MY NUMBER ONE AUTHOR MARKETING TIP

by Korina Moss 

Let me preface this blog post by saying I’m not a marketing expert. My first book came out last March and I’m in the early stages of growing my “brand.” (Gosh, I hate that word.) So my number one marketing tip is my number one, not the number one. It’s the one that I go by when I decide how I’ll spend my time on social media. But hear me out because I think my tip can work for you and make your marketing life more enjoyable. 

So what is my number one author marketing tip? Be yourself. I know it sounds simplistic but, ironically, it may not be intuitive. 

When we think of marketing, we immediately think ‘sell your books’. We transform from multi-faceted creators into one-dimensional salespeople. My social media has plenty of posts promoting my books and other authors’ books, especially around the time of their release. Book promotion is necessary, and it can be a lot of fun. It can also be exhausting for the author and for readers who follow us on social media. 

Because I’ve been a reader for a lot longer than I’ve been a published author, I look at author marketing through a reader’s lens. The books I love to read the most tend to be the ones where I feel a connection. So as an author, I want to forge a rapport with my readers beyond the pages of my books. We’re already connected through our love of cozy mysteries, but I can use social media to strengthen that bond. And by using the various platforms, I can show different facets of myself. 

 

My recent Instagram feed

On my Instagram page, I lean toward posting nature photos of where I live, trip pics, throwback photos of my son, and food snapshots (which, of course, include cheese!). My Facebook author page feels more like a daily chat, so I like to talk about routine things that are happening in my life and pose questions to get to know my followers and those who stop by. My Twitter account is almost solely about reality television. I live-tweet humorous takes about the shows I watch. I’ve made a great bunch of friends on there who do the same. This is the one platform which is rarely book related. Frankly, I was a little nervous that my publisher would frown upon my gossipy banter, but they were supportive of me being me. I’ve also since discovered that many reality TV tweeters are cozy mystery readers and have bought my books. 

Last week, one of my Twitter friends contacted me. She co-hosts a podcast that discusses a franchise of reality shows called Below Deck that we watch on Bravo TV. Having seen my tweets and knowing I’m a super fan of the franchise, she invited me to be a guest on the podcast to talk about the show. We recorded the podcast and I had a blast. She asked me questions about my cheese shop mystery series (which she’s read), and we talked about which annoying reality show member I might fictionally “bump off.” I wasn’t expecting it, but my cozy mysteries ended up getting quite a bit of airtime on the podcast, and I reached a whole new audience who might not have known about me or my books. Being myself and sharing an interest outside of books on Twitter ended up affording me a new opportunity as an author. 

 

Instead of dreading marketing, by being yourself on social media you may find that the best part is the connection—the same as can be found in a good book.

Readers: What’s your favorite social media platform to use? 

To connect through social media, you can find me at: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or my website korinamossauthor.com

To listen to the Gangplank Report podcast mentioned in this post, go to: The Gangplank Report

Social Media Drain by Debra H. Goldstein

Social Media Drain by Debra H. Goldstein

I’m worn out. Recently, the second book in my Sarah Blair mystery series, Two Bites Too Many, was published. The beautiful cover, binding, editing, and technical “stuff” was handled by my publisher, Kensington, but most PR fell to me. Consequently, for the past month I’ve blogged, liked, posted, tweeted, retweeted, pinned, pushed, and whatever else I could think to do.

I’m tired.

And, I don’t know if it’s done any good. Let’s be honest, I’m not a Janet Evanovich, Diane Mott Davidson, or Carolyn Hart. People who read the light mysteries I write know their names, but what

has my social media foray accomplished for Debra H. Goldstein?

If you Google me and leave out the “H,” you’ll find there are several Debra Goldsteins. One is a literary agent and author, two are physicians, one is known for her artwork, and a younger, blonder, thinner one has written several books on text flirting. Maybe I should work the latter one’s specialty into one of my future books in order to get her fans to check out my work–it’s something I haven’t tried, yet.

I’ve asked my friends who also are mid-listers or bottom-rungers what works for them, but the reality is we don’t know. Experts say it changes constantly or is different based upon the age of the target market. What do you think? Do the efforts we put into social media help you identify us or make you want to read our books? 

