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One of the online tools I use weekly is AuthorCentral.com, which is an Amazon site with a backend for authors. It gives authors access to the listings about your book, statistics about sales, reviews of all your books on a single page and access to Amazon for correcting mistakes.

Book Listings. When you log onto AuthorCentral, the first thing to do is claim your books. Click on the Books tab at the top, and then ADD BOOKS. Once the process is completed, you’ll have access to the book listing, book details and book extras. These shouldn’t be changed willy-nilly, as your publisher has likely spent time in honing the description. But you do have access to change anything that is wrong, to add good news about awards and such, and to tweak as needed. Indeed, there is a space for “FROM THE AUTHOR” which gives you the perfect place to add information. The Book Extras are primarily intended for Shelfari, which isn’t one of the most popular sites; often, I don’t bother to do anything here. But it’s available if you like.

Profile. The profile tab offers simple access to your Amazon Author page, something you want to update a couple times a year, or as new information is available. Included are you bio, bibliography, photos, videos, blog feeds and the ability to list events.

Sales Info. This includes sales data over time and by geographic region, as reported by BookScan. That is important: this only includes sales data from BOOKSCAN. Still, this is important and helpful. Say you visited California and wanted to know the effect of that visit on sales. You could check the sales data the next week. The information is also broken down book by book.

Author Rank. Just like Amazon gives your books a sales rank, it also gives YOU a sales rank. For a certain time period, how did your sales stack up against other authors in your category? I tend to ignore this one.

Customer Reviews. On the other hand, I check my customer reviews about once a week. It’s convenient to have all reviews from all your books in one central location. Otherwise, I’d have to visit each book listing on Amazon to see new reviews. It’s a bit slow (24-48 hours) pulling in a review. When a friend emails to say s/he has posted a review, I can check the book page and see it immediately; however, it doesn’t show up on AuthorCentral for a day or two.

Overall, these tools allow writers to keep a pulse on their book sales. It’s been a valuable addition to my set of online marketing and promotional tools. Thanks, AuthorCentral.

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Group blogs like Long Awkward Pause shine on WordPress.com -- and now you can say you knew this comedic confab before they hit the big time.

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I'm REALLY glad that the mural is being painted on panels which allows me to work in the garage around my schedule during odd hours!  I don't feel rushed, yet I feel like I'm still getting things accomplished (even with daytime demands).

This evening, I played around with the grape colors, bringing them closer to what I want.  I still need to build up layers and values.

Before

After

I also worked out a couple of issues with the figures - particularly the man.  I dealt with the NCS, or Narrow Chin Syndrome, as well as the Big-Footitis that he suffered from.  He really had too much heel - the heel was more profile while the front of the foot was more 3/4 view.  Anyway, he's been healed - Hallelujah!  (And "heeled," I guess).

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One of the problems with modern life is too much choice. Choice is offered as a good thing and, on the face of it, it is. Certainly, lack of choice is lack of power and the ultimate lack of power is slavery. But too much choice can be horribly paralysing and lead to great dissatisfaction. 

There's an area of choice in which I think writers are becoming panicky and paralysed. It's the P-Words: Publicity, Promotion, Profile, Platform. Oh, and pro-active.

Time was when a writer wrote a book, waited for Publication Day, was wheeled out for a few signings and tottered back to a hotel for a claret-laden dinner with editor. (Actually, I have no memory of such days, but allow me some imagination.) Now, we have to be pro-active, partly because often our publishers don't do enough or we have better ideas, or simply because there are so many opportunities and our publishers rightly encourage us to use them. We see other authors Doing Stuff and want to Do Stuff too. For a pro-active, interfering, control freak such as me, this is, in theory, great.

In theory.

In practice, it's a flipping nightmare, a feast of choices, incitement to wake in the night with Yet Another Stupid Wheeze Which I Usually Actually Carry Through. And then there's the panic when we hear what someone else is doing - why didn't we think of that? The blog tour, the sponsored marathon, the one-woman festival, the colour-coded Tweet-up, the mail-shotting of the fan database. What?? You don't have a fan database, in a spreadsheet, with the ability to identify each category of reader, by postcode? You mean you haven't set up a Twitter persona for each of the characters in your book? You don't have a special blog, posting every day for six months? You haven't organised a book giveaway throughout all continents of the world? Bad, lazy author.

