Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of bad behavior from self-published authors who didn’t have the advantage of belonging to professional writing organizations. And it’s sad. I’ve seen bar fights, blackball lists, and just plain nastiness. The internet has made creative introverts keyboard warriors. It’s not pretty. And it’s not professional. Kindness never costs anyone anything.
If you’re not part of a professional writing organization, then join one. Writing is a very insular world. Worry about yourself, your product, and your career. Don’t compare yourself to others, and be happy for others’ successes. Negativity in any capacity (anger, hatred, disappointment, jealousy, frustration) is a creativity killer.
10. Self-Care and Balance
Speaking from experience, there’s such a thing as too much success. Find your balance. Find what kind of production schedule makes you comfortable. Write what makes you happy. Find something to do that’s not writing or managing the business of writing. It’s easy to work eighteen-hour days when you own your own publishing house. It’s also very easy to burn out and not be able to produce anything.
Take care of yourself, love yourself, and your writing will reap all the rewards.
NANCY J. COHEN
In the old days, it was a death knell when your series got canceled. A new publisher wouldn’t pick it up because they didn’t have control over your backlist. Even if your sales were steady, that didn’t count in the blockbuster mentality. With nowhere else to turn, you had to start fresh and create a new concept to attract another traditional publisher. This isn’t the case anymore. You have choices now. A small press may take on your series, or you might decide to indie publish your work. You can become a hybrid author, self-publishing your ongoing series while submitting a different project to a new publisher. The end no longer has to be the end. One caveat here: make sure you retain the rights to your characters and series.
If you want to conclude the series and move on, write a book or novella or even a short story to tie up the loose ends with your characters. Or consider creating a spin-off series, with new characters but in the same world readers have come to love. Writers have many more options today when a series is canceled. It’s only the end if you say it is.
Authors Online
Building your author identity and reaching out to readers, online.
MADDEE JAMES
You’ve written a book: congratulations! Now, whether you’ve found an editor/agent/publisher or you’ve decided to self-publish, the vital question is: How do you get your book out into the world, and more specifically, how do you use the internet to market yourself and your book? Here are the most essential things you need to know.
Good Writing Comes First
The most important thing any author can do is write a good book. Focus on that first. Everything else comes second.
Writing the book is the fun part for many authors, and what comes next—the branding, marketing, promotion, website building, social media—can feel overwhelming. But this chapter should make you feel less stressed, because the simple answer is that you don’t actually have to do everything you hear others talk about. While you definitely need to establish an online platform, once you get the basic needs down, you can focus on what works best for you—and then get back to the joy of writing the next book.
Build Your Author Identity
It’s important to put forth a clear conception of you and your writing, and one of the best ways to do that is through building your author identity—your brand. There are many different names for the genre(s) you may write in: mysteries, thrillers, historical fiction, psychological suspense, gothic mysteries, cozies, and so on. Figure out what “theme” or “feel/style” best describes your books. While you may write more than one type of book, there is most likely a theme that unites your work.
How do you want potential readers to perceive you and your books? Suspenseful, dark, atmospheric, frightening, humorous, romantic? That’s the first thing you have to figure out. Try to come up with a brief elevator pitch that describes all your books, and then use that to build your author brand. Your brand should clearly show your readers what you and your writing are about and what they can expect when they read your books and come across you online. Your brand is… you.
Along with your theme, make sure you know your target audience. You may write for adults, young adults, or middle-grade readers. These are very different kinds of readers, particularly in the online universe. Note that if you write across genres and for multiple age levels, your theme should still allow you to have a focus… you just may have to work at it a little harder.
Once you know your brand and target audience, you’re ready to get more into the nitty-gritty of what’s next: building your website, your newsletter list, and your social media presence.
Your Author Website: The Epicenter of Your Professional Online Presence
Your author website is the hub of your online identity because it’s the number one place you can control your message. It should include information about you, your books (including buy links, of course), the social media you participate in, a way to contact you, and a clear form for readers to sign up for your newsletter, among many other things.
Domain names
Reserve your domain name regardless of where you are in the publishing process. Your domain name is your very own home on the internet. If yourname.com isn’t available, add “author” or “books” to it, as in yournamebooks.com. Get a .com name if at all possible.
If you want to get additional domain names, like your book titles, feel free, but your author name is most important and is the one the other domains should point to.