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts – but it may be tomorrow before I read them. I’m social media drained tonight.

A 280-Character Theme-Based Writing Exercise

by Julie Tollefson

A few days ago, I searched my work in progress for any line that mentioned "rain." Nothing. My previous WIP? Nope. How about a recent short story? Uh-uh. Apparently, it does not rain in my fictional worlds.

Why so obsessed? I was looking for a line to fit the week’s theme for #1lineWed, a writing game on Twitter sponsored by the Kiss of Death Chapter of Romance Writers of America (Twitter handle: @RWAKissofDeath).

Writers of all genres are invited to play along, sharing a passage from their work that relates to the theme word. The catch is the snippet of work must fit within the 280-character limit of a tweet, with enough room left to add the official hashtag (#1lineWed) that helps others find your contribution to the game.

Some weeks are easier than others, I’ve found. On March 14, when the theme was “wind,” I had enough characters left in my entry to add a couple of other popular writing hashtags—#amwriting and #amwritingmystery:

She laughed, a music so light and bubbly the wind might carry it away. #1linewed #amwriting #amwritingmystery

The same for February 28 and its theme, “heavy”:

The owl called again, this time closer, more urgent. The beat of its heavy wings disrupted the air over her garden. #1linewed #amwriting

And February 21, “light”:

Early morning light, weak and tentative, filtered through branches still barren of leaves, though the swollen buds at their tips hinted at the coming spring. #1linewed

Other weeks take more thought and a bit of creative license to find a sentence or two that works with the theme word. For the March 7 theme, “earth,” I couldn’t find a single reference to earth that worked as an outtake for the game. But I stretched and found this passage:

Its architecture mimicked the limestone-capped bluffs of the region and created the impression that forces of nature—not man—had carved the castle on the hill, as it was known, from the land itself. #1lineWed #amwriting #amwritingmystery

Beyond the fun and challenge of playing the game, #1lineWed can turn into an exercise in revision. Though my search for “rain” turned up empty, the opening scene of a recent short story described a distant storm. The problem? No way would I be able to fit the 630-character passage into a tweet.

So I rewrote it a bit, lost some of the details that are important to the story but not for the tweet, simplified, deleted extraneous words, and came up with 277 characters that have the same flavor as the original passage but fit in the limited space of Twitter:

Far to the south, lightning writhed between & around black, anvil-topped clouds that towered over the High Plains. The storm promised a wild ride for anyone in its path. Here, though, she inhaled deeply, the scents of sagebrush & cattle, of heat & dust. Of childhood. #1lineWed

Though I’d revised and tightened the original passage a dozen times, I still found ways to streamline it for the #1lineWed exercise, and that’s valuable practice any day of the week.


If you’re a writer, how do you hone your skills?

If you’re a reader, do you follow Twitter games like #lineWed? Have you discovered new authors because they talk about their work online?

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Find Julie on Twitter (@jtollefson) and Instagram (julie.tollefson).

Advice for the Timid Twitterer

By Julie Tollefson

Confession time: Twitter scares me.

Should be easy, right? Say something in 140 characters, hit send.

But I agonize over those 140 characters. Do I sound witty or dull? Will people misunderstand my intent? Is anyone out there really reading what I write?

My friend Peggy Rothschild, author of Punishment Summer and Erasing Ramona, has a terrific Twitter presence, so I've asked her for advice for the timid Twitterer.

What's your approach to Twitter? What do you recommend for people like me, who worry over every character?
I love Twitter—it’s my favorite social media platform. It’s a great way to share things I think are funny, interesting, or intriguing. The character limit can sometimes prove a challenge, but it also helps keep things simple. If someone’s new to Twitter, maybe start by retweeting things from friends or people you admire. I follow a number of blogs and often tweet links to interesting posts. I think the big thing to keep in mind is Twitter’s not about the number of followers you have—it’s about sharing information. 

