That means posting/reposting the most amount of times, and in the largest variety of ways or places. Maybe reaching out to friends' blogs to reblog your blog post or...I dunno. Up to you. :) I've pasted a Press Release at the bottom of this post that you can copy and paste/send to friends for blog posts.

To Enter:

1. Do your posting. Remember, you have SEVEN days. Pace yourself.
2. Send an email with ONLY the following in the subject line: Ebook Celebration to assistant[AT]bookhaven[DOT]com No punctuation, no project title, no nothing except those two words with that exact capitalization. 
3. Paste your links to the places you've posted these links and/or where you've had others reblog, repost, or retweet.

The contest will be open for one full week, from tomorrow, February 2 - February 9.

Any posts/reposts will be counted between those days. But remember, variety and number of people reached is more important than volume! Retweeting yourself seven times won't get you a win.

Sound hard? Well, it's a competition! :)

I'll look over the entries, decide on the winners, and get back in touch about sending your materials and scheduling your call by March 31.

Thanks in advance for your help!!

*****PRESS RELEASE FOR BLOG POSTS (feel free to copy)*****

THE MARIA PARADOX, written by Drs. Rosa Gil and Carmen Vazquez, is a unique self-help guide for Hispanic women and the men who love them.

The authors challenge the machismo-reinforcing idea of “marianismo,” a centuries-old belief system that in effect tells Latinas: "Don't forget a woman's subservient place; never put your own needs first; sex is for making babies.”

Filled with self-help exercises, this clearly written manual offers practical advice on how to build support networks, overcome passivity, forge career paths, change or get out of abusive relationships and increase sexual fulfillment.

Filled with real-life success stories and wise, compassionate advice, THE MARIA PARADOX details how Latinas can enjoy the best of both worlds.

The book can be purchased from all major online retailers. The authors can also be found on Twitter and on Facebook. 

Online Author Marketing: Your Book Is Pubbing!

You're living the dream, man. An agent, a book deal...now your book is about to come out!

This is going to be AWESOME.

Publishers dedicate marketing and publicity staff to your book, with their biggest push focused around the launch. It's called "event marketing" in the industry.

What that means is that there's one big push, but no long term marketing strategy for the book...and this is where most authors (and some agents) get really grouchy. ("They're not doing anything anymore!")

But before we start Publisher bashing, as is so en vogue these days, consider that just as your book had some launch-time marketing (galleys printed, an ad somewhere, etc.) the next book on that publicist's list has to get the same attention. The publisher has to move on.

Which means that, at this stage, your own marketing efforts have to get more aggressive and your strategy more sophisticated. In post one, we talked about building the foundation of your online presence. On Tuesday, about focusing your online strategy. At this stage, you should focus on marrying your marketing foundation (blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) with specific marketing strategy.

This means getting creative. Your goal should be to keep your book(s) on people's minds in the online space, where attention spans are notoriously short.

This is not done by "selling" your book.

As you've no doubt heard before, broadcasting "BUY MY BOOK" is a quick way to get ignored. Create value for your audience--by being funny, like Maureen Johnson, finding interesting images on Flickr, or marrying your writing interests with something broader, as Sarah Fine does with psychology and YA literature.

Keep them coming back for your digital content and persona (separate from your book) and they'll get your book news (new releases, discounted ebooks, etc.) too. Organically piqued interest has a much greater chance of generating sales and word-of-mouth advertising.

Yes, this "online stuff" takes time. Or money (you can certainly pay some very talented professionals to do this for you). The online space has become a hugely important marketing and sales environment. If you choose to ignore that online space, you risk dooming your book to the "Launch and Fizzle" pattern so many books fall into.

Online Author Marketing: Agented!

You may have been an unagented writer before, just trying to build a basic online brand (see yesterday's post) but now...

YOU DID IT!

You landed an agent. Nice work! You've got a blog with a few followers and you've done some guest posts here and there for other bloggers who've even returned the favor. You may have figured out The Twitter. The two platforms, through cross-linking, support one another.

Things feel a lot more concrete than they did when you were just hammering away at different projects. You've got one to really focus on, with some in the wings (your agent hopes).

Now that you have something specific to promote, whether sold or unsold, you should reevaluate your online strategy and perhaps expand into new platforms. Hopefully your agent can help you. For instance:

• Are you writing nonfiction as an expert in some area? You could join Quora and start answering questions there--it's a great way to build platform.
• Facebook. This is more complicated because everyone thinks they know how to do The Facebook. Most people have a Facebook page of some sort, but few have one that's really effective in building an online brand, (see here for some details). Think of a strategy for Facebook: what are you promoting? A single title? A series? You as an author?
• Flickr. If you're an artist or illustrator, Flickr is a great place to showcase your work and build stories--supplemental, perhaps, to your book--in a new way.