Website design (theme and branding)
Starting with the home page, your website should make it immediately clear what your theme is and who your target audience is. It’s not just about the content; it’s also about the colors, the logo, the font, the style, the imagery… viewers should be able to get an idea of your author brand the second they view your website.
It’s worth every penny to have a website that looks and feels professional. If this is something you can do yourself, go for it. But there are many author website designers to choose from, at a wide range of costs. It’s well worth your time and money to get a site that shows your work in the best light.
Website responsiveness
Responsive websites that adapt to all screen sizes (desktops, laptops, tablets, phones) are extremely important for both viewer visibility and search engine optimization. Make sure your website stays current on all devices.
Website platform
There are many choices for platforms on which to build your website. Choose one that has stood the test of time, like WordPress. Other companies have come and gone, but WordPress has been around forever. There are many, many WordPress themes to choose from that allow websites to look very different.
Website hosting
Choose a website hosting service based on longevity (again, some of these companies come and go), good customer service, site speed, automated backups, etc. Have an SSL certificate (this is a protocol for web browsers and servers that allows for the authentication, encryption, and decryption of data sent over the internet) on your website, regardless of whether you plan to do e-commerce, for two reasons. First, Google gives preference in its rankings to websites that use SSL certificates, which could affect your search query position. Second, site visitors who see “not secure” in the address bar might not feel comfortable viewing your site—even though there’s no security threat. Seeing the padlock or the word “secure” will make these visitors feel safe.
Website analytics
All sites should have analytics code installed to monitor site traffic. Delving into your website analytics allows you to figure out marketing strategies to help drive people to your site.
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of optimizing your website to make it reach a high
position in the search results of Google or other search engines. In the simplest terms, it means adding keywords and specific content so that a search engine might show it as a top result when users search for certain keywords. However, with billions of websites online, rising to the top of a search engine is close to an impossible task. Along with doing the basics of SEO (using your name as your domain and adding keywords, title, and description in the head section of your website), your goal should be to build a website with clear navigation and unique, interesting content about you and your books.
Navigation and content
The most important content on an author website is as follows:
Home page
Bio
Books
Contact and social media links
Newsletter sign-up
Media downloads
Home page: The opening page of your website should have, at a minimum, your latest (and/or upcoming) book, buy links, and a newsletter signup. As previously stated, it should be immediately clear what you write about. Viewers should be able to get an instant idea of your author brand, who you are, and what kind of books you write.
Make sure to update your home page at least several times a year, and ideally more, as keeping your website fresh is very important for SEO.
Bio: Every author website should have both a personal bio and a shorter professional bio (the latter is described in the media downloads section below). The personal bio is important in that it tells the reader who you are, or at least the author brand that you want to project. While authenticity is extremely important, it doesn’t mean you need to tell the reader too much personal information. Figure out what kind of author persona you want to express, and make this clear in style and feel.
Books: This is obviously the most important part of an author website. The books section should show all your latest covers, clearly indicating which are stand-alones and which are in series, with the latter showing the order. If your series books don’t need to be read in order, state that in this section, but still show the order, as this is important to many readers.
The book page(s) should have synopses and links to purchase the books, along with both professional and reader reviews. Excerpts and other bonus material about each book can also be included (book club questions, author Q&As, background information, book inspiration, etc.). Note that buy links should include direct links to all major book retailers along with a link to independent bookstores when possible. You can give links for ebooks, print, audiobooks, etc. Also be aware that many online retailers have affiliate programs you might want to sign up for.
Contact and social media links: There should be a contact form visitors can use to reach you and information on how to reach your agent or publicist, if you have them. Include links to all the social media platforms you are active on (more on this in the following section).
Newsletter sign-up: Set up a newsletter sign-up with a mailing list service such as MailerLite or Mailchimp as soon as possible so that you can start collecting the email addresses of readers. The folks who sign up for your newsletter list should be considered your superfans—those who always want to order your book the second it is available, talk about you to others, and so forth. You need to cultivate this list and treat your superfans like gold.
Make sure your newsletter sign-up is on a prominent spot on every page of your website (without being obnoxious about it). You’ll find more on newsletters in a following section.
Media downloads: This section should include images available for download: at least one professional author photo along with the latest book cover(s). This is also where your short professional bio (100 to 300 words) should go. The purpose of this section is to make it easy for anyone in the online or print media to get what they need if they are writing an article about you or your books.
Social Media Platforms Are Where You Build Your Online Community
If your website is your professional hub, your social media platforms are your social hub, where you can interact with readers, other authors, and industry professionals on a more personal level.