NO! No more, I say, no more. I reject paralysing choice. I will not be panicked into doing stupid things that sound good but wreck me. Never again will I set a world record of school visits in one day, as I did for Deathwatch. Or organise a blog tour AND set up a new blog, as I did for Wasted. Nor will I ever lie awake wondering what mad things to do for the next book. I will reject panic. I will calm down, be sensible and moderate. We do too much, worry too much, glance in too much fear at other people, fret about what we're not doing instead of focusing on what we can do well.

So, here, for what it's worth, is my advice on approaching publication in a state of zen:

1. Play to your strengths: do what suits you. If the idea curdles your stomach juices, spit it out.
2. Focus not on the excitement of the Bright Idea but the feeling you will actually have when you have to put the idea into practice. Will you regret it? If so, stop it in its tracks.
3. Choose a couple of things to do and forget the other possibilities. You have another book to write and a life to live.
4. Ignore everyone else: no one is doing everything and most people are not selling as many books as you fear.
5. If you wake in the night with a crazy idea, go back to sleep. 
6. Be strategic and time-focused. Six months before publication, make a plan (in conjunction with your publisher); then do virtually nothing till two months before P-day.Then, look at your plan and follow it. This planning eliminates the need to wake in the night in a panic. Besides, you're not panicking, remember?
7. Remember that what happens to your book will depend mostly on luck and the book, more than how many hours you spent promoting it.
8. You do not have to have a launch party - it's fun (for some people) but it usually doesn't sell books so only do it if it will make you happy, not if it will stress you.
9. Do as I say, not as I do. But I'm trying - I really am.

ARGHHHHH.

By the way, in case my publicist is reading this, the book is called Write to be Published. But it's not published till June, so I'm doing nothing yet.

C

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I've finally put the kibosh on the cover of book 2 due out before the end of the year.



The overall tone of the book is a little darker, and I think the cover matches. If you liked anything about book one, the sequel is going to make you go bonkers.

You can hold me to that.

On another note, the profiles page of the Forts site has been updated to include four new characters. Two of them you'll be familiar with from "Fathers and Sons," the other two you'll meet in "Liars and Thieves."

Consider it the first preview.

CLICK HERE TO READ

Steven

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Let's unpick this a bit and then I'll tell you why I use the tools I choose and what they do for me.


Two clichés: 1) there are many ways to skin a cat  2) horses for courses. Building your "profile" as an author can be done in many different ways and we should only do what we want to do and what feels comfortable. We are, above all, writers. If we let ourselves spend more time "networking" than writing and thinking and dreaming, then our profile is going to have nothing substantial to base itself on and we will lose touch with why we exist.

1. Don't panic, Captain Mainwaring. It's not even a commercial.
2. Take your time to try various possibilities 
   
3. Each tool seems completely mad when you first begin  -  everyone's first "tweet" reads something like "well, I made it 2 twitter  -  WTF do I do now?"
4. Doesn't matter whether you take it ultra-seriously or dip in and out  -  do it your way
5. Don't let it take over your life, ever
6. Enjoy it or don't do it
7. People survive perfectly well without all of this
8. BUT, every now and then you will make a fabulous connection with someone who could end up being a genuine friend, excellent colleague or very useful contact. But the same could be said of going to a party, reunion, meeting, lecture or supermarket ... (It's just somewhat less likely, statistically).

I think I am registered on most of those things like Linkedin and a few writerly equivalents the names of which escape me. Which tells you how useful I have found them. As in not. So that takes me zero time and I get zero out of it. (There's a lesson there).

I blog. Obviously I blog because here I am. This blog takes me half an hour a month to write, and 5-10 minutes every time someone else posts, so I can read and maybe comment. I get out of it the feeling of being part of a community (we email off-blog too) and being able to listen to other readers; some people may read me who otherwise wouldn't have; and the act of writing something is good practice. It's fiun and it's easy. No pressure.

