Promote your Signings with BookTour

The release for Michael's Avempartha is about a month away and there is a lot of activity around the book signing tour that will be occurring April - June. There are some tools that I use that I thought I would share with the rest of you. I'll then have a post that "brings it all together". The first item I would like to cover is a great site called BookTour.

WHAT IS BOOKTOUR
BookTour is a site where authors can list their upcoming events: Signings, Lectures, Conventions, even virtual events. Readers who are interested in going to author signings register and get emails and RSS feeds whenever an event is near them. In addition, a number of other sites "pickup" the bookTour feed and you get free publicity by them posting events in their areas (More on this in a minute).

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST
As with many things like this on the Internet there is no cost. This may not always be the case (the site is actually "in Beta" at the moment but I've used it extensively since October 2008 and never had to pay a dime for it.

WHAT DO I DO?
The whole system is very easy the first thing you do (as with most sites is make your profile. They provide a number of places for you to provide "more content" about yourself that people will see when they click through. For instance:

• Your head shot
• An overview of you (Bio, Awards, Reviews, and "blurb" of each book)
• Book Trailers
• List your books (Shows cover and provides links to Amazon and local retailers)

After you have a profile, you simply add the events one at a time. It already has in the system most bookstores, but if you find a venue missing (say if you are doing a signing at a coffee shop you can add that

WHAT READERS SEE
When the reader receives emails, or RSS feeds about upcoming signings if they click on it they will see your profile page along with a listing of all your events. Here is an example from Michael's BookTour Listing:

WIDGET FOR YOUR WEBSITE
BookTour provides a great little widget (plug in) that you can put on your site so that your followers can know where you will be when. It provides "real-time" data that you have entered into BookTour so you don't have to update your website every time you add a new venue - simply add it to BookTour and it will show up automatically on your site. The blue box on the left is the widget as it appears on Michael's site.

This is how you do this

1. Make a 2 column table on your website. In the first column put something simple like "aaa" in the second column put all the content you currently have now.
2. From BookTour do a search to find yourself, and get on your "profile page". On the right directly below the red "Request a visit from this author" button click on the "on my website" link.
3. Decide how many events you want displayed at a time (depending on how long your page is).
4. Where you currently have aaa replace the aaa with the data from the first box. The "number" identifies "your" page as opposed to someone else.
5. Take the code from the second box and paste it directly above the "/body" of the page.

ANCILLARY BENEFITS
I'm sure you google yourself or your book from time to time. One of the great things about using sites like BookTour is you get more exposure on the Internet. First there are the listing from BookTour itself and since it is a fairly large site with lots of links it gets a high SEO ranking. This alone is worth listing your venues here.

Another benefit is many newspapers and other websites are "hooked" into BookTour and take content from it. For instance for this article I did a google and found 5 newspapers that were linking to events I had in BookTour and Goodreads also pulls events from it to present to its millions of online readers.

WRAPPING IT ALL UP
I'm the first one to admit that book signings are not the best way to spread the word about your book - they are time consuming for the amount of exposure and number of sales you actually get. However, they are great for "establishing creditability" for your work. If you are going through the time and effort you need to make the best of it and using BookTour is a great resource to utilize.

Marketing #4: Sample Chapters

I was having a discussion with an author on-line on GoodReads. He was a bit upset because no one was buying his books. I decided to "checkout his books". In just a short time it became completely clear to me a big part of his problem - I could not (even with a lot of searching on my part) find any sample chapters.

Sample chapters are essential, especially for new authors. People would like to "try before they buy" as it were and if you don't give them a place to investigate your work you'll be fighting an uphill battle.

WHERE TO PLACE SAMPLES
You should not just think about one way for people to get at sample chapters. You should use a series of weapons in your arsenal including:

• Amazon Search Inside the Book
• Google Book Search
• Authors Den Book Excerpts
• GoodReads Excerpts
• Author's Website
• All-in-one Book Page

AMAZON'S SEARCH INSIDE THE BOOK
We discussed this a bit in another post I'll refer you there rather than repeat myself. But one thing I should point out about this source of getting a "sample out" - You have no control over "what" is posted. They are going to do a few pages from the front of the book and where it stops may not be at the best place for your book. For "The Crown Conspiracy" the first chapter is a red herring, because the people you are first introduced to are not the "main characters" but bit players. Many people reading about it on Amazon might get the wrong impression so for the chapters I have control over I actually post an excerpt from chapter 2 which does have the main characters in it.

