Guest Post - Author Charmaine Clancy on Marketing ebooks.

Today we are thrilled to welcome Charmaine Clancy, author of the hilarious My Zombie Dog, and recent member of RFW, who tells us what she's learned about marketing ebooks. Whether you've published several ebooks, or are about to launch into the epub world, we're sure you'll find something here to help you. 

Over to you Charmaine:

Thank you Denise and Donna for having me on Romantic Friday Writers. It’s such a thrill, I feel all important now!

So…you’ve written a novel and decided to go the Indie/self-publishing route... now comes the hard part - how can you promote your ebook?

BOOK COVER

First, make sure you have a fantastic PROFESSIONAL cover that grabs attention, even at thumbnail size (this is how most people will see it first on Amazon). If you’re creating your own cover check out DIY Book Covers. Or check out my latest blog post on Cover Fonts here. 


PROMOTE

Amazon also provides ways for you to promote your ebook. The ‘Like’ button is a good place to start. There are places where you can swap likes with other authors or ‘tag’ each other’s books (check out World Literary Cafe or search Goodreads for Indie or self-publishing). Tags help your book get found in searches. Make your tags relevant to your novel’s content, theme or genre.

REVIEWS

Reviews are a big draw card for potential customers. Don’t do your own review; it always looks a bit sad. But maybe your beta readers wouldn’t mind putting up a few words and rating your novel? While you’re at it, why not ask some of your blogging friends to feature your novel in a blog post? Blog tours are like digital book launches, and can attract attention to your ebook.

KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING

When you upload your ebook through Kindle Direct Publishing, consider taking part in the KDP Select program. KDP Select requires you to solely publish on Amazon for a minimum of three months. While you are in this program you can host ‘free’ days, where you offer your ebook for free. If you schedule and promote your free days well, your book will rise in the ranking (My Zombie Dog hit #1 in Children’s Spine-chilling Horror) and the more people that download it, the more book pages your novel will turn up on the ‘customers who bought this book also bought’ section. KDP Select also offers your book to Prime Members to loan. You get paid a royalty each time someone borrows your book. Once the three months is up, you can decide if you want to continue in the program. I found this program very helpful for promoting my book, but I’m now keen to make my book available on iBooks, Nook and Kobo.

'LOOK INSIDE...'

When you upload your ebook, I recommend using the ‘Look inside this book’  function and having the first couple of chapters free (you’ll find this in Author Central). In this time of ebook markets being flooded by poor quality products, it allows the reader to check that your book is properly formatted and your writing is tight and clear.

GOODREADS and SHELFARI

You can also add a free sample of your ebook on Goodreads. At the very least, make sure your book is added to the Goodreads database. This is another place to get reviews. There is also Shelfari, I don’t find it as popular as Goodreads, but it does add content to Amazon.

Once your page is up, you’ll want to tell people and give them the link. You can do this on your Facebook, Twitter or Google+ page, just be wary of over-blasting your novel. People won’t want to connect with you if all you do is sell. Be interested in your followers and friends online, and be generous, offer them links to helpful articles or promote other people’s books that you think they might like. Then, and only then, you can also let them know about your book. A good rule of thumb is to leave it a couple of hours before linking to your book again.

BOOK TRAILERS

Creating a book trailer for YouTube and providing a link to your Amazon page will also help. They’re very easy to create, but if you’re uncertain, check out How to Create a Book Trailer in 9 Easy Steps.

EMAIL

How often do you email people? You should set up a ‘signature’ that appears automatically at the bottom of your emails, it can include a thumbnail size picture of your book cover (big picture files are annoying in emails because they take time to download) and hyperlink it to your Amazon page. People are curious, they will want to know more about that book cover in the email you send.

BUSINESS CARDS/BOOKMARKS

One more thing, get some business cards or bookmarks printed up featuring your books. Share them when you attend writing festivals, libraries, or anywhere someone asks about your book or what you do for a living. Make sure it includes the information they need to find your book online.