My other blog (Help! I Need a Publisher!) takes up a lot of time. Maybe an hour a day, often more. I blog on it at least three times a week, and reply to all comments  -  most posts get around 20 comments, sometimes as many as 50ish. People also email me off-blog (including agents, editors and publishing industry people). That sounds like a lot of work for no money and it is a lot of work but here's what I get from it:

• it's become a whole new career strand, with many invitations to speak to writers (on Creative Writing MA course, for example)
• it's taught me a lot, as more and more people contact me with their own views, knowledge and experiences; it's broadened my knowledge outside the UK
• I've been interviewed for or done guest posts on many other blogs, which would never have happened
  
• I love doing it, love the free style of writing and the instant feedback
• I've made friends, genuine friends, as in people I can phone, email and meet
• With one of these new friends, fellow blogger Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works, I'm planning some exciting projects which actually will earn us some income from what we both do.
• I know I've sold some of my books, as I've gained readers who would never have heard of me
• people have brought me chocolate. Really. Three times. And people have recognised me by my shoes or boots. Extraordinary.
  

Blogging, then, can be very rewarding. But you have to want to do it; you have to know what you want to say, and be prepared to open up your personality (or I guess you could always invent one if you wanted  -  after all, the internet lies ...). It's a form of writing itself, very real, very good fun, very flowing, very instant. And it can lead to a greater "platform" or profile, too.

I Twitter. Twitter is very weird when you start because you're essentially twittering to yourself until people start to follow you. I could write a tutorial on how to get started on twitter but this is not the time for that. (Except to say that  if you "follow" me, then I'll almost certainly "follow" you and then you'll quickly see how it works, and I'll help you along. Start your free account at www.twitter.com and in "Find people" put @nicolamorgan).

How much time do I spend on Twitter? Probably 10-20 minutes a day, split into half a minute at a time.

What do I get out of it?

• because I follow the Bookseller, Book2Book and industry experts such as Scott Pack, I know that I will get industry news first, before it's published, so I'm always informed
  
• it's easier for people to discover you on Twitter than on a blog, so people have come across me through the chain of twitterers
  
• Twitter is easily linked to your blog, so a) a blog post goes instantly to Twitter, where your followers can "retweet" to all their followers and b) vice-versa, so every "tweet" of mine goes onto my blog automatically, so blog followers see more informal messages than blog posts
• Twitter organises "tweetchats"  -  so you get to know that, for example, Mon/Wed/Fri, 9-10pm GMT, there's always "litchat", a load of people around the world chatting about a lit-based topic. There are things like writechat and amwriting and pubchat (publisher, not pub ...). Through this, I've made more contacts.
• I love the even greater instant-ness and public-ness. It's like Speaker's Corner except you can only shout 140 characters. (Thank goodness).
  
• I publicised some Edinburgh Book Festival events on Twitter and I know that a couple of people only heard about it through that. I know about a couple but assume there were more
  
• And in the last week I have twice been invited to speak, purely because of a message I put on Twitter
• It's fun
• It's free

What about Facebook? I do that too, but less than I used to now I use Twitter more. For me, Facebook is purely social and relaxing, nothing to do with work-related "networking". My Facebook "friends" are more genuinely friends, though I admit I haven't physically met them all. How much time? Some days only a quick look; other days I'll get involved in a fun message thread (especially if people like Gillian Philip, Philip Ardagh or Bookwitch are on form!) and come back several times during the day. What do I get from it? Contact with friends. Fun. Relaxation.

People can be very disparaging about all this, and use the word "networking" in a very sneery way. Some people, I agree, do it very calculatingly and some do it unattractively. Some people on Twitter can be very boring  -  there's one person who just says "Morning all" every morning, but on the other hand isn't that what real people do when meeting other real people as they arrive in their offices? This is all, really, about new forms of human interaction. You can call it networking and be disparaging if you want. I call it making human connections. I like doing it and I get something out of it; I hope I give something too.

But, as with all forms of human interaction, it's all about doing what works for you and feels good for you. All I'd say, though, is if you don't try it you'll never know.


This blog post has been far too long  -  it's kept me from Twitter for at least half an hour.

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I was able to put the ol' kibosh on this piece in just a couple of days. It's strange how one piece can take me hour upon hour to finish off, while another (with pretty much the same amount of work) can get finished in two days.

Usually getting paid makes me speed things up a bit, but I didn't earn a single dollar for this one, so who knows?

Steve~

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Who started all this talk about book trailers, anyway? It was illustrator Layne Johnson, who has several such videos on YouTube. His Farmer George preview is sure to inspire viewers to read this beautiful book, written by Peggy Thomas.