There are many more ways to build an online brand; your agent can and should help you with this strategy, although you shouldn't expect them to do it for you. If you're too busy for social media, see here. Apply to all social media platforms.

A word on oversharing: you're going on submission now. It's a nervewracking experience for all involved and it can be really frustrating. Don't blog about it. Don't tweet it. Don't write angsty poetry about it and post it to your Tumblr. Don't.

So in the agented stage you get an online presence with a little more flair, guided by your agent. You've also got a more focused message, since you'll have a project to promote. Go get 'em!

Online Author Marketing: Pre-Agent

On Friday, I participated in an amazing interactive interview on Krista Van Dolzer's Mother. Write. (Repeat.) Blog. One of the questions asked, concerning author online marketing, was too complex to discuss in the comments section:

How can a writer get the most out of the Internet at each stage of the writing journey (pre-agent, post-agent, pre-book release, post-book release)?

Since we couldn't talk about it on Friday, it'll be the subject of a series on the blog this week.

First, we'll cover pre-agent online marketing and platform-building tactics.

Since your online presence is the foundation for your online marketing in the future, you should have a strategy before you just jump on Blogger. What brand are you trying to build? What other people are already talking about what you want to? How can you possibly collaborate with them? Unfortunately, blogging about "your writing process" or "your publishing journey" is not going to cut it if you really want to build a following--too many are already doing it. For tips on blog topics, check out this post here (and the surrounding posts).

I suggest a blog and a twitter account as a good online foundation for an aspiring writer.

You don't have to be super active on Twitter as soon as you sign up. Go ahead and find 20 or 30 people to follow--a mix of writers you admire, agents, editors, and non-publishing people--and just lurk. Listen to conversations, jump in where you feel like you have something to say. As you get more comfortable with the platform, you can tweet more. A fully active account should be tweeting no fewer than three times a day.

The hashtags #askagent and #yalitchat are examples of ways to find others interested in the things you're writing about: both agents/editors and beta writers. You can search those terms on Twitter and read the transcripts of the chats, which are always full of great info.

A blog is another good way to get started building an online presence. As you'll see as you get your feet wet with Twitter, the writerly blogosphere is incredibly interconnected. Bloggers guest post, start series together, and share thoughts on books they loved (And hated). But here more than anywhere else you have to worry about oversharing.

Many writers serialize their work on their blogs. I cannot encourage you strongly enough to avoid that. Authors nearly always list "getting an agent" as the reason they put "teasers" on their blogs. But there is already a mechanism for showing your work to agents: the query. Trust that process; it is highly unlikely that an agent will just stumble on your blog. They usually find it by clicking links in a query. So why put it on the blog?

If you choose to do so anyway you may put yourself breach of the warranties and indemnities clause of the publishing contract that you haven't even signed yet. I like Krista's strategy: she has a widget on her sidebar that lists a logline for her book. That's interesting without crossing any lines. Kathleen Ortiz has a great author website post here that lists website elements you should focus on.

You should try to post about twice a week on your blog--a link with a caption is still a post, but try to make a habit of producing real content--between 100 and 400 words.

So what do you think? Any questions? Tomorrow we'll talk about changes you should make once you're an agented writer.

Platform

It's that dreaded word. Unfair, limiting, gatekeeping word. We hatessss it, precious.

Well, actually, no we don't. In fact, it's probably safe to say that the only ones who hate platform are the ones who don't have platform. It's high school and the head cheerleader's new perm all over again.

Frustration is easy to understand, though. Platform is harder than ever to acquire with the rise of the Internet and particularly with the rise of blogs. When we set up blog tours for our authors, blogs with one or two hundred followers are considered successful, places that will make good potential blog tour "stops." In the unbelievably noisy Internet age, a couple hundred people professing to listen to your noise is fairly impressive.

But what does that translate to as far as platform?

Platform, as it applies to publishing, is about whom you impress with your numbers. Publishers. And, unfortunately, a couple hundred isn't going to cut it. To get publishers' attention, regardless of whether you're debuting or a self-pubber trying to transition to print, you have to command the attention of thousands.

The definition of "publisher" is not as hard and fast as it once was, though. That affects your platform strategy. We'll finish out the week with a short series, covering the anatomy of a non-fiction and a fiction (no, you novelists haven't escaped this scourge) tomorrow and Friday.

Packaging >> Positioning

We're getting fancy, guys. We have jargon. Packaging. Positioning.

On Monday, we talked about covers and the effect on readers. Namely, whether readers pick up the book. Covers should communicate content and tone--no easy feat, to be sure.

But picking up the book is not a won battle, friends. We want readers to buy that sucker. Sometimes, for the casual book buyer, an appealing cover induces a capitalistic coma that draws reader, book in hand, to the cash register. Zap.

