Indie Author Group

Category: Promotion

  • To brand or not to brand…it’s not even a question.

    To brand or not to brand…it’s not even a question.

    Recently, a new author approached us and told us that they were completely lost after being told they needed to establish a brand – they’d spent months and months looking at all of the studies of how to be an author. It talked about leveraging thousands of people on a list, pre-launching your pre-orders and propelling them into the charts using your following, and only using social media to buy advertising. Your brand is how your readers perceive you, you can’t control that, don’t even try. (I have to emphasize, if this is taken out of context, I DO NOT agree with this!).
    Oh…and engage, engage, engage. Even on reviews.

    None of this is good advice, not in my opinion.

    There is no question that you need to brand

    Brand isn’t a maybe if you’re an author. Your brand isn’t something that others shape either – it’s your individual and unique stamp. Your garuantee of quality. YOUR reputation in the reading community. So your brand should be something that’s not only carefully cultivated, but carefully considered.

    Many authors start after they’ve launched books, and that’s ok, but it really is best to get started as soon as you commit to the idea of being a published author. The longer you have to develop a cohesive brand, and start impressing people with that brand, so they link to your books via your brand.

    So….what’s my brand?

    Brand is complicated, but you can make it easier by breaking it down into what you consider essential, what you consider to be secondary, and what you consider to be not essential. And a lot of that does come down to where (a) you are comfortable, and (b) where your readers are. Balancing both allows you to decide where to work on your brand.

    What options do I have?

    We’ll be talking about it in the coming weeks and months, but anywhere readers gather is potentially a place to hang out. But brand isn’t (just) advertising – in fact, in my opinion, advertising is only a small part of it. I believe the key to brand is authenticity.. It’s interaction. One of the major rules that we absolutely stick by on the Indie Author Group is that we follow the *social* in Social Media. Readers might remember things they’ve seen over and over again, and while brand and consistency is about memorability, would you rather be remembered because all you’ve done is talk about your books, or beacuse you’ve given back to the community. I’d prefer the latter, wouldn’t you?

    Platforms

    We’ll be talking platforms in the coming weeks, but myself? I focus (in order) on:
    My own blogs, my own newsletter, guest posting, support groups on Facebook, my own groups on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Bookbub, Goodreads. I keep an eye on other places too, but that’s my order. Your milage may vary, and before I set up my own sites, I was a lot more active on places like Facebook and Twitter.

    So….think about where your readers and genre are, and where you’re happiest, and build your community. Use sites that aren’t fully in your control to funnel people back to your own blog, and share items that you create.
    And it’s not to say ‘don’t talk about your work’. Just keep it proportional.

    And remember – we’re a community. Your brand should always reflect generosity. Share others, support others, write up the things you’ve learned and pay it forward. Your brand is something that will live with your pen name, always, so you can create something amazing, lasting and incredible, simply by building what you need from your community, and designing support for those around you. That’s the brand we’ve tried to build with IAG, and the brand all of the team of moderators and regulars believe in. And you’re welcome to come enjoy that brand, and learn from us too.

    Next week, I’ll talk about options for blogging – if you’ve got questions, let me know!

    Pin me!
  • Happy 9th Birthday IAG!

    Happy 9th Birthday IAG!

    Happy birthday to the Indie Author Group. Founded just as the trend of self-publishing took off by Valerie Douglas, and her co-founder Kai Viola, we are a vibrant team of writers and artists that look after one of the oldest communities for self-publishing and hybrid publishing on the Facebook.
    It’s our birthday today! We’ll be celebrating next week though, so watch the blog, group and page! (or the blog page!)
    To celebrate our 9th birthday, we’ll be overhauling, adding resources and doing a lot more, so watch this space!

  • A new release roadmap

    A new release roadmap

    New releases require a lot of the work and changes the ten hour marketing plan. So, here’s suggestions of a change to work well on your ten hour plan.

