Day One of Book Launch

L.W.Patricks said:

Do any people have advice on social media marketing? I'd love to hear it.

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We'll see how much you love it after you hear it.

It's generally a waste of time. Use social media to be social. Don't spam your friend about your book (but it's cool to mention it once upon release.) Use the time you saved to write another book.

L.W.Patricks said:

Hello everyone,

I thought I'd come back here and post some weekly updates of successes and things I've learned about my independent publication.

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Either you're published by an independent publisher, or you've self published. You can't do both with the same book. If you've self published, then don't be afraid to say so. And read this room's guidelines, please, before you go any further.

*takes grumpy hat off*

The best of luck with your publication, LW. I hope your book does really well, and you sell many copies. I'll look forward to hearing all about it in the coming weeks.

Good luck & I wish you much success!

Now about social media.... here's my take.
It's really just a tool to get your name out there & build your brand. You probably won't get any sales from it. So far I have 300 followers on Twitter. Guess how many books they have bought? NONE! lol And everyone spams about their books all the time. Even big time authors in my genre do it & yes it annoys me. So, while occasionally I promote things like my new release coming out or "read these books before the next in the series comes out" I use Twitter, facebook, Pinterest, google+, Tumblr & Instagram to chat & be social.

Please don't take this as me being negative or mean. I'm trying to be honest and tell you what my experience has been. Most bloggers are not accepting new books because they have just too many to review. Most, but not all don't accept self published books. A lot of them want printed books to review as well. Also, depending on genre it can be even more difficult to find someone. Then you get the ones that don't even respond! I have sent messages to over 20 bloggers and so far only 2 have been able to review my books.

You can read more about things I've done and my self pubbing journey here:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=244506

What's your Twitter/Facebook info so I can follow you?

I hope I didn't come off as negative. I think you're on the right path, I just don't want you to get your hopes up that joining Twitter & Facebook are suddenly going to sell books for you.

I love twitter - but as to marketing, it needs some know-how. Just spamming about your book in every tweet will make you lose followers - and you will need to have some first. I myself tend to unfollow people who don't have a thing to say other then self-marketing their book(s).
On the other side, I follow some tweeps who write books, but also have interesting blogs or websites and really communicate over twitter.
My twitter-account is not new, I have some followers and sometimes get new ones. I hope once my book will be on sale I might mention it without looking I just tweet as a method of sales.
Just my two pence ;-)

Hi, L W Patricks. Just wanted to say I admire your ambition and I think your cover is very attractive and professional looking. I hope things go well with you and congrats on publishing your novel!

Looking forward to following your journey. Good luck!

I just got my author account on goodreads, I have a few self-published works, and I have a contest for my print version of My Imperfect life. The contest is for a week, and i've gotten quite a lot of people who have entered to win a copy of it. I'm just giving out one, I'm not made of money! I suggest you try that out. I also have a facebook page for my book, but its not getting many likes! I'm too lazy to use social media for my books and like the others have mentioned I think its best used for social stuff and not selling.

Also, you might try using KDP select and offer ebook versions of your work for free to download with a promotion campaign. I got a couple hundred to download the ebook version of my book, no reviews on the amazon page yet, but it is the holiday season!

Good luck and congratulations on your publishing journey. I would echo what others have said about social networking. You can make it work for you but you should aspire to do what online mavens like George Takei do. His online presence is fun and lighthearted and he posts a lot of funny geeky macros that appeal to his trekkie and non-trekkie fans. You gotta find out what your online presence will be and make it enjoyable for your book's demographic.

Start with the book. Instead of just selling it bluntly all the time, post about your influences on the book like maybe gladiator history or modern day preppers or other research. Make playlists for the book. Wallpapers of the book cover, etc.

You can't always sell the book all the time. You probably have hobbies like cooking or biking or whatever you're into. Post about that. Use that as a base then add a love of a geek culture, hip hop, horror movies, dancing, whatever. Then post what you're interested in a variety of formats like playlists, blog essays, movie reviews etc etc while thinking about your intended audience for your book.

A lot of authors just pimp themselves constantly in a boring way. You gotta make it interesting because that attracts bigger bloggers who can spotlight you on their blogs. Also a variety of interests can attract bloggers outside the book world and give a different kind of exposure. I would also suggest that you network with non-author bloggers like for example say you post recipes occasionally to your blog then you should start following cooking bloggers. You want to widen your network. I've seen a lot of authors who have a blog roll like a snake eating its tail.

Most importantly, its a lot of work so you need to make social networking and blogging fun or else you'll stop. There are a number of online free services where you can update multiple social networks at once (google 'update multiple social networks at once.')

I should put a disclaimer on my last post. I haven't tried to market any books but that is just advice from my observations on being on livejournal and tumblr. My friend has a couple of blogs and that is stuff that she has told me.

Hey LW,

I'm interested in what you did for your press release. Did you get in touch with local press? Did you find it successful?

I find Twitter more helpful than facebook - I think generally you reach more people. As long as you use it to chat rather than spam, you could find that you end up making a few sales that way. It's not guaranteed but it has happened to me - I'll start chatting to someone and they ask me about the book and hey presto there's a sale on Amazon.

Don't spend half your life on there, though. Use it as a hobby, something you want to do in your spare time. Not as something you have to do.

Also find authors of books in the same genre as your book and follow their followers. That way you're actually following potential readers, rather than loads of other self published writers trying to get noticed. Manage flitter is a good little tool that shows you who follows you and who doesn't. That way you can unfollow people who don't follow you. It helps when you're getting close to the 2000 followers point.

Facebook I just use as an 'internet presence'. Most of my likes are other authors but it's good that a reader can google my name and find an established Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads page.

For Goodreads I find it useful to plug the book in various groups. Most have a section for authors to promote their work, find those and follow their regs. You can get bombarded with people who want a free read in exchange for a review. I started out doing this to get some reviews but in the end I started having to say no.

You can also run competitions on Goodreads and add your book to lots of lists, such as 'best book cover' and so on.

Um, that's all I can think of at the moment! Have you set up any blog tours. I went for an intensive week long blog tour which was good for sales. I asked Reading Addiction Tours to set it up, but you can do it for free yourself.

Come back and let us know how you get on

Congratulations and best of luck with your book! I agree with comments made about not spamming your followers on twitter. I just wanted to add that the best results I've had with twitter is when I tweet about a chapter or two of my book which is available to read on my blog. Not sure if it's ever translated into sales but I do get some hits from it.

Hi LW,

First off, best of luck with the book, you seem to pretty well up on the marketing side of things so far and are giving me a few more ideas.

On facebook, I was fortunate to be pretty well known on my personal page before I set up my author page, and in the three weeks that my author page has been live, I've 340 likes approx, 40 or so of which are strangers to me.

I have done the few book related status since setting up, but now that my book is released, I will be concentrating on making my page more entertaining in a few ways:

• 
  Putting up a funny writing 'memes'
  Linking to free reading on my website
  Maybe raffling a kindle - depends on personal finance
  Through my day job, I have a semi-famous friend who will promote my book on their facebook and twitter, just saving that until closer to xmas.
  I am writing a number of articles for a local free magazine, which has my website and facebook page listed. Also, in the few local interviews I have had, I am mentioning the web and FB pages too.
  Maybe in early Jan, put up a status about free promo day on kindle - I know its writing related, but it's not 'go buy my book please', it's more like 'take it if you want it, it's free'
  And, think of a few more things for FB page.....

That is off the top of my head there. Hope it helps.

LWP:

Good luck with your book, and with all future publishing endeavors. May you have many sales.

NDG