Whether you take on all these suggestions, or just a few, the main point is you will need a marketing plan to promote your book and yourself as an author. If you still can’t decide where to start, check out this post on The Book Cover Cafe, print the chart Anthony provides - it’s very extensive!

Charmaine Clancy

charmaineclancy@gmail.com

WAGGING TALES - blog for writers

Author of MY ZOMBIE DOG

 

Thank you Charmaine. It's wonderful to have you posting about your personal experience with publishing and marketing My Zombie Dog. Thanks for all those links!

And don't forget to check out our Self Publishing Page above. There is a selection of excellent links to make self publishing easier.

No 4 Guest Blogger & Bad Book Reviews - Francine Howarth

Today's guest needs little introduction, so I give you Francine Howarth, writer of Regency romance. Today she is sharing her take on bad reviews. Have you had one or two? If you're as yet unpublished, gird up your loins, because not all reviews are good! But Francine says they can work in your favour...

Hi RFWers and followers!

Well you can relax, the last thing I’m going to do is promote myself or my writing. Nor is this meant as a sympathy vote post. Hell, you must all know where my serious-writer blog is located and, that updates on latest releases are posted as and when along with book trailers.  If you don’t, it’s here. ;)

Here at RFWers we’ve had guest bloggers who’ve talked about “how-to write romance, how-they write and what inspired them”.  So, I thought I’d talk about something a lot of writers think won’t happen to them and when it does it comes as a shock. Now the sad fact of life is, that as soon as your book goes public it’s open to scrutiny from readers who are neither family, friends, fellow groupie writers nor critique partners. You are now fair game to raw critique and social graces of some reviewers leaves a lot to be desired.

Fear of a bad book review is something all published authors learn to live with, yet nonetheless dread them. In fact, some authors within our blogosphere have received the odd one or two since their books hit Amazon, and the bad reviews knocked them for six. Yeah, it’s not nice if a bad review pops up, but the best way is to ignore it and never respond by comment to the reviewer. If you do you fall into the trap of making that reviewer feel even more self-important, and said person will feed off the attention granted them.

Now let’s assess outcome of a bad review.

Can a bad review of a book be detrimental to sales of said book, more especially if the reviewer declares your book to be crap? The answer to that is NO. A bad review is likely to draw more attention to your book than dozens of good reviews. So don’t panic and don’t fret if a bad review surfaces. Books reviewed by professional reviewers, as in Sunday Newspaper supplements and magazines, will consist of overall summary and no spoilers. It’s rare in today’s newspaper or magazine review columns to see a bad review, yet in the 1960s and long before scathing reviews of books were quite common and some critics were infamous and dreaded by all authors.

With the coming of Amazon, Smashwords and Goodreads etc., has come the every “wo/man and their dog/cat” who thinks themselves a book reviewer. But, where a “professional book reviewer” now has a publisher remit of “just give a summary, no spoilers for God’s sake and don’t kick up a storm of protest to vile reviews” your average Amazon reviewer seems to have no concept of what a spoiler is (reveal of plot inclusive ending), and most reviews blow the gaff either as glowing or vile reviews.   

But a BAD review can up your book sales. Strange as it may seem, people are curious creatures and BAD draws out the GOOD in most of us and what do we do when a bad book review pops up, we want to know for ourselves how BAD it is and more often than not the book is stunning for all the right reasons, in that it likely make us stop and think! I would imagine Sara Craven (Mills & Boon) author who dares to push boundaries has adopted elephant hide, because poor Sara has had more than her fair share of stick from Amazon reviewers. First off she was slammed for having a rape scene, and for having a heroine whom fell in love with the rapist. And, ever since that book it seems some reviewers purposely go out of their way to criticise her and ridicule her plots. Yeah, it’s a tough call to carry on writing when knowing malicious anonymous persons are lying in wait for your next book.

