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!

January Promo by Christine Duncan

It’s that time of year where people are looking to change what they’re doing or to revv up what they’re doing to promote their work.
A yahoo group that I’m a part of called Marketing for Romance Writers is launching a whole list of ideas of how members can start helping promote each other–a smart idea whose time, I believe has come. There is a bit of crossover with members in other genres (like me). I believe it is well worth checking in to. Murder Must Advertise is another yahoo group with the same purpose for the mystery genre.
Preditors and Editors is doing their bit to promote books by smaller publishers with their annual readers poll which has been extended to Jan. 26. Readers vote for their favorite books. Needless to say, the authors involved tend to facebook all their friends asking for votes so the site gets a bunch of attention from people who would not ordinarily know about it. All of which ends up in being a pretty effective form of promo for the books.
I have been thinking of loading something onto Scrbd–which despite its use of the in-term of the decade, social network, is not really all that new of an idea. People upload their work and let others read for free. I am always trying to decide with these sites if they help you build momentum or if they just make you look desperate.
What new promo things are you trying for 2011?

Holiday Promo by Christine Duncan

I know a lot of writers who are revving up for the holidays. Some of them are offering their books as gift-wrapped bundles at special prices. Some of them are doing special holiday contests on their blogs. Many romance writers seem to do this one, and often it involves readers going on a bit of a blog tour as the writers do a group contest. One woman I know is gearing up to sell her books at Holiday craft sales.

I have done the holiday contest thing. It was fun, but I didn’t really see an uptick in sales. As for the special price on both of my books, gift wrapped, I don’t think my publisher would be too happy.

I haven’t done the holiday craft shows mostly because the only local craft shows that I know about seem to involve art juries deciding who gets to participate. Still I’m going to look into it, because the writer who is doing it seems to have a pretty good success rate at it.

So what am I doing? I’ll be doing a podcast on Monday at 5:00 central on Murder, She Writes and I’m hoping to do a bit more blog touring. I’m still trying to arrange some local things.

The thing is, not much in the way of advertising is going to influence my buying patterns this year. I’m going to be fairly practical and very frugal (read that as cheap.) In a year where many of us had to stretch to pay the mortgage, I’m thinking I won’t be alone. But hey, I’m always open to any suggestions on promo.

Elevator Pitch by Christine Duncan

The elevator pitch is useful to a writer at just about any stage. If you really want to sell your book–work on your elevator pitch. If the book is published but you’re trying to interest readers,(sell your book) work on your elevator speech.

The difference is, I think it’s easier when you’re not published yet. The elevator speech for an unpubbed writer should be short–really short. And it should be fun and pique interest. Think of it as a tweet for Twitter. Okay that sounds hard if you got a complicated plot and hero/heroine. But it’s important. You’ll use the elevator speech at conferences where you are trying to interest editors and agents and you use it in your cover letter. So it’s a little intimidating. You don’t want to stammer here.

Trust me though. Perfecting an elevator pitch tends to boil down what you think is important about your novel. That can really help you when you’re sitting down to write too–almost like goal statements, it tends to concentrate things. I know one writer who keeps her elevator pitch right in front, taped to her monitor so she doesn’t veer off track.

If you’re wondering why it should be so important consider this scenario: You come in and sit down in front of an editor stammering, “Well, uh, my work in progress is about this guy who ah, he doesn’t like himself much and ah….” (Yeah, the editor is bored already,and if you weren’t sweating it so badly, you would be too.) Or you can say, “I’ve got a techno-vampire mystery where the hero is troubled by his vampirism, has a mortal love interest who isn’t aware of his problem and is also trying to track down some guy killing all the vampires.”

Not that that is a wonderful elevator speech, but it tells genre and sub-cross genres, gives a bit of the plot, tells the editor you know where you’re going. And you can actually spit it out if you do accidentally meet an editor in an elevator. .

By the time you’re published, people want longer elevator pitches. The typical one I’m asked for now is for radio, so it is usually around two minutes. You know, you can say a heck of a lot in two minutes. Or not enough. It takes practice.

Give it a try. Try it out on us! Give us your elevator speech.

Can Promo Really Help? by Christine Duncan

I saw a post on Facebook the other week from a publicist responding to an author. I never really saw the author’s original post but I gather from the answer that he/she was lamenting because his* book was coming out this fall in the middle of a recession.
No one would buy it.
The publicist’s response was somewhere along the line of with the right advertising, books will still do well.
Maybe. In the best of all possible worlds.
Frankly, I’m thinking twice before I buy a .35 chocolate covered cherry when I stop by the 7-11 to pick up the newspaper on Sundays. (I have to buy the Sunday paper–the TV guide is in it and my husband and son are addicted to that thing. The candy–eh, I don’t need the calories anyway.) Advertising is NOT affecting my buying habits right now. If I can’t find a book at the library or in the rare really-gotta-have-it mode, at the used bookstore, I’m not buying right now. It doesn’t matter if you are throwing in freebies; it doesn’t matter if it is something I’ve been lusting after for years. I did go to see Harry Potter at the theater though it had NADA to do with advertising–at least, this year.
So here’s my question, what are you doing to get your book sold and do you really think it’s helping? Sending your book off to Oprah? Selling the book out of your cubby at work or maybe on some downtown street corner? How is it different than what you did before for promo?
Do you think publicists help?

*Okay, enough of this PC pronoun stuff I’m going with the Trad male pronoun. You feminists in the crowd can keep in mind that I am a woman myself. A lazy woman, but definitely female.

Cutting Writing Costs? There Has to Be A Better Way

I’ve seen a number of posts on the ‘net lately about how writers can cut costs.  There was even a discussion on Sisters in Crime about authors who were giving up their web sites.  Others said they were cutting out conferences.  One discussion I read on another writer’s blog said she had cut down on her writing organization memberships.

I definitely need to cut costs.  I even took on a seasonal job doing taxes to try to boost income.  But as someone who has been around small businesses all my life, I have to say that I believe cutting anything that advertises you as an author or helps you network to find those advertising or signing opportunities is a bad move. People can’t read your stuff if they don’t know you’re out there.  Many e-authors even contract to maintain a website when they sell the book.

You can move your website to one of those free services (or your blog–obviously we think that works). See Georgie B’s blog for thoughts on blog advertising. If you keep your domain name (that costs a big 12.00 from most places) your readers won’t know the difference except for the ads added to the site.   Learn how to do HTML so you can update it yourself.

Conferences can be pricey–so choose ones closer to home–offer to help out on some of the organizing or teach a class to get a discount.  Many mystery conferences that I know of will do that.  When Bouchercon came to Denver,  many moons ago, I did that.

As to quitting your writing organizations, do it if they aren’t working for you anymore.  But review carefully, you may find that you got more helpful tips from them than you think.

That’s my two-cents–discounted for the current economy.  Tell me how and where you are cutting costs.