Finally, Something Goes Right

I had a great experience on December 9. I had a radio interview about my book with a web radio. It was with Street Vibes Mix Radio, which has a "Writer's Block" interview with authors every Wed night from 8 to 9 pm. The interviews were helpful, asked good questions and followed up with lots of friendly comments. There is also a Street Vibes Ning site. Go to  http://streetvibes.ning.com/ There you will find info and links to the web radio. Good group of talented young people. I enjoyed talking to them.

Homework in selecting publishers

It sounds obvious that an author should do a thorough job of investigating publishers before making a selection. I set out to do just that but "things happen" and I made some mistakes. One was not really thinking through the pricing of my book. My publisher gave me some minimum prices and I was able to increase them as I wanted. I sure didn't think this through. I wanted as many people to buy my book as possible so I picked a very low price with a minimum royalty. I forgot to consider the costs of shipping in my decision. It's not really a problem as I didn't expect to make money on my book although it would be nice to recoup my costs. It turns out that with the low costs I selected it's not possible for me to directly sell books at as low a price as the publisher. The reason I want to directly sell some books is to be able to sign and inscribe books for long time friends as associates. I can do this but I either have to sell the books at a loss or charge my friends more than they would pay the publisher. The reason is there are two shipping costs involved when I sell books direct. I have to pay shipping from the printer to me and then from me to the buyer. The shipping cost from the printer to me is more than the discount I get as the author. I should have increased the royalty enough that I could sell books at an equal or lower price than the publisher. Oh well, another lesson learned.

Book Blog Updates

I finally learned a better approach to adding blog posts and getting readers to the site. It should have been obvious but then maybe nothing is obvious to people that are new to a subject. I now add my post but also put a related post in LinkedIn  and Facebook groups, and sometimes Twitter, with a short intro and link to the post. The key that I had missed was the short intro that introduces the topic in a way that draws attention. Sometimes I use a question that I then give my answer in the main post. Other times I seek the opinion of others on the topic I am addressing. I haven't actually compared statistics but I think this is helping bring readers to my book blog and hopefully some will then go to my web site and buy the book.

Another Lesson Learned; Maybe

I expected to see a bump in visits to my book blog after my book and I were featured in an area newspaper. It didn't happen. Then today I see a big bump in visits. Now I can't remember what I did yesterday that could account for it. I need to keep a log of some type to learn what works well and what doesn't work.

Another Paper Article

A second area newspaper printed an article about me and my book. This one said they would print something if I sent them a press release. I did, along with pictures, and they printed exactly what I sent, including a typo neither Microsoft or  I didn't catch. Now I have enough confidence to send a release to other area papers. I haven't checked yet to see if the article increased traffic to my web site or resulting in any spike in sales. Let you know later.

Newpaper Articles

The article resulting from my interview with the reporter for our local weekly paper came out today. I am impressed and flattered. Hope all articles are this nice.
I wrote a press release for a regional daily and an article is promised in Saturday's paper. If it turns out as well as the article in our local paper I'll be confident enough to send press releases to more regional and national papers.
When I wrote the press release I remembered everything except the most important item; where someone can buy my book. I had to send a corrected press release. Good thing I am starting locally where I can get away with my dumb errors.

More Dumb Mistakes

The lessons learned continue. All the advisers of on line book marketing say to use Twitter to direct people to your Blog and your Blog to your Web Site where they can buy your book. Good plan. Four weeks after I had these plans in place, or so I assumed, I was driving home when it dawned on me that I may have made a stupid error. Right. When I checked I found that I had included all kinds of links in my web site but no links in the blog back to the web site. Thus people that followed my Twitter posts to my blog had no way to find my web site without a search, which isn't likely to be very successful given the newness of the site. It's fixed now. Just in time as my book is finally available for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. However, at considerably more cost than on the publisher AuthorHouse's site.

Interview With Reporter

I had my first interview with a newspaper reporter about my book. The reporter is the sister of my next door neighbor and she goes to our church so we are friends. This is good as perhaps she'll have pity on my being a novice. It wasn't my first interview but the last one was some time ago and really left a bad taste for reporters as that one had an axe to grind and really didn't care about my views. It's not fun to have your views distorted for someone else's benefit. I have higher hopes for this interview. I also see that another area paper had a nice article today on a local author and her new book. She is using the same epublisher I used. Maybe I'll contact her and share experiences. I need to get in gear and contact the other area paper to see if they will do an article on me like they did for the other new author.

