Facebook Pages by Christine Duncan

I have never created a Facebook author page before.  It seemed too complicated.  And I thought you probably needed a bunch of fans.  Turns out, it’s rather simple. Sign in and go to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

 

Authors are included with artists, bands, and public figures down on the lower left.  Pick that one and tell them you are a writer.  Then, figure out what picture you want to represent you.  Tell a little about yourself.(I’m still working on all of that. I always have trouble editing my cover pics.) Pick a FacebookURL  (mine is www.Facebook.com/christineduncanmysteries.) and you’re in.

So what do you do there?  I don’t know. It says invite all your friends, but frankly, I always find myself stalling there.  I mean Really?  Isn’t that just… I don’t know…invasive?????

  But you can do status updates on what you’ve got out there, contests, new publications.  Where you’ll be signing.  I guess.  It’s another forum. 

  

So here I’ve been on Facebook for God knows how long, and I’m just figuring this all out.  Sigh.

   

But hopefully, you my writer friends are a step ahead and can tell me what to do next.

  

Happy Memorial day everyone! Tell a soldier Thank You!

Authors, Why Write a Blog? by Christine Duncan

.I think the reason I hear most for writing a blog is about promotion–keeping your book out there somewhere. Whereever out there is. But I have to say that writing this blog for as long as we have now (is it going on 3 years or 4? Must look that up.) has taught me a thing or two that is useful.
For one thing, this blog has taught me a little (much needed) discipline. Inevitably it will be my turn to post again. And I won’t let my fellow bloggers down. This has been a good thing for my other writing too. Some how, this blog gets me jumpstarted enough to think about my novel each week. And then I write more.

This blog has also taught me the importance of titles. Over and over again, the same posts get hits. The search engines lead them here regularly. Are they the best posts on this blog? Eh. Maybe. But the titles are great. How to really really scare someone. Senior sleuths, what makes a really good bad guy.

People want to know and those titles lead them here.

This blog has also taught me just how small the net and the world really is. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Thinking of writing a blog? I say go for it. The rewards aren’t monetary but they are good

Selling Your Own Book by Christine Duncan

Recently one of my publishers wrote a group email about links on our websites to sell our books. She has special banners for each genre. And the idea is that we should include those on our websites with the link to Amazon.
I don’t mind selling my book that way. It seems easy enough and it’s one of the reasons I keep a website along with a blog. But other ways of selling my books are…harder.
A couple of years back I went to Wyoming author’s day. That day was difficult because it was just part of the fair. People were there to do the kinds of things they do at fairs, eat fried stuff and ride rides that make the fried stuff seem like the mistake it probably was. And we authors were in a building in the middle of this, by ourselves sitting at tables with our books. People came through because they wanted to see what was in the building or to go to the bathrooms, or just to get out of the sun for a minute and were a little surprised to see us. My son helped me by giving out bookmarks, or maybe it was fliers and asking folks if they liked mysteries. I sold a couple of books and went on a couple of rides myself after the writers all went home. But it was a long afternoon.
A year or two after that, I did one of the Wal-mart deals where they put authors in the aisles. I forget why. They may have been promoting literacy. Another long afternoon of startled people who didn’t really expect to find authors in the women’s underwear section or wherever I was. No son there to hand out bookmarks.
So I tend to believe that it is hard to sell books when folks don’t expect to see you. So I was surprised to see a post on MurderMustAdvertise by author Susanne Alleyn saying that she has had some success selling her books at her own yard sales. She sells at a bit of a discount and says her best line seems to be “Signed first editions by an almost-famous author!”
I’m willing to try anything once–and I have as much junk that could go in a garage sale as the next person, but I’m not convinced. Wouldn’t that tend to make folks think your books were…I don’t know…junk?
What do you think?

How do You find New Authors to Read? by Christine Duncan

One of my publishers emailed all of her authors today. She had received something from Amazon saying that they weren’t going to keep in stock books that weren’t selling. Big news, right?

The publisher seemed to think so. She was asking all of us to redouble our promotion efforts. My e-publisher asked this week that all of her authors get an author’s page on Amazon.

Then I read an MJ Rose article on how nothing we do in the way of Facebook or Twitter or blogging or any on-line promo makes any difference to what we buy (Sorry, but I can’t remember where the heck I saw that one so no link–anyway Ms. Rose gets enough publicity without me. She gets the attribution at least.)
All of this was enough to get my brain going. I need to promote but nothing I’ve been doing works. So how do I do promote?

When I want to find something to read, like for instance, for a recent airplane ride, I go to a bookstore and browse. Or to the library and browse. Or I look for some place on line for a recommendation for genres I like, such as Crimespace Cozy-Mystery.com or Myshelf.com Crimespace has a lot of authors promoting to me but hey! it’s what I want when I’m looking for something to read.

So most people really don’t like that?

We’re all authors so we all read, right?(This is one of those word problems you hated in school. 30 children are on a bus. The bus is going to NY. 20 kids got on in Hartford…) Anyway, so we should all be able to figure out where to find books, because we find ‘em to read, right? And that would mean we should all be able to get our books there and have other folks find ‘em, right?

Here’s what I’m thinking. You request my book in your library and I’ll request yours in mine. Email me, People!

And yeah, I could use some more promo ideas.

Branding? Don’t They Do That To Cows? by Christine Duncan

In my never ending search for a way to market my mysteries, I keep coming across the concept of branding. The idea seems deceptively simple yet I find it hard to narrow it down to one sentence. Part of it seems to be that everything you do should be done with the idea of getting your name out. So use your name.