GOOGLE BOOK SEARCH

This is very similar to Amazon's Search Inside the Book Program. An example of Michael's Book which is in the program is shown above. It also indexes the entire book but shows a few pages. Again you have no control over what pages are shown in fact in Michael's version it starts (for some inexplicable reason) on page 2 instead of page 1. One of these days I have to fix this.

AUTHORS DEN
One of these days I have to do an entire post about this site as it offers a ton of great opportunities for authors and is highly ranked in the search engines so it is a good way to get your books high up on Search Engine Optimizations. But one thing I'll bring up for today's post is that they you can post your books and in that posting is a place for putting an excerpt of your book. I HIGHLY recommend that you take the time to pay attention to the formatting when putting into this format. When I cut/pasted from Word there were line and paragraph breaks that were not ideal. So I took the time to put it into notepad, make all the paragraphs on individual lines then pasted it into AuthorsDen. This made a much more attractive and easier to read post. (This is where I eventually found the author's excerpt that I stated above and he did not do this - the overall effect was on of "unprofessionalism"). Remember anything worth doing is worth doing properly so take a few minutes to put your best foot forward.

GOODREADS
If you don't have an author profile on GoodReads you really need to. Like AuthorsDen this deserves a post of its own but suffice to say they have an area where authors can showcase their writings as well. Here are some tips for when you post your samples chapters on this venue:

• Description is 2048 characters and will allow for html formatting so use for bolding and for italics. I suggest you put the "blurb" from your back of the book and then select a few "choice" reviews and put them here.
• Make sure you set the genre drop down to the most appropriate category for your book if you can't find one that makes sense use "Literary & Fiction" for novels and "Non fiction" as your best "generic" categories
• Tags: On this site tags MUST be single words so take this into account when making your tags
• Don't forget to add your ISBN for the book that the chapter relates to - this ensures a picture of the cover is included and provides a quick link to the Goodreads page for that book

AUTHOR'S WEBSITE
Again I've already covered the importance of an author's website elsewhere on this blog. But it bears repeating that having a books page with a sample chapter with each book is essential. I always recommend having a page where you have the "Blurb" from the back of the book and THEN a button for the sample chapter - so many people drop the readers right into the sample chapter and without context they are lost. Give them the same information that a reader in a store would have.

ALL-IN-ONE-BOOK PAGE
This is something that not many people have - but I think it is essential. This is a page that is "independent" of your website (i.e. you would not land on it as a part of your website but it contains everything you would ever want to know about your book in one spot. Again I'll go over this page in more details in a future post but suffice to say that the ability to access the sample chapter must be on this page.

FORMAT FOR POSTED SAMPLE
For the pages that you have control over I highly recommend you post them in a .pdf format on 8 1/2" x 11" with ample spacing such that it looks like what it would look like if it were in book form but "blown up" to the larger page size. In other words make it look as much as possible like a real book but allow it to print nicely on their printer. Make sure that on every page you have the following: page number, author name, book title, URL to "All-in-one Book Page". They just might give it to a friend and then they will have all the information required to order their own copy.

PICKING THE RIGHT SAMPLE
When posting a "sample" it is not always necessary to choose the first chapter of the book. Although in most cases this will be the logical choice. When I first posted a sample chapter for "The Crown Conspiracy" I started getting some interesting feedback - people didn't like the characters and were being "turned off". As I mentioned these were not the "real characters" and so it was giving the book a wrong impression. So for that sample chapter I choose a lively piece near the beginning of the book that shows the main characters and the rapport between them.

PICKING THE ENDING
While I'm not a huge Twilight fan I will admit that I was impressed with the sample chapter that Stephanie Meyers put in the first book. The reason is where she ended it. It definitely ended in a place where someone would want to rush right out to get the book to see what will happen next. Now it turns out that her Chapter 2 was a huge let down from the build up but the technique worked. So choose carefully where you end your sample even if you don't publish the whole thing. In Avempartha there are three sections in the first chapter. The first two are compelling and end with the main characters going off to find someone. The third section is really just them "finding" the person - not much really going on there so I ended the sample chapter for that book after the first two.

WRAPPING IT UP
When posting sample chapters make it easy that anyone can find them no matter where they "find" your book. Use every avenue at your disposal. The disadvantages of Amazon and Google (can't select which pages you wish to showcase) is a sever limitation so be sure to use the other venues so you can pick "the perfect" pages for showcasing each book.