Since I mostly tweet about writing, art, and the outdoors, I’m not worried I’m going to offend someone. And, while there’s no “edit” key for Twitter, there is a delete option if a tweet goes out riddled with typos or inaccuracies. As for finding an audience, in truth, there’s so much content on Twitter, there’s a good chance a tweet won’t be seen. But once you find out which hashtags relate to what you’re tweeting about, you can broadcast your message to a wider audience.

Hashtags! These are words or phrases marked with the # sign that help you find tweets of interest among the hundreds of thousands flying past every minute you’re on Twitter. What are some hashtags you’d recommend for writers?
There’s a lot of wonderful motivational quotes under the #amwriting hashtag—as well as practical writing advice and links to how-to articles. Other favorite hashtags include #amreading, #writers, #writerslife, and #writetip. I also periodically check #tenqueries—where agents share their responses to queries, giving the genre and reason why they passed or asked for more pages (the author and manuscript title are never revealed). There’s also at least one twitter writing event every day of the week, including #MuseMon, #2bitTues, #1lineWed, #Thurds, #FicFri, #SlapDashSat, and #SunWIP—just to name a handful. Plus there are writing contests during the year which usually have themed chats under their hashtags—like the upcoming #NoQS (Nightmare on Query Street), #PitMad, #QueryKombat, and #PitchWars. Some of the hashtags are useful for sharing information about writing and others provide an opportunity to interact with writers.

You often tweet about art and nature. Are those special interests of yours? How do they relate to your writing? 
I was a Girl Scout and our troop went camping all the time, so I grew up with a love of the outdoors. I still love to hike, kayak, and bird watch. Nature did figure heavily into the writing of my YA adventure, Punishment Summer. Though Nicki (the main character) doesn’t start out loving being stuck living among the trees and wildlife, over the course of a summer, she falls in love with that world. The manuscript I just finished is also set in an isolated locale, which made a great excuse for more “research.”

I was actually an art major in college and enjoy visiting artists’ studios, galleries, and museums. In the three books of mine that have made it out into the world, my love of art didn’t really figure in. But, in the last manuscript I finished, the main character is a professional photographer and sculptor. I’m planning to delve deeper into the world of art with my next manuscript and am reading up on famous art thefts as a possible background for the mystery.

It’s always fun having personal interests intersect with story when it’s time to head down another research rabbit hole.

Do you set goals or a schedule for your tweets, like "tweet at least once a day" or "spend half an hour a week in Twitter conversations"?
I’ve never set any number goals for tweets per day, but, if someone is kind enough to retweet something of mine, I make a point of visiting their feed. If I see something there that resonates, I retweet it. While I don’t need to set a time minimum to spend on Twitter, I do need to set a maximum. I can spend WAY too much time scrolling through my feed or checking out the tweets of writers, artists, and pundits I admire.

For weekly events like #1lineWed and #Thurds, I allot a little more time and frequently use a service like Tweet Buffer to schedule my tweets so they’ll go out on the assigned date if I’m unavailable. For #1lineWed and #Thurds, you find lines in your manuscript that include the theme-of-the-week word. I don’t always have time to participate in both, but I try to take part in at least one a week. It’s a fun way to connect and get a peek at other writers’ work.

What connections have you made through Twitter? What's your best Twitter story? 
I can’t remember how I heard of the author Margaret Mizushima—it might even have been on Twitter. When I read her first Timber Creek K-9 mystery, I was hooked and thrilled to learn a second book in the series was already out and the third would be out soon. I tweeted how much I loved the book and the characters and—YAY!—heard back from the author herself. We now follow each other on Twitter, which means I’m going to know the minute her next book comes out! I’ve also been blown away by the friendliness of well-known authors, the kind of well-known where I’d likely not have the nerve to talk to them if I saw them in public. These authors have taken the time to thank me for tweeting about their books, and I’ve gotten recommendations for some great reads from them. But for me, the bottom line is: Twitter is fun.

Any other advice, tips, or tricks you'd like to share?
I have two bits of advice for Twitter. The first is, don’t be the “Buy My Book” person who only tweets about their books. If your book is on sale, yes, tweet it out! If a new book has a publication date, tweet it out! Just don’t be the one-note tweeter focused solely on yourself. The second thing is, it’s sometimes a good idea to check out the feed of someone before following them back. I follow-back anyone who interests me, but usually make sure they’re who their mini-bio says they are. (An early lesson I don’t want to repeat as I have zero interest in winding up with porn in my feed!)

