Jenny Hansen here, popping in to share some topics we've been buzzing about behind the scenes at Writers In The Storm.
First of all, this is our 500th post. That is so unbelievable to me. Four years ago, when we started this blog, we had no idea where it would go, or that we'd find nearly this much to post about. THANK YOU for taking the journey with us!
This milestone brings up a second one on our list of goals:
Write To Done's yearly contest, the8th Annual Top 10 Blogs For Writers Contest 2013 is happening right now! They're soliciting nominations for the Top 10 Blogs for Writers of 2013 and I’ve had Laura breathing down my neck about it.
(She’s that way, you know…why do you think she has 3 books out in a year?)
I’ll tell y’all what I told her:We’re not in charge here. Our readers are.
So, what do you think? Do you love WITS? Do you remotely have a yen to stampede over to Write To Done and gush in the comments about Writers In The Storm? We’d be tickled, and grateful, and thrilled beyond belief.
It’s okay if you don’t. We’ll still tell everyone we have the best readers around. But what if you DID. *jumps up and down…knocks the other gals over with excitement* That would be incredibly cool.
And one more thing, since we’re talking about dreams…
What about the Big Kahuna of shiny bloggy dreams?The Writer’s Digest annual list of 101 Best Websites for Writers. We’re dying to get on it and it’s pretty easy to get started, but again, we’re not in charge.
To nominate WITS for the site, you’d need to send an email with your comments and nomination for next year’s list to writersdigest@fwmedia.com with “101 Websites” in the subject line between now and Dec. 1, 2013.
p.s. y’all…I made one more deal with Laura. If she’d stop nagging me about chasing these Big Kahuna dreams, I’d not only put up this post, I also give away TWO copies of her book, The Sweet Spot, in the comments section. It’s on sale today for $1.99, so if you’ve been waiting to buy it, NOW is the time!
That’s really all I popped in to chat about, here on an off day at WITS. We love you guys and have so much fun digging up cool posts for you. We’ll keep at it through the holidays and into 2014.
By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.
Goodreads – with its 18 million rabid readers – is one of the most powerful places for an author to be discovered.
Goodreads is where folks converge to discuss novels, offer recommendations, write reviews, and keep compilations of the books they’ve read and want to read. Etailers like Kobo and Google feed Goodreads reviews directly into their websites.
Even if you’re not a member, your books are still listed and attracting reviews. Take advantage of the opportunity to control your own profile and book data and provide information that’ll bring the reader directly to you.
Here's how, in ten easy steps:
1. Become a Member of Goodreads!
In order to join the Goodreads Author program—where all the perks are—first you have to join Goodreads as a reader. If you are joining for the first time, I strongly recommend that you use your author name in its exact spelling to make the approval process much easier.
2. One Name, One Profile.
Do you write under multiple pen names? Unfortunately, Goodreads doesn’t allow multiple pseudonyms under one profile. Most authors work around this quirk by creating multiple Goodreads accounts using different emails.
3. Connect with Friends and Fans.
In the process of joining, Goodreads will ask if you’d like to connect to people through Facebook, Twitter, or email. Saying ‘yes’ helps build your Goodreads community of friends and fans. With your permission, Goodreads will then share any updates (like reviews) on your choice of social media, letting the world know what you’re reading.
4. Join the Goodreads Author Program!
Type the title of one of your books in the search bar. Then click on your hot-linked author name, which will bring up your author profile. Fans may have filled out some of this information for you—I found a cheesy old publicity shot on mine!
Now, look around for a hot-linked query that asks “Is This You? Let Us Know.” It may be at the bottom of the page or under the photo. Clicking on this link will bring you to a short application. Make sure to include your website and other info to convince them of your true identity. Within a few days they’ll verify the information and then allow you access to your books and Author Profile.
5. Believe in the Power of the Profile.
Here’s your opportunity to insert a compelling bio, your website and social media info, upload your video trailers, book excerpts, and automatically feed in your blog, Twitter, or Facebook posts. You can post your future events and even invite friends.
Here people will “friend” you and “fan” you. Fans will get a weekly email with all your Goodreads posts (including your blog/Facebook/Twitter feeds, if you’ve linked them.) As you get established in Goodreads, folks will soon be posting book quotes and putting you on lists (“People Who Write Like Jody Picoult.”)
If you do nothing else with the Goodreads program but maximize this Author Profile, you’ve already increased your discoverability tremendously.
6. But Wait, There’s More!
The more reviews your book has, the higher that book rises in the algorithms. A year ago, a Goodreads representative said that when a book gets “a couple of hundred reviews,” it increases your chances of being included in the direct emails sent to folks who read in that genre. The best way to take advantage of this perk is to aim to increase the number of reviews and the number of people who put your book on their “To-Be-Read” list.