Writing for Dummies

Today's post is as the result of a request. I love it when people email me with topics to cover. Feel free to email me anytime at robin.sullivan.dc@gmail.com with a suggestion or just to let me know that you read the blog and find it useful (or not so useful). Knowing that people actually read some of what I write here makes it worth writing down. If there are only crickets out there I have better things to spend my time on.

Anyway I was emailing with an author about podcasting and mentioned that Tee Morris (author of Podcasting for Dummies and Advanced Podcasting Techniques for Dummies) is coming to do a guest lecture for my writer's group. They asked if they could use "For Dummies" in the title of their next book - so I did some research for them.

FIRST A BIT ABOUT TITLES

Book titles are not copy rightable (okay not a word but you get my point). An author can not "reserve" a title for them and them alone. Elie Wiesel's "Twilight" was published in 1988, Nancy Pickard wrote "Twilight" in 1995, Meg Cabot has a "Twilight" from 2005, Erin Hunter's "Twilight" is from 2006, Christtie Gordon's "Twilight" was published 2008, and I think there is a s somewhat well known person called Stephenie Meyers who used it in 2005. ;-) These are just a few that I found and I'm sure there are others.

NOTE: Always consider if your title is used by others before selecting it - it is important to have a title that has a good Search Engine Rank - obviously any of the authors above will have a difficult time getting Google's attention against the Meyer popularity. Books in Print (put out by Bowker - the US ISBN agent) is a great resource for determining if your title has been used before. Also a quick search on Amazon is helpful. So no one can stop you from using "For Dummies" in your title. But..

BRANDS ARE COPY RIGHTABLE

Everyone has seen the hugely popular "For Dummies" books - Their trade mark yellow and black with distinctive font and the triangular headed big eyed geek (known as "Dummies Man"). These images are definitely copy rightable and are - Notice the ® around both the cartoon guy and the "For Dummies". It is not the words that are copy written it is "the look" -those particular words written that particular way - (i.e. colors, font, etc). So if you attempted to "emulate the look" of the For Dummies then Wiley will definitely be coming after you. You will open yourself up for a huge financial liability. This organization has spent millions investing in this "brand" and I'm sure they have a whole department that works on ferreting out people who abuse it and they will have a legal department that is not worth tangling with.

WHO OWNS "FOR DUMMIES"

There are over 150 million "For Dummies" books in print and 1,400 titles. More are developed all the time by Wiley (AKA John Wiley & Sons) A leading non-fiction producer of: reference books, text books, and brands such as Cliff Notes, For Dummies, and Frommer's.

A LITTLE HISTORY
The first "For Dummies was published in 1991 "DOS for Dummies". It was initially met with skepticism — most bookstore chains didn't want to carry the book at all, claiming that the title insulted their customers and readers in general. But the publisher prevailed arguing the title was a "term of endearment" that readers would immediately relate to and identify with. Their success speaks for itself.

I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A FOR DUMMIES BOOK

At one time you could approach the "For Dummies" publisher (the people who owned the brand before selling it to Wiley) with an idea - basically "pitch" them the concept and your credentials and if they liked your idea they would take on the project. If you have an agent you can still do this. If you don't have an agent then the best you can hope for is to be placed in their database. Basically they have a stable of "For Dummies" authors then when they decide a books should be written they look to see who has the best credentials to write it. This is an excerpt from their site.

"It is Wiley's policy not to accept unsolicited proposals for books in the For Dummies series. You may send us a copy of your credentials for our files or contact a literary agent to submit a proposal on your behalf. If you choose to submit a proposal through an agent and do not already have one, we suggest that you consult a publication like Literary Market Place that offers contact information for literary agents. Please be aware that Wiley Publishing, Inc., retains the right to publish a book, at any time, on any topic."

Which basically means if your agent suggests a good idea -- they might do it anyway without you ;-)

HOW MUCH DO THEY PAY

Once I talk to Tee Morris I'll learn a bit more about their royalty structure. My guess is it will be less generous then industry standard because they are putting the lion's share of their money into promoting the brand and I'm sure the supply of authors wishing to be "For Dummies" authors is higher than the demand. This is only speculation on my part -- call it an "educated guess".

WRAPPING IT ALL UP

Being in the "For Dummies" stable would certainly be a feather in the cap of any non-fiction writer. While you "could" use that in your title - I would not suggest it. I did a search on Amazon and didn't find a single book with "For Dummies" that wasn't part of the Wiley offerings. I'm 100% sure that Wiley is very protective of this brand and anything close may be challenged.