There Must Be A Better Way

All the book marketing advisers recommend joining many groups; one said as many as 50, and checking them each day. I am finding this a very time consuming task and since it is impolite to turn every comment you make into a blatant pitch for your book it is not a very rewarding task. I don't mind the unrewarding part but the time it takes is getting to me. I need to find a way to keep this type of work to about an hour a day. There are other things to do in life. I know I need to work on ways to better link my social network sites and maybe follow more blogs. I think it's easier to follow blogs as they can be syndicated into Google Reader or Yahoo where it is easy to check on a large number quickly. If I find any way to streamline this process I'll share it.

Start Book Marketing Early

I recently read a piece advising authors to begin their book marketing campaign a year ahead of their expected publication date. At the time I thought this was way too early. But upon more reflection, and working on marketing of my book, it's beginning to look like good advice. I expected to work an hour or two a day on marketing. It's turning out that it takes more because I didn't do enough preparatory work ahead of the publication date. Too late now for me but if you are planning on marketing via the web I also recommend that you start months ahead of publication rather than weeks like I did. I also came across a site with good advice on web marketing that I'll share here. It's by Maureen Hume and the site is http://blog.marketingtipsforauthors.com/2009/10/easy-affordable-marketing-by-maureen.html.

An Important Web Site

I learned of a great site for new authors from someone on twitter. If you are a new author and expect to be faced with marketing your book as I am check out. http://www.authors.com/profiles/blogs/the-usage-of-social-media   There are additional important posts for new book marketers, e.g. check out the posts on Sept. 3, 13 and 25.

A Twitter "Aha"

I think I am figuring out twitter. I started a twitter account because the book marketing advice said to. I flailed around for a week or so before I got a hint that to acquire followers you need to follow people. Then I had to learn how to find people that I wanted to follow. More advice was to download tweetdeck; which I did  and that helped some but not to easily find the people I am interested in. Finally, I asked another twitterer and got the answer on how to use tweetdeck. It worked and I am not building followers. More importantly I think I am beginning to see how to use twitter and why it's valuable.There are many things that we do that have  to do with either sharing information (our blogs and web sites) or seeking information (e.g. via search engines). However, there are some types of information that need to be shared with people directly and some types of information that other people can supply faster and easier than by other means. This is where twitter shines. It connects you easily and quickly with other people that you want to share information with or seek information from. It takes some investment of time to build the right connections. I see this as a winnowing process. Follow many people then some of them will follow you. Many will drop you and you will drop many but over time you can build the right connections with people that you want to share with and that you want information from. Now, I am going to try this approach for a week or so and see if it works as well as I think it might.

Library Book Signings

I visited my local library today and talked to a friend that arranges the special events. I wanted to know the etiquette of book signings. I found that an author can either be invited or ask for the opportunitiy. It is alright, at least at my local library, to bring books to sell. They prefer that you give them a copy rather than having to buy one- not surprising. Finally, they don't pay unless you happen to be a best selling author that demands to be paid.
As soon as I get a book in hand I will revisit my library and arrange a signing.

Latest stumblings

My latest dumb move was to forget to inform my publisher of both of my summer and winter addresses. The result was that they sent my final proof copies of both the soft and hard cover books to my winter address and I won't be there for a month. Fortunately my next door neighbor gave them a quick check so I authorized the publisher to proceed with printing. Lucky for me my next door neighbor is such a saint.

I continue to struggle with the social network stuff. I received an advice email today that suggested an author start the emarketing a year ahead of the expected publishing date. I wish I had seen that advice a year ago. Go to Pre-Natal Care for Your Book by Lynn Serafinn for the good advice that I got late. And if you figure out how to use tweetdeck let me know.

Double Check Your Social Media Sites

Per all the advice I read I signed up for Facebook. Neat site and I connected with several high school friends I hadn't seen in years. However, I wasn't very careful to check all the details. My son, younger and more savy about such things informed me last night that my facebook profile could only be seen by those signed up as friends. Not very useful as a marketing tool. I had made the mistake of assuming the profile was public and didn't check. Apparently Facebook's default is for privacy, which is a good policy, but not obvious to novices like me. So, the lesson I learned is that it is necessary to double check all the settings on these social network sites. They may not be doing what you think.

First Sale

Yesterday was a milestone day. My first book was sold. Whereas that is a trivial event it was exciting for me as a first time author. I imagine it's like the first dollar a store owner earns, frames and hangs on the wall of the shop.

Organizing Web Stuff

I have seen a number of suggestions for organizing links, subscribing, etc in order to manage the stuff it is necessary to follow and update when trying to market via the web. I am finding that is more difficult than the suggesters indicate. At first I thought I would be good to use Yahoo as it looked to me like Yahoo kept things on a common page whereas Google has a great page called IGoogle and another for subscriptions called Google Reader. I messed around a bit with Yahoo but didn't get very far. I actually gave up because the Yahoo portfolio manager just isn't as easy to use as Google's. I have now settled on Google. First, because I like Google calender and Google's financial portfolio follower. I use a IPOD Touch and it syncs calender only with Microsoft Outlook (and only the new version of Outlook). Fortunately Google calender and Outlook cross sync automatically (once you set that up). After some fussing around I have managed to bring the blogs I follow and the comments on my personal blogs into Google reader. Now that I have an acceptable process I'll see how it works for awhile.