7. How do I Get my Book on Everyone’s To-Be-Read list?
Ah, grasshopper, that’s the One True Question. Goodreads offers several tools:
Widgets. Goodreads will create for you html strings for a variety of widgets that you can insert directly into your website. Some are simple buttons that, with one-click, adds a book to a TBR list. Other widgets are more elaborate and include a scroll of the highest-rated reviews for your book.
Advertise. The last time did this, it was a beta system, and I ran an ad to support a giveaway I was running on one of my books. I didn’t think it was particularly effective, but the metrics may change now that they’re working with Amazon.
The Almighty Giveaway: This is Goodreads most powerful offering, and but for the cost of books and postage, it’s FREE. Currently, Goodreads only allows giveaways of PRINT books, but that may soon change. The point of a giveaway is to increase the number of folks who put your book on their TBR list, and to (hopefully) generate pre-publication reviews from the readers who win. The control is all in your hands: You get to choose how many books to offer, the geographical limits, and the time length of the giveaway. When the giveaway is over, Goodreads will send you the names and addresses of the winners which you must pinky-swear to burn after you’ve shipped the books.
Goodreads’ Greatest Perk for Book Launches. If you’re launching a book, it’s strongly suggested that you run a giveaway three months and then three weeks before the release date. Why? On your lay-down date, Goodreads will send out a targeted email to announce your book’s arrival to everyone who has your book on their TBR list. That’s pinpoint-targeted publicity, and it costs absolutely nothing.
8. Engage.
Like any social media website, you get more out of Goodreads if you engage socially. We’re all readers, right? By writing reviews of books, I’m showing those readers out there that I’m a reader, too! By joining a number of “Groups,” I’ve developed relationships with folks who love women’s fiction and chick lit. But be warned: Some authors have been flamed for being pushy marketers or complaining about ugly reviews. So if you’re inclined, join groups to engage, not to market, and let the readers discover your books on their own.
9. Stay Positive.
Yeah, you’ve heard the horror stories, but don’t let the recent dust-ups between readers and authors deter you from joining Goodreads. Goodreads has already taken steps to calm the turbulent waters. And those bad reviews? Ignore them. They often mean that you’re expanding your reach outside of your usual audience . . . and that’s what Goodreads is all about.
How do you discover new books? Do you take into account Goodreads, Riffle, Shelfari, and/or vendor reviews? Have you used Goodreads to promote your books? What worked for you?
About Lisa
Lisa Ann Verge is the RITA-nominated author of sixteen novels that have been translated into fifteen languages—quite a switch for this former chemist. She’s is a five-time finalist in Romantic Times’ book awards, her women’s fiction has won the Golden Leaf and the Bean Pot, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble’s General Fiction Forum’s top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters, who never fail to make life interesting. Check her out at www.lisavergehiggins.com.
I'm so excited to be on Writers in the Storm today talking about Facebook book launch parties. I’ve thrown three virtual launch parties and participated in many more, and I’m eager to share what I’ve learned from these great experiences.
There are a lot of different kinds of Facebook parties, ranging from week-long events to one hour Q&A sessions. All I can share is my own experience and hope that it helps you stay ahead of the curve.
First of all, why throw a virtual launch party?
My #1 reason for throwing a virtual party, complete with lots of party favors and giveaways for attendees is as a thank you, first (for my debut release) to my loyal supporters during my publication quest, and then to my loyal readers. It’s great fun to laugh and joke with them, answer any questions they might have about the books or myself, and shower them with giveaways and thank yous for their readership.
The #2 reason for hosting a virtual launch party is to spread the word about your book release. It is perfectly acceptable during a launch party to post buy links for your book and ask attendees to share the links on their Facebook profiles. Remember: everyone’s there because they love your books and you, and they don’t mind being asked to post links. To this end, I have found virtual parties very effective in spreading the word of my book releases to people who wouldn’t normally know about it.
A 3rd reason I love to host these parties is because, otherwise, release day can be anti-climactic. You’re alone in your house and it’s quiet and, uh, yeah. Throwing yourself a party with other book lovers as guests is a great way to stay festive and celebrate the launch of your creation into the world, which is a huge deal that you should be very proud of.
Here’s a caveat
I love social media. I love chatting with my readers on Facebook and Twitter every day. I look forward to it. I understand that not all authors dive into social media as merrily as I did because it can be scary and awkward and sometimes you don’t know what to say. If that’s the case, then maybe virtual parties aren’t for you, or maybe you need the help of a company like Author Elf, which will host a virtual party for you and all you have to do is show up and reply to comments.
The Nuts and Bolts about Hosting a Virtual Party
1. Attend one and observe what you like and don’t like about it. It seems that virtual book launch parties are happening weekly and finding one to attend isn’t difficult.