Some years ago, a children’s radio station in Orlando made an audio version of one of my older books, The Dragon Halloween Party. There was bouncy music, professional voice overs, and high-pitched exclamations by the dragons such as “Ouch!” and “Oooooo!” It was delightful, but there was no chance of doing anything like that myself. Or maybe there is…



Several PBAA members have been inspired to make trailers in the last few days. Hopefully some of them will post their masterpieces, too. A few tips from my newbie experience:

On a Mac, iMovie works well to create a mini-movie. I had to download v.3.0.3 to get the “Ken Burns Effect,” where you can pan and zoom across still images. It can be a little temperamental, so save your work often. My system is so old (OS 10.2.8), I couldn’t use the newer versions—the latest version is iMovie 08.

You need iPhoto to create an “album” of the illustrations images which then can be brought into iMovie. They have to be in an album or iMovie can’t see them. I downsampled the illos first in Photoshop to make them about the size of a photo (4" X 6") because iMovie seemed to reject an image that was too large. It probably says in the Help what the maximum image size is, may have to read it sometime…

The voice-overs were recorded using my digital camera, which can be set to record in Audio mode while taking a photo. (My computer does not have a built-in microphone.) Each bit of sound was tweaked in Audacity, a free download. You can make the sound track faster, higher, lower, and do various other distortions. Max Headroom, anyone?

I didn’t use any music in my preview, but would like to try it in the future. My brother has Garage Band, and it should be easy to put together a simple bouncy tune to layer underneath.

One note: if you plan to embed the YouTube viewer, be sure to make a “custom” viewer. After playing your video, the standard one puts random videos from YouTube as little icons to click on and play, which I didn’t want. I think there’s a Blogger viewer, but didn’t take the time to figure that out.

It’s ton of fun, although it did take a fairly long time to make only one minute of video. Now that I have an idea of the process, the next one should go faster. Why not make a preview video of your book today?

Loreen

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Last Wednesday, I introduced Kamilla Reid's self-published book, The Questory of Root Karbunkulus. To be truthful, I haven't had a chance to read her book yet. But since she sent me a copy to give away to one of my readers, and it's the holiday season, I figured this is a good time as any to host a Book Giveaway.

I also wanted to start a discussion on things authors can do to market their books. If you're interested to see what Kamilla has done to market her books, go here. Authors, whether they are self-published or through a traditional publisher, need to market their books. And with this one common denominator, I thought it would be interesting to find out what kind of creative book marketing ideas people came up with. Here is the link to all of the comments. Or if you just want to read the marketing ideas, read onwards.

m. thompson said...
Everyone uses bookmarks, because they're cheap. But it does nothing to really distinguish a book.I'm thinking a calendar or a cool magnet would be great.

PJ Hoover said...
Group marketing like The Class of 2k7.

Minh Le said...
Start a (hopefully) unfounded rumor that your book has veiled references to Satan worship... send memos to the 700 Club, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, etc. Once the book starts getting banned in libraries across the country, interest will go through the roof, sales will skyrocket, you'll be interviewed on NPR and maybe even get a mention on the Colbert Report! Hey, it worked for Harry Potter...

Anonymous said...
Ha! Minh Le is hysterical! I've always wondered about self-publishing--it has such a bad rap. This is one of those tempting things you want to look at, but shouldn't because self-publishing is considered a no no if you want to be taken seriously in the publishing world. The book trailer is pretty impressive. It really makes alot of book trailers look really lame, no? I like how Stephenie Meyer did all those proms for Twilight.

Brian Mandabach said...
That trailer is very WOW! I had a contest for best trailer, but since the book hadn't come out yet (I wanted it before release) I provided a script and image ideas to choose from. I don't think that worked so well because, though I have one really nice trailer, I can't figure out how to upload it. (file too big)I also had some really cool t-shirts made, and I give them, along with books and cd's of the books "soundtrack" away when I do school visits. Not sure any of this stuff helps, but it is kinda fun. (NOTE: If anyone knows how Brian can upload the file to YouTube, please contact him through his blog.)