Social networking is Time Consuming

My marketing plan includes spending about an hour a day on the various social network sites associated with opportunities to market my book. For me these include LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and Twitter. Today I have spent three hours just working through a subset of these. Perhaps my plan is going to take more time than I had expected. On top of that I can't figure out how to use Twitter. So far it's useless but I'll keep trying. I do notice that a number of people tweet for awhile and then seem to give it up. So maybe I am not the only one that it doesn't work for.

Finally Published

I received an email yesterday that my book is available for sale on the publisher's web site. A quick check confirmed it. I am told it will be another 30 to 45 days before it's available on Amazon and other book seller's sites. I submitted my manuscript to the publisher on Augusts 1. It took a month of diddling with publisher's representatives before they said they were ready to begin work. That actually gave me the opportunity to submit a slightly updated version on Sept. 1. So it took only 28 days once they started work. Actually, it was less than  that as I don't think they started when they said they would. The cover design came first and was great so no corrections were needed. The galley arrived in about two weeks. There were both author and publisher corrections to make. It took me a couple of days to return the paperwork for corrections and a phone call but then the corrected galley was returned in about two days. This version was ok and I approved it. All the other paper work like pricing agreements was simple and quick.

Publishing Advice

Not having any experience as an author I finished most of my draft and then started looking for a publisher. I googled agents and found the agents professional society that listed their profiles and interests. I started sending letters. Then I met an author on an airplane. He was young but published and he advised that I send out at least two or three  dozen agent queries. After spending some weeks doing this I found a site by an agent that explained the business. It became clear that agents have more opportunities than they can handle so they focus on proven authors, new authors with an existing platform (i.e. they are on TV or the lecture circuit), or promising young authors that have a future of many books. It then became crystal clear that no agent would take on me as I am fit none of those categories. Therefore I decided to go the self publishing route. It's unfortunate that I didn't find advice on this reality earlier; it would have saved much useless effort.

Social networking

As stated in previous blog the common advice is to use links to social networks as well as blogs, web sites and twitter accounts to market books. After seting up my web site and blog I joined facebook and started a twittter account. Facebook is interesting because I found that many of my high school classmates are on it. I was surprised to find so many older people on a social network site. I suspect it's an influence of grandkids. Anyway it was neat to find them and now I can suggest that they buy my book as a gift for their kids and grandkids. Twitter was also a fun surprise. Via some unknown to me process it linked me to one of my granddaughters who is in college. I figured she wouldn't want grandpa following her so sent a note asking. Surprisingly she said she didn't mind. I can't imagine that I would have wanted my grandma to follow me if I had had Twitter when I was in college. Maybe she is just being polite.
Getting off track. I am finding that it takes quite some time to set up these social network sites. I think I let it go too long. I would advise an author to set up all sites at the time the draft is finished. That way you can expand them and get used to tending them before your book comes out. In my case I intend, since I have a business related self help book, to use LinkedIn as my primary social network site. Facebook will augment it but at this point I think I can reach many more people on LinkedIn that would be interested in my book. Will let you know if I change my mind as I get more familiar with facebook.

Starting Point

I didn't learn until I had completed a draft of my book that experienced authors say writing the book is 10% of the effort, finding a publisher is 30% and marketing it is 60%. I wonder if I would have written it if I had known that. Probably. Why we write is a strange question that perhaps we don't know the answer to. At this point I have written my book. Selected an epublisher and am setting up my marketing plan as I await the printing. The general advice I have found on the web is to have a web site that markets the book, a blog that points people to the book and a twitter account that points people to the blog. I have had blogs before using standard sites like blogger and enjoyed blogging until I run out of ideas on the particular topic I am blogging on. Having a web site is another kettle of fish. I tried one of the free ones once and I am sure no one ever found it. This time I purchased a package from a local company that offers a site and hosting for a very modest annual fee as long as you don't mind having their ad on your site. It's an unobtrusive ad so I don't think it makes much difference.The site package included five pages, a blog and a forum. I only used three pages: a home page explaining the site, a book page describing the book and an author page giving my background and experience. My book is non fiction so readers will presumably want to know if I am qualified in the subject before they buy. I chose to add the forum because my book is a self study book and I think some readers may like the opportunity to ask questions, share experiences and participate in group learning. More on my experiences in setting up the site later.