2. Create a banner for the Facebook event page, much like the banner type and dimension for your Facebook author page. Rarely does uploading the book cover work. It doesn’t have all the great details and only a fraction of the cover will show. Here’s a link to the most recent Facebook party I hosted. https://www.facebook.com/events/416526788452374/ I created the banner in about ten minutes using silly old Microsoft Paint. I not only uploaded it to the event page, but I used it to publicize the party by posting it to my Facebook author page, Twitter, and Pinterest.
3. Create the party description in a Word document before you even create the event page, then when you create the page, copy and paste it into the field on the Facebook event page. How much or little description you add depends on you. I like to include at least one link where people can find out more information about the book and/or read a sample chapter. Sometimes I put the pre-order links right in the description. Remember, this is a safe place to shamelessly promote your book!
Here is what I wrote for the Cowboy Justice launch party:
COWBOY JUSTICE is coming to stores and e-retailers in North America in October (and other points around the globe in November). Join Melissa on Wednesday, October 2nd for a rockin’ good time celebrating the book’s release.
Handy Reminder: receive a ONE TIME ONLY email reminder about the party on the afternoon of the event so you don't have worry about remembering the time and date. Click here to opt in: http://eepurl.com/E3GJr
RSVP for the fun by clicking the "join" button in the upper right corner of this event page. And don't forget to invite your friends!
Learn more about COWBOY JUSTICE at my website: http://www.melissacutler.net/
4. Party Favors: Giveaways are not, technically, allowed on Facebook unless they’re Facebook sanctioned giveaways. That being said, I’ve never once heard an anecdote of an author who ran into a problem with this. I will say that I never use the word “giveaway.” I hand out party favors. I hand them out at least every half hour and use random.org to select the winners—er, “recipients.” How you do this easiest is by exporting the guest list to excel. This is very easy to do from the event page. Then I copy and paste the guest list into random.org’s list randomizer. When it’s time to hand out a party favor, I re-randomize the list.
I like to hand out virtual gifts, such as e-books, MP3 songs that remind me of the book’s themes or characters (Amazon lets you gift individual songs), and e-gift cards to Amazon, Sephora, Cold Stone Creamery, and Starbucks. Other authors I know do mail physical gifts, but I like to get my gift distribution done and over with on the night of the party.
5. What else do you do during the party? I love inviting the attendees to ask me questions, about my books, my life, or my writing process. It usually keeps us really busy. I also try to shake it up by posting links to Youtube videos of fun, party songs and posting funny memes like “what’s your cowboy name?” where attendees use a chart to determine what their silly cowboy name is. This is where an obsession with Pinterest comes in handy. Other authors I know like to post trivia and fun facts about the place/setting/topic of the book and/or post discussion questions like “If you were stranded on a deserted island like the characters, which celebrity would you like to be stranded with?”
Georgie Lee, author of the Harlequin Historical romance Engagement of Convenience, had this to say about her most recent launch party: “One thing I recommend doing before the Facebook party begins is to prepare a number of questions, fun facts, and pictures. When the party is in full swing, it's easy to forget what you're planning to say. I kept my questions and fun facts in a Word list and checked them off as I used them. I kept the pictures in an easy to find folder on the desktop. It made running the party much easier.”
Quick fire tips:
Think wisely about the time frame. All day parties can be exhausting, but I know authors who love long, multi-day parties in which guests just check in once or twice per day. I prefer 3 hour parties that begin at 4:30pm PST (which is 7:30 on the east coast), because it allows for maximum people to attend after work, but when it’s not encroaching into their bedtime.
I learned the hard way that it’s very important to clarify what time zone your invitation is in, and also that the event is taking place ON THE EVENT PAGE, not somewhere else, such as your author page. Trust me on this.
You can create the event from your Author page, but all posts must be done from your profile, so be sure to list your profile as one of the party hosts (this is done in the “edit details” field). Also, you can only send Facebook invites to friends of your profile, not people who have “liked” your author page, so you must be diligent in spreading the word in the weeks leading up to the party.
Post a variety of links for attendees to share, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes, but also be sure to ask them if they’ve added the book to their Goodreads shelf (and provide a link), and if they’ve subscribed to your newsletter and “liked” your Facebook author page. Space the links out to maybe one every half hour.
Above all, have fun and stay enthusiastic. NEVER comment that it’s quiet or that it’s boring. Fake it ‘till you make it!
Scroll through the posts of my COWBOY JUSTICE party to get a feel for how the party shaped up. It was so much fun and I had a great time, as I believe my guests did. Here’s that link again: https://www.facebook.com/events/416526788452374/
Have you hosted or attended a Facebook launch party? What worked? What didn't?
Melissa Cutler is the author of COWBOY JUSTICE and many other romance novels. She knows she has the best job in the world, dividing her time between her dual passions for writing sexy contemporary romances and edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense for Harlequin, Penguin, and Kensington Books. She was struck at an early age by an unrelenting travel bug and is probably planning her next vacation as you read this. When she's not globetrotting, she's enjoying Southern California's flip-flop wearing weather and wrangling two rambunctious kids.