More often building awareness of a book, branding and positioning it in the marketplace, is the effort that wins the battle.

Positioning means the image/collection of images that pops up in a consumer's mind when your product gets mentioned. So, when you hear a title like GHOST COUNTRY, you think thriller, serious, fast-paced (as opposed to, say, unicorns, happy, and paaarties). Positioning also means how consumers compare your product to others in its category. So how are Patrick Lee's thrillers different than, say, the Jason Bourne books. It's about how the book gets packaged (cover, typeface, copy, etc.). But it's also about how it gets talked about.

Like a cover, the buzz surrounding a book should reflect tone and content in interesting ways. As with any product, marketing (which is a large part of brand-building and positioning) has to break through the noise--and books, regardless of genre, is a noisy market. Especially for you self-pubbers!!

Publishers and authors are getting really creative with the ways they define books in readers minds. Characters are getting Twitter feeds and Facebook pages. Books have trailers like movies.

The Internet means marketing is as flexible as its ever been. You can bring characters to life to talk directly to your audience. If your tone is sassy-with-a-touch-of-ninja-dash-of-literary, you can do that. We're not restricted by a medium anymore, as they were in MadMen (on Netflix, btw!!).

It's sort of cool.

Blog Promo and Audience

OK, before we were so rudely interrupted on Wednesday, we were deep in conversation about blogs. How you have to have them and what to write on them, and what not to write on them. We are making so. much. progress.

Now, you've got this blog! It's your online brand-y-hub thing! You are crafting a message both personal and interesting to your audience!

Whoa. Audience? Who said anything about that?

Oops.

Your audience, as you doubtless know, is numero uno. It's more important than your witty quips or cool stories. Plus, if you keep checking your comments and you've still only got that one from your mom asking about your change of address, we've you've got a problem.

Two things on audience: Who they are and how to get on their radar screen.

Both take a little legwork. Your blog has a topic--you don't only have to talk about that one thing, but it should constitute the majorty of your content. So research that topic! Google keywords and see what comes up. Take a look on Twitter to see who's talking about the things you're blogging about. Use this info to:

1. See who should follow/friend/link to--as in other bloggers
2. Decide how to tailor your posts and labels (at the bottom of blog posts) so that you include the keywords people most often search when looking for your topic. They're the intuitive ones. The ones you Googled. You're dabbling in SEO now!! You techy, you.

The people involved in the internet discussions you uncovered with your Googling are your core audience--they're already interested. Their followers/friends/readers are interested in what they're retweeting/posting/blogging--meaning they're valuable. They'll extend your "reach." Marketing lingo! Look at you...

Now you talks to them!! But before you start broadcasting your presence, hedge your bets a little. Get about a week's worth of your best material queued up to pose. You can take one of two routes:

• Have a big launch day.
• Just sort of ease onto the scene

The former is appropriate if you've got something you know people will want. I had some assurance that people would like the prizes I hawked offered on my launch day (thank you, btw!!), so this was a no brainer to me. I knew it would drive traffic and, through retweets, etc., that people would spread the word (THANK YOU!). Do you? Be creative now...and make sure it's not random. It needs to make sense in the context of your blog.

If you don't do a launch day, tha's cool. Just ease in there--post that week's worth of material before you start promoting yourself. But make sure your best, most interesting post is the one you post on the day you start buzzing about yourself. One that'll hook 'em, and get them clicking around your other posts. Doesn't hurt to cross link to your other posts, either.

When you're ready, just slide into the conversations you've been watching:

• Twitter is the easiest place to do this. Make comments or retweet. Use hashtags. Don't be afraid to talk directly (@) people. You can link to your blog in your tweets, but also link to other sites that you find interesting. Be interesting/linky and not only will people follow you, but they'll check out your profile, which lists your blog (right???).
• Other blogs are fantastic ways to get ideas for content or crosslinking. Someone say something you have Opinions about? Response blog and link to it. Mention your response, using the other person's handle, on Twitter. You can build on others' posts and, by linking to them, build a presence in the community.
• Facebook. I don't know. Post a picture or something. Facebook is a weird and wild animal. It'll have it's own series here somewhere. Plus, I use mine only for personal use. You have to be careful with that. With all the pictures.
• Quora. OMG this place is so underappreciated. People ask questions, other people answer them. It's a great place to build a platform and find things to blog about. The things people are asking about are the things that they'll want to read blog posts about.

So that's it! KNow that you'll do probably 5 hours of work up front, figuring out where your audience is and how to best talk to them. Expect that, and don't be discouraged. Your time investment will reduce as you find the most efficient means of talking to your readers. And as your readers start reblogging/retweeting you...doing your work for you. :)