Readablefeast said...
Using social media to market the books is something I teach writers about. One of the ideas I would like to see used more often is creating a MySpace page not only for the book/author but for a book's fictional characters as well. If the book is for young adults/teens, this would be very effective. Having a character "guest post" on the author's blog would also be a lot of fun both for the author and their readers. I'd love to see some conversation between the readers, the author and the characters and a blog, Facebook page, or MySpace page would be a great place to start. Podcasting and doing video on YouTube would be a good idea, too. The only downfall is that these types of efforts could be time consuming, so if the author had a budget, I would recommend them hiring someone to write it with them overseeing things to make sure the reader would pick up on the character's voice. Imagine the feedback the author would get for the followup book!

caryn said...
I really like it when authors tie their book into a scholarship or donate a percentage of their sales to a charity. I'm not sure how it really works out financially though, especially when you hear that books don't always earn what they're supposed to.
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Aren't these ideas wonderful? Thank you, everyone who shared an idea. I'm sure you helped someone who is searching for some good book marketing strategies. If anyone wants to add another creative marketing idea, please feel free. I'll add your comment into the post. In the meantime, I'm going to announce the winner of The Questory of Root Karbunkulus. Minh Le, you're the winner. E-mail me your snail mail address to hipwritermama at comcast dot net. Congratulations!

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Well, Sara, TadMack and Robin were brave enough to do this. So I figure, why not me? Let's give a look see through one of my high school journals and find a lovely morsel to share with you.

Actually, I only saved two high school journals over the years. One is full of angsty journal entries that I'm still amazed I wrote. The other is full of handwritten inspirational quotes, essays, excerpts from books and poems that resonated with my tortured teen self. Everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt, La Rochefoucauld, George Bernard Shaw, e.e. cummings, Woodrow Wilson, Henry David Thoreau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Shakespeare, Ben Burroughs, Ann Landers and more share a spotlight in this journal. I even wrote a few original poems, that made me laugh and shudder.

The one poem I am going to share is one I could recite at a moment's notice when I felt my parents were unjust. I even remember writing this in letters to my mom to reinforce my feelings. I'm not sure who wrote this poem (it sounds like it came from a greeting card), but it captured my teenage spirit and made me free. I hope I'll remember this poem and the rebellious teen I was, so when my children turn into teenagers, I'll remember my dreams for them are simply my dreams, and not theirs.

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I had planned to write a post earlier this summer about self-publishing successes after I read Eragon by Christopher Paolini. But I never got around to it. Then, Kamilla Reid sent me an autographed copy of her self-published book, The Questory of Root Karbunkulus, which reminded me about writing this post. But I never got around to it.

And while today's post won't exactly cover self-publishing, you'll find a couple of links to articles on Kamilla's success on marketing her book after the fantastic book trailer below.

Kamilla even sent me an extra book to give away to one lucky person...and I figured this would be a great time to do so. I must admit, I haven't had a chance to read the book yet. I really wanted to have read it before giving away the book, but given my book stack is pretty high, it might be awhile. However, here's a Teens Read Too book review. And here's the awesome book trailer that she did with the help from some friends--you will never believe some of this was filmed in her basement!



If you're intrigued after watching the book trailer, you're going to want to check out Kamilla Reid's website. By now, you're probably curious about what Kamilla has done to market her books. Here are a couple articles to read: recent article about Kamilla's marketing plan and PC World's article, Six Rising Stars on the New Web.

I figure, all authors --whether self-published or published with a traditional publisher -- have to market their books in one way or another. And I'm wondering whether you've ever come across anything an author did that made a wow! impression on you . Or, perhaps you stumbled across a pathetic book marketing attempt. So, given this thought...here are the updated rules for this Book Giveaway:

1. Use your creativity to come up with an idea -- small, big, inexpensive, extravagent, easy, time comsuming, etc. -- on something you'd like to see authors do to market their books. You can use a wow! stategy an author used that you loved.
2. Only clean and respectful entries will be accepted. Otherwise, they will be deleted.
3. Go and write about this idea in the Comments section below by Sunday, December 9th 11pm EST, if you'd like a chance to win a paperback copy of Kamilla Reid's book, The Questory of Root Karbunkulus.
4. The winner will be announced on Monday, December 10th.

Thank you, Kamilla, for donating this book for the Book Giveaway. Okay, folks. Ready? Set? Now....Go! Comment away.

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