***

Peggy Rothschild grew up in Los Angeles. Always a mystery-lover, she embraced the tales of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys before graduating to the adult section of the library. An English major in high school, she switched to art—her other passion—in college. At present, Peggy lives in the beach community of Ventura with her husband and their cats. (The cats frequently act as consultants during the writing process, attacking pages they don't think are quite up to snuff.) In her spare time she focuses on transforming their yard into a drought-tolerant paradise. Find her on Twitter: @PegRothschild

Pitch Wars: Behind the Curtain

For the third year in a row, I’m a mentor in a contest run by Brenda Drake called Pitch Wars. You’ve heard this spiel before in this space, but this basically means that querying writers submit to contest mentors (usually agented writers). The mentors then pick mentees to help them get their manuscripts in the best shape possible before an “agent round” where a select group of agents comb through the entries and make requests publically on each entry.

The contest has a growing number of success stories, with dozens of writers agented and/or gaining book deals in direct correlation to the contest. My mentee last year, the super awesome Kellye Garrett, was offered representation IN A BAR at 10:30 at night by an agent who loved her Pitch Wars submission (they were at the New England Crime Bake the week after the agent round).

So, yeah, Pitch Wars does incredible things for writers. Mostly because it provides a spotlight on something that might be great but overlooked in a pile of queries. I’ve benefited from that spotlight myself, meeting my agent through the contest in its first year.

Thus, as I think it’ll be helpful for querying writers to hear, not just those in the contest, I thought I’d give a little insight. Well, actually three little pieces of insight:

1. Numbers matter

2. Taste matters

3. Context matters

First, the Numbers: The quality of the work always matters, of course, but here’s the deal: ALL the submissions in my contest inbox are wonderful. Seriously. The competition is FIERCE, the queries are strong, the opening pages are polished and all the writers seem affable and ready for a working relationship.

Which is awesome. Except there are 78 of those hardy competitors in my inbox. In the whole contest there are 1,591. Less than a tenth of those will be chosen as mentees. This year, there are no alternates. Each mentor choses a single mentee. Which means I have to reject 77 great writers. And some mentors with wider tastes have to reject double that.

Now, think about an actual agent and not just a contest mentor. Many agents get at least 100 queries per day. Maybe more. Yet many only take on a handful of clients per year. Maybe only one or two. Yet they get possibly 365 times the number of queries I have to comb through for this contest.

Moreover, of the clients they take on, less than half will get a deal out of their first book on submission.

Yes, it will always be a numbers game.

Second, Personal Choice: I am not an agent or an acquisitions editor, but, like them, I am human. Which means that as I comb through my entries, there are some that snag my attention much quicker than others. I have a tendency to enjoy crime fiction (duh) but I also really like humor. I can’t read strictly somber books any more than I can watch strictly somber movies. I’m sure they’re amazing. I. just. Can’t. And that is my humanity showing.

Thus, as I sorted my submissions into “Favorites,” “Maybes,” and “No, Not for Me” folders, I decided to go with my gut. After doing this twice before, I’m starting to get a little better at understanding what works for me personally and what doesn’t.

Unfortunately, because there were so many great submissions, I ended up with 30 Favorites, 30 Maybes and 18 No, Not for Me.

My gut likes many things, obviously. Which leads me to my third insight…

Third, Context Matters: There have been truly great manuscripts that didn’t get a single request in Pitch Wars but went on to be agented and sold after the contest. Yes, this happens. Why? The contest setup.

Pitch Wars is different than querying in that each writer gets 300 words to show their stuff, not a query and 10 pages (or whatever a certain agent prefers). Here, there’s a pitch of about 35 to 75 words at the top of the page and then about 250 words of the writer’s first page below it. That’s it. From there, agents request partials and fulls.