But: choose only the platforms that you actually want to engage on. Many authors (and publishers) will tell you that you have to be part of all major social media platforms in order to best market your book. They are wrong. You shouldn’t have a social media presence somewhere you don’t want to be. The whole point is to be social, to have fun, to interact with people. If you don’t like a platform, you won’t have fun and, in turn, you won’t be authentic. It will all just become a huge frustration and time suck.
The second most important thing, once you decide which platforms you want to join, is to think about which platforms best fit you from your author branding standpoint. Different platforms appeal to different types of audiences. Make sure to research this before you begin.
Always keep your author brand in mind for consistency. Through the use of headers, and of course what you choose to post, what you are all about should shine through. It’s also important to use the same name on your social platforms that you do in your website URL.
This brings us to another crucial point: what you should post. A well-established rule is the 80:20 ratio, meaning 80 percent of your social media posts should be fun and personal, and only 20 percent should be promotional. What you will hear more often than anything else is to be authentic. Show people who you are as a person and a writer and it will naturally move them toward wanting to check out your books.
You can do “hidden” promotion by posting about things that have to do with your books, like amusing videos of yourself reading from them or photos of locations in them… in other words, you can promote your books without being direct about it. But the key here is to have fun with it. Become known for something like silly pet photos or videos, inspirational quotes, stories about your goofy partner, your love of history or nature or peacocks or muffins—unique things about you and your life that keep people coming back for more. And leave the sales on your author website, where they belong.
Video is fantastic for creating an instant connection. Some ideas for videos you can post include you reading an exciting (or humorous) excerpt from your book, music clips that inspire your writing, you reading reviews of your own books (including the bad or ridiculous ones!) or other authors’ books, interviews with other authors, and book trailers.
Last, post consistently (not only when you have a new book out). Stay engaged with your followers by commenting on their posts, at least occasionally. Make sure to respond when they ask you questions or comment on your posts. Remember that you are building a community around your author brand.
Newsletters Are the Best Way to Keep in Touch with Your Readers
Your mailing list, which you use to send monthly or semiregular newsletters, is one of the foundations of your online presence. Newsletters allow you to reach your biggest fans directly. They are also more of a long-term, stable way to reach readers than social media channels, which may come and go.
You want to let your newsletter subscribers know when you have a new book coming out or an event coming up, but you also want to give them an exclusive look into your writing world. If you consistently engage your subscribers with fun and interesting newsletters, you will have fans for life. So treat your subscribers as you would your dear friends, with great care. Make them feel special. Let your personality shine through (as long as it’s consistent with your author brand). Be funny, be engaging. Tell them things they can’t find anywhere else. That will keep them reading your books, coming back to your website, connecting with you on social media, and telling their friends about you.
Support Other Authors
Authors supporting each other is one of the joys of the mystery/thriller community. We see it all the time on social media and blogs, in newsletters, and at conferences. It’s a simple fact: nurturing relationships with other authors online helps you, too.
Ideas for this include posting about books you’re excited abo
ut, sharing others’ good news like award nominations, recommending new releases by other authors, and doing giveaways for their books in your newsletters, blogs, and social media platforms. What helps one helps all.
Another good idea is to start a blog or social media page with a group of like-minded authors who are similar to you in theme or genre. This is an almost effortless way to support and cross-promote one another. Some of the best group blogs are like being part of a coffee talk with the authors; it’s very personal and makes readers feel like they are in the authors’ circle of friends. Make sure to throw in questions so people have a reason to comment. Like with newsletters, be amusing, interesting, and engaging. Draw readers into your world.
You Can Do It!
So, the basics: write a good book, figure out your brand, build a website, sign up with a mailing list company, engage in social media that appeals to you, and support other authors. Simple, right? You can do it!
MYSTI BERRY
Five Ways to Tame the Social Media Monster:
Spend more time on writing than you do on marketing.
Social media channels are NOT DIRECT SALES CHANNELS. Yes, I’m shouting. It’s important.
Expect to spend a lot of time and money on just getting people to discover you. Only a fraction of the people who notice you will be interested, and only a fraction of the interested people will buy what you are selling. Approaching every channel as a direct-sales channel will alienate people before they have a chance to evaluate you, your brand, and your products.
The best ways to get attention and engagement can change rapidly in social media contexts, so anything that anyone tells you today may be mostly true, partly true, or totally false tomorrow.
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