Luckily I have elephant hide, and I laughed like crazy when my latest “Scandalous Whispers” received the following review:

  “The hero and heroine are apart because of her mother's desire for Christina to marry a mean rake earl. Why Christina doesn't tell her silly mother she wants to marry Robert instead of the creepy earl and tell what the creep tries to do to get her alone and force his intentions on her is ridiculous! I love romance stories but this one just really misses the mark”.

Now bear in mind this reviewer titled the review thus: “Insipid”.

Did this review upset me? No.

Why not? Answer: I don’t do “Insipid”.  

As RFWers you all know that to say I write “Insipid stories” would be like saying I have a penchant for wearing pink, have fluffy pom-pom slippers and have a rose-tinted view on romance and adore stereotypical characters and mushy plots. As if – when in real life I love the waft of horse sweat, and don’t take kindly to horse shit from swanky dudes. The latter, fortunately, characterisation or caricature if you prefer, is moi, who loves a bit of romancing whilst able to smell a rat at fifty-paces. On the other hand, my character Christina is a young lady of the Regency era, and well brought up young ladies at that time were swayed by parental influence and often faced with arranged marriages.

Damn it all a 21^st century chick-lit female is more than likely to knee a jerk / rake in his jewels and deflate all the tyres on his Porsche if he came on too strong. While a Regency Miss is far more likely to conceal immoral advances from a rake she despises for fear her parents think the worst and, get her wed to him quick sharp. After all, parental intention will be to prevent any scandal and save her from consequences out of wedlock despite protests that her chastity remains in tact. BTW: the latter is not my plot, there’s more to it than that simple equation. That said, there are 21st century women who can be pushy executives and high-flying businesswomen, yet become putty or simmering wrecks if a guy breaks through their defensive shield  and embeds a twisting screw! Same can be said of dude counterparts when temptation leads and things don't go his way!

Let’s be honest, here. Stand a 21^st century young lady alongside one from the early 1800s little comparison can be drawn between them, beyond that of pent up emotions, raging hormones and young love exposed along with despair when things go badly wrong. So, what I’m saying is that the above review is written by a 21^st century female who has little or no knowledge of life in Jane Austen’s era or, chooses to ignore it.  And, the strange aspect to the above review is that the heroine doesn’t even know if the hero is interested in her when the rake makes immoral advances, so why in hell should she tell her mother she loves Robert? I’m fairly sure this reviewer hasn’t even read the book, and has set up her review on the basis of info from the blurb alone and from reading the sample pages.

So let’s take a look at the differences in social behaviour 21^st century Vs 1800s. Most young ladies born to gentry in the 1800s had little chance to rebel, their allowances ad dowry were subject to parental hand out, and if a young lady chose to run away she would have forfeited her allowance and her dowry. Young ladies of rank in the 1800s were very much under the control of parental persuasions, and I doubt many ran away for how were they to raise funds? That aspect I shall leave to your imaginations. And yes, some great storylines could come out of this kind of situation, but most would no doubt - in real-life 1800 mode - end in tragedy unlike the rosy-glow endings of your average historical romance novel. On the other hand a 21^st century young women has every opportunity for independent living, and to make something of herself no matter her background. Success boils down to good manners, self-confidence and go-getting what it is you want from life. Sitting on your arse criticising others because they’re getting on with success is pitiful.          

So, chins up, and if you ever get a bad review, look on it as your having arrived on the book scene. Because hey, (a shout-out) someone other than a friend has gone out of their way to post up a shit review, which in itself says more about the reviewer than it does about your book. ;)

And so I say to my wonderful anonymous book reviewer (just in case you’re reading this): thanks for stopping by to post up your review. You did me a great service! Because, in essence, I was stuck for something to write about for this guest post and you provided the inspiration for a sufficiently long post to bore the pants off RFWers! :)

Have a lovely day

Francine X

Thanks Francine. Now let's hear what you think. Drop us a comment - do you agree with Francine's take on bad reviews? Do you have a story to share?

Don't forget our Dec 2 Writing Challenge - see sidebar/challenge page for details!

Denise (L'Aussie)