Are you on Twitter as Reader, on Dorothy L as Agatha C. and on your blog as Anonymous? Then you are not taking advantage of branding. You need people to see you and recognize you on all these places (and where ever else you hang out) so that they will be interested, remember your name, buy your books.

Along with this goes the rather old fashioned idea that you don’t do anything in public (the internet, your facebook page, your bookgroup) you can’t write home about. Don’t go on Goodreads and offend folks with your bad manners and language. Don’t go on Facebook and badmouth your publisher, your bookcover or your granny. Moms of the world are applauding loudly. Haven’t they been telling us this all along?

In other words don’t brand yourself as an idiot.

And if there is something unique about you and your work–trumpet that. But not so much that folks get sick of hearing it, if you can figure out where that dividing line is.

Some of this seems like plain common sense to me. Then again, I AM a mom. And we’ve all heard of folks who have had bad consequences from behavior online that was less than well thought out.

But it all seems so artificial. And I’d rather look for a way to really connect. Branding. Like a brand name. Like a product. Like I’m not really a person at the other end of the blog-o-sphere from you. It makes me feel like that cow.

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Promo, Promo, & More Everlasting Promo

As I get closer and closer to the print release date for Safe House the promo tasks begin to seem overwhelming. It didn’t help that I was locked out of Twitter this week for having clicked on the wrong direct message.  I had to start a new account, find all the people I had tweeted with before, and start over. And I thought social networking sites would save me time connecting with others.

I have also been sending out ARCS for review.  This is also a time consuming process, just figuring out who to send to and when. Some review sites, like Foreword and Kirkus want ARCS months beforehand, some want them on publication (Midwest Book Review is one of them.) Meanwhile, I’m looking for blogs who will host me for a blog tour, and putting together an email press kit to mail to book stores in my area to try to arrange signings and talks.  Which means I need to figure out what to talk about and how not to stammer and stutter my way through the talks. I have started a database list of radio shows that I will also send to.

I have said publicly and on other blog posts that this time I was giving myself permission to take time to promote and to not be obsessed.  I LIED.

I am a perfectionist.  I am not able to cut myself that much slack.   I am more and more aware that authors have to sell this book to be able to get the next one published.  And my next book is my favorite so I really want to get it published. So I want to do it ALL. If I only knew what it all is and how to do it.

What are you doing for promo? And why do you think it’s a good thing? C’mon, give me a clue–I could use one.

New Year’s Goal setting

I’m not really the type to make resolutions. I don’t know why. I guess I see resolutions as some huge thing like I will become a millionaire this year and run an ultra- marathon in my spare time.

This week I am looking back at writing goals and what I did right or wrong in 2008. Mostly I am pleased. Safe House came out in ebook form in 2008, and it’s coming out in print in 09 due to efforts I put in place in 08. I started this blog with Narelle and Michelle and “met” a few fellow bloggers. I learned the basics of blog touring through blogbooktours and am going to start to set up my own blog tour. I started to do a little social networking–if only to chat about mysteries and have some more suggestions for my To Be Read list and I struggled to figure out Google Alerts.

What I’m trying to say here is that I broke down the huge goal of becoming an author whose work is becoming known and started following the steps.  I didn’t let myself be overwhelmed.  I just did one step at a time.  For 2009, I want to keep following that path.  Nothing big–just slow and steady.

What did you do in 2008?  Are you glad you did it?

Precious Inspiration

 

Books that inspire me – where to start? Well, how do I define a book that inspires me, rather than a book I love?

 

If a book makes me want to pick up a pen, and start writing, then it inspires me. Not all books that I love do that. For example, my favourite book is Jane Eyre – but once I’ve finished reading it, I don’t feel any need to rush to my pad and start scribbling.

 

So – lets start with Jasper Fforde’s books – all of them, but especially the ones with Thursday Next. They are utterly outrageous in the way he plays with literary conventions and stereotypes, and very funny – especially for a bibliophile like me. And Thursday Next herself is a wonderful heroine – human, and flawed, but utterly brilliant when it counts. Every time I finish a book, I want to sit down and play with words and ideas.

 

Georgette Heyer. Those wonderful sparkling Regency romances, with her feisty, clever heroines, and her heroes – some light hearted and witty, other brooding and sexy (Sylvester!). She inspires me to write the most frivolous, funny dialogue, and drown myself in the Regency period until I find myself saying ‘Doing it rather too brown, my Lord!’ to my friends – who, as they are not Heyerites, have no idea what I’m talking about.

 

MR James. The Master (not in a Dr Who sense – although…) He wrote ghost stories. Wonderful, haunting, disturbing ghost stories, lingering in the memory long after I have closed the book. Whistle and I’ll Come To You My Lad has made me permanently scared to sleep in a room that has an extra, empty bed. He inspires me to write my own ghost stories – tales of ordinary people, caught up in extraordinary, inexplicable events.

 

Dickens. For his ghost stories, for his novels, for his characters. When I read him, I become inspired to invent characters myself, deep, complex, characters, with a life of their own, and let them lead me where their destiny takes me. And he teaches me how characters do not necessarily have to be human – a major character in Bleak House is the City of London itself, in Our Mutual Friend, it is the River Thames. And he teaches me how to use language to invoke and inspire – how to slightly twist words to cleverly evoke a feeling – a prime example being his phrase ‘misanthropic ice’ in Christmas Carol.

 

Those are not the only authors that inspire me. I could mention Tolkien, JK Rowling, Lemony Snicket, Stephen King, Anne Perry, Mark Gatiss – all writers who inspire me to pick up a pen, and create. And for that gift, I am deeply indebted to all of them.