    • Start building out your blog posts – talk about other books
    If there are best books in (your genre), that you enjoy, talk about them. Post about your new book and talk about everything you can think of – research, your cover, your discoveries. Share the joy and pain of getting the books done.
    • Set up your book on preorder when you do your cover reveal
    Pre-orders give you a place to start from and gives you a chance to build a readership. Remember, if you’re going to lower your price after publishing (for example the first week release at $0.99 or $1.99), then no matter when people order, they’ll get the book at the cheapest price after their order. Even if you raise it, those that order first can be rewarded by getting the book at a lower price.
    • Guest blog
    Ask your readers and author friends if you can guest blog. Focus on the places that your readers will be. Google blogs that would be read by your target market, and see if they accept guest blogging about books.
    • Newsletter swaps are another way to do so
    There are currently lots of groups for people to request newsletter exchanges. Remember though to be fair – if you’re a new author, don’t expect the bestseller authors in your genre just to open up their newsletter to you. They might, but if they don’t, do not choose to criticise. It’s everyone’s choice to offer space to their readers and it’s their reputation on the line.
    • Teasers, teasers, teasers
    Separate the teasers that you like the best and use them to promote your book. Head on over to Canva and use the free options and create eye-catching items, and memorable pieces of your book. Think about looking into podcasts or vlogging if you’re feeling bold. You can also generate different cover styles at Adazing.
    • Give away arcs to your advance reader team
    The best time to do this is a month before your book is out, but you can do so any time up to the actual release.
    • Set up book giveaways
    Choose books close to yours to attract readers and plan a great book giveaway. Reward authors in your genre too, by promoting them, as goodwill is often the simplest way to get into shared promotion projects, and it’ll show your readers that you are engaged in the community. Let them know that you’re promoting their books in a giveaway, and they may share too.
    • LAUNCH book!
    Give it a few days till your rank settles, raise the price if you had it lowered, and then decide your next moves.
    • PROMOTE– Back to the ten hour marketing plan!

    (originally printed on tenhourmarketing.com)

  • A ten hour marketing Primer – 2018 update

    A ten hour marketing Primer – 2018 update

    In 2011, when IAG was formed, one of the biggest questions everyone had was marketing. All of the questions focused around how to make the most of writing and marketing at the same time, and from that, a project called ‘the ten hour marketing plan’ was designed, mostly based on the answers I’d given others with questions asked on the board.

    Over the years (2014, 2016, 2018) we’ve updated it in minor ways, but with the release of other materials that grew from it imminent, I thought it was time to do a full explain and update.
    The original primer was basically designed around taking three pillars of marketing, and how myself and other mods talked about using the content that we’d set up, and how long it took. It was originally a sort of ‘day in the life of marketing a book’ but as it turned out it was close to ten hours a week, we shared it as that instead.

    The new update removes Klout, as it no longer exists as suggested, and talks about a few items that we have found more useful since. If you’ve got variations, or questions, we’d love to hear them!

    Marketing plan graphic.

    A Ten Hour Marketing Primer – 2018

    Author’s note – the ten hour marketing primer is not designed to be used without adjustment. You do not need to follow our plan exactly, but it is a tried and true method for limiting the time you spend marketing, while maximizing results.

    How do I promote in 10 hours a week?
    So…I keep giving people this mythical 10 hours a week number and saying ‘I do all of my promotion in 10 hours a week, more or less’.

    And I do.  So I thought I’d share my basics.