Therefore, the first page and the concept are extremely important in this contest. I’m convinced the only reason I “won” the adult round of Pitch Wars the first year is because my pitch and first page described (in sickening detail) the death of a chef in his very own kitchen with his very own tools. It worked very well within the contest parameters. Even if it was gross.

As I narrow down my favorites and my maybes, I’m thinking not only of how I personally feel about the manuscript, but how I’d craft a pitch and what the first page would look like as a teaser. Those things are just too important to success in this arena. And I want my mentee to feel successful and get as much out of the contest as possible.

This might seem cold and calculating. BUT, in a way, it’s “just business.” Agents and acquiring editors must do this too. Agents might be looking for a certain type of book that fills a spot in their list. Or something that they know editors are looking for in a submission. Editors are hoping to fall in love with a book that works in their imprint, catalog and calendar. They turn down far more than my 78 submissions in a year because they have to, not because they want to.

SO, all that said, if you are querying, entered in a contest or in my inbox (hi!), please understand that there is a heavy amount of thought that goes into evaluating writing submissions. It’s not a perfect science. It’s run by the reader’s heart, head and gut—just like your writing.

#Query Madness

At a recent Sisters in Crime event, a Sister shared two words that struck me with the sharpness of Miss Marple’s knitting needles: “query blurbs.”

This is a new-to-me hurdle in the publishing Hunger Games. And just when I had tackled my latest querying challenge: the query tweet.

I’m a member of Agent Quest, a subgroup of the Guppy writers group. The support and information sharing of this group is an oasis in the soul-shriveling desert of the agent search. Ideas, helpful critiques, and attagirls flow on the Agent Quest site, as well as helpful tips and leads.

One night a couple of weeks ago, a Gup mentioned a query event on Twitter. I’d already heard of Pitch Madness (#PitMad), where writers tweet their 140 character pitches and agents who are interested “favorite” them (a "favorite" means you can cut to the front of the query line). Others can favorite, too, including it seems, some less-than-reputable publishers and agents. Still, this new query contest grabbed my attention, since it was being run by a reputable, big name agent.

This agent said she’d pick the three best tweet pitches she received by 8 p.m. and invite those lucky Tweeters to send her a synopsis and ten pages. A jump to the head of the line! A Golden Ticket to avoid the dreaded slush pile? I jumped in.

All I needed was a 140 character pitch of my manuscript. It was 7:30 p.m. I set to work as the clock ticked down.

I crafted a pitch tweet I liked: “Former lingerie model PI teams with oddball teen sci-fi/fantasy author to solve mystery of teen’s father’s death.”

Then I clicked to Twitter and realized – I don’t have a Twitter account.

A quick scan of Twitter showed grandparents and Golden Retrievers who tweet. How hard could it be? Signing up was a breeze. I hit Tweet and sat back, waiting for this discerning agent to pick me.

I clicked onto the stream of tweets to check out the competition. @gnomewrter and @zombieluv were there. Tweets pitching everything from dystopian erotica to historical nonfiction appeared. Dozens of tweet/pitches flowed onscreen. Except mine. Where was my tweet?

I scrambled to my account and clicked the tweet button again and again. Tweet. Tweet. Tweet.

Back to the agent’s twitter feed. No tweet from @bookvoodoo1.

         At 8:01 p.m. I found this buried deep in Twitter’s FAQs: “Please note that it may take a few days for changes to your profile information to be reflected in search.”

Head thunk on the keyboard. “Changes in the profile” means you can’t just jump into Twitter and expect to Tweet immediately. Twitter has a mysterious algorithm that means no instant tweets. My tweet was lost in the twitterverse, and it would land too late for the contest.

I came away from this experience with some wisdom and four twitter followers. Well, OK, maybe three. I think the bikini clad Russian girl inviting me to meet her in Spayce follows everybody.

The wisdom?

A tweet forces you to get to the essence of your story. There’s no room in 140 characters for filler. Twitter makes you write tight, a good exercise.

What else did I learn?

Maybe you should have a Twitter account – just in case. Make one now, so it is ready. You never know when Pitch Madness will hit you.

Also, RT means “retweet,” William Shatner is hilarious, and you can waste a lot of time on Twitter. A lot of time.