    1. Schedule your writing time – some people are more productive in the morning, those with day jobs or kids may need afternoon or evening.  It’s absolutely critical you work out this step however, because you don’t want to be doing work
    2. Schedule your marketing time. I do this by:
    • Facebook sweep – I spend 10 minutes sweeping FB for anything interesting to share to my page. If I find something neat I either post it, or queue it. I fill my content usually by Wednesday for one of my author pages. I’m just picking up doing the second one now. I do this four times a day (40 mins total)
    • Blog posts – 30 mins. I write a blog post daily, but you should do a post at least once a week. (1hr 10 mins) Keep it somewhat short and as interesting as you can. (Examples, inspiration for books, prospective cover art, your writing process.)
    • You can also guest blog – https://indieauthorgroup.com is one of many sites that accepts a guest blog. Read the guidelines, and be aware of the style, editorial expectations and other rules surrounding that – it’s easiest to manage that way, and means you’ll get more yesses than nos. Some guest blog positions pay – most don’t, and that’s ok. If they are making money from you in a meaningful way, or are a huge website, you can try to negotiate, but most guest blogging posts are designed to introduce you to the site’s readership, so you shouldn’t expect pay, that’s normally a bonus.
    • Twitter – 10 minutes, three times a day. I retweet interesting stuff. (1 hr 40) MONDAYS – head on over to #mondayblogs, share other people’s posts and share one blog post of your own – make sure it’s not promotional.
    • Triberr 25 mins/3x per week – more content, more community building. Instead of Triberr, I sometimes switch to Pinterest and Instagram, especially if I’m working on stuff that is more visual, like layouts for books, so if you’re a more visual person, you can switch out Triberr and even Twitter with Instagram and Pinterest.
    • Work/write – I write a lot of posts and answer questions, and do content while I supporting others, so the majority of my day is taken up there. If it’s quiet, I get to write, if it’s busy, I’m doing a lot of ‘paying it forward’.
    • Email – 10 mins twice a day for marketing information via newsletters etc.(2hrs)
    • I then stop for lunch and write or do other work.

    Repeat three days a week (except the stuff that’s daily).
    Ok, so it’s not quite 10 hours, and sometimes I’m faster than I think with the stuff I’m doing.

    My biggest marketing primer tip?

    I do my email DEAD LAST. It’s important – really important – not to do your email first. If you do, you’re reacting for the rest of the day. So I promote in just under 10 hours a week. If I’m doing a blog or other promotional tour, it goes up (naturally), and some of that is sharing other people.

    The new Ten Hour Marketing plan book launches December 1st and contains more tips, tricks and information.

  • Submissions open!

    Submissions open!

    We are now taking guest posts for three of our blogs, and we’d love to see our readers and members join in.  If you’d like to guest post with us, all of the details are here!

    The main rule of submitting to the blogs are that they CANNOT be fluff, no use posts that promote you.  We are very keen to keep the quality of the blog high, therefore all posts should be your original content (we do accept reprints), with links to anything that you’re asserting that is to be backed up.  So, for example, if you say that ‘The Benevolent Dictator says that nothing sells one book like the next book’, it’d be brilliant if you could also link those words to the page (https://twirl.indieauthorgroup.com/selling-books/).  This means people can see where you’re learning from.  Please do not link YOUR OWN blog unless you are an expert – you’ve got your byline at the end for that.

    Main Guidelines

    Aside from no ads, we also ask that people do not use affiliate links.  If you link to Amazon books, we reserve the right to change the links to our own affiliate link, per our privacy guidelines.  We do ask, on the whole that you don’t write articles with Amazon links in if you can avoid it, to avoid issues of this kind.

    If you are linking to your own blog, we do ask that you link to specific posts, and that your own privacy guidelines are up to date.

    Your byline can contain three links – one of which should ideally be a blog, or other site for people to follow you.  We do not allow friend request links from Facebook – you must use a Facebook page.

    Finally, we reserve the right to reject any articles that don’t work for our site, or fits with our guidelines.  Full guidelines are of course listed here.
    Once you’ve read our guidelines, you can submit here.  The blog posts will then be taken to tech or marketing, or posted to the main blog as the team decides is right.
    Please ensure you include your email, your byline and any images when you submit.  We will not respond to return articles if we reject them, but we will of course let you know about accepted articles and your publication date.  If you do not hear back within six weeks of submission, please consider that your article has been rejected.

    We invite people to submit up to three posts.  We know the categories are odd on the form, don’t worry about that, but if we reject all three, we do ask that you look at our guidelines (which are clearly listed in our post here, on the guidelines and at the bottom of the form) and then wait a few months.

    Good luck, we’re really looking forward to seeing your submissions!