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Hi Rachel. Good question. I included the link to my Twitter bio so you could see mine & what it looks like. To do it yourself: enter one link in where it says WEBSITE (this is where I put my amazon link). Put the other in your BIO section. Be sure to shorten the link (use bit.ly, owl.ly etc.) to give you room to write your bio info.
Hope that helps. Any more questions, let me know!
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Awesome tip, thanks. 😀 Also, had the thought of shortening the link and tweeting it then posting that – so I should get a good analytics read via HootSuite as far as how many people click on it, is my thinking. 😀
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Excellent information, Badredhead. Loved your Youtube video too – great hair!
eden
Thanks so much, Eden! Hehe, great hair. The YouTube videos are new for me but fun. xxoo
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Yes, this is WordPress.org site, self-hosted. It’s great — there’s a learning curve but it has lots of plug-ins and that do things for you (like analytics and SEO and social media) it makes your life so easy. I love it.
Reply I own the domain, but it’s hosted on GoDaddy.com. You can read the difference between hosted and self-hosted: http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
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Great info, Rachel. Goodreads often baffles me. In your opinion, if you could give one tip, what is the way to optimize your use of Goodreads to promote your book?
Reply Hi Sherry! Happy to see you here. Goodreads is not the most user-friendly interface, that’s for sure. People either love it or hate it. I’m with you, it’s a bit baffling. Many writers join as readers of book clubs (for example, @TNBBC — The Next Best Book Club) which has over 8K readers. Or advertising as I mentioned. Feed your blog. Add your Twitter friends regularly (that’s easy) & FB also. Emlyn Chand started a Karma group. She LOVES Goodreads. I think she’s got it wired. Hit her up or watch her stream. In fact, I think she’s written a post about it on her Novel Publicity site. Thanks for reminding me — I need to go read it again!
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[…] Top 25 Ways to Sell Your Book Without Spamming Links (badredheadmedia.com) […]
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Nice post, Rachel. I found the three day after free thing true, too. But you’re right, it did get me some traction and now my book is hovering around 10k in the Kindle store. Love it! 🙂 And, I also just got into using hootsuite. I’m chalking 6 bucks over to them next month to be able to bulk schedule tweets. Great tips!
Reply Sweet. Try some of these other tips before your next free days — I’m still hanging on to my rankings (#3 on Motherhood for example on SNARK) though it’s dropped back into the 3,000s. I definitely feel having Kindle Nation Daily or Pixel of Ink (I think I forgot to mention them) do your advertising for you is a HUGE boost. As for Hootsuite, absolutely worth it. I compose my tweets in the window since it counts for me and at this point, have about 12 accounts going — worth it for the bulk scheduling or multiple accounts, whichever you have going on. For mobile, I like Tweetcaster Pro or Echofon Pro, Tweetr for scheduling.
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Thanks, Tim. Appreciate the props. There are truly even more than what I offer here. I love Twitter Counter (you can see it on my http://RachelintheOC.com blog) that’s free and a great option to connect Twitter followers to your blog. I didn’t even cover WordPress and all the plug-ins! I will have my WP expert guest post in a few weeks to review all those terrific options and how that can all work together to get your name out there even more than spamming links even could.
Best of luck. I have many more free tips each day on my @BadRedheadMedia stream and FB page also. Hope to see you there. 🙂
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Rachel – I’ve been doing this for 9 months now and I still feel like a beginner. So much great stuff here. I bought your book about a month ago – MUST read it this weekend. Thanks for sharing.
Reply Hi Red! As you may or may not know, I left the IBC in December. But, the info in Dollars & Sense is valid and still stands. I use it myself often! Carolyn & Amber make good points in their sections as well. I learn every day — there are so many terrific people out there who have more experience than I. It’s so important to ‘just keep swimming.’ xo
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Awesome, thanks so much. So many options for writers that I think people either don’t know about, are intimidated by, or figure are too difficult to do so they don’t try or bother. Try stuff! If it doesn’t work, don’t do it anymore. Thanks for visiting and commenting on my blog.
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Great post Rachel. This is full of helpful and highly relevant information. Congratulations on your sales!
Reply Thanks so much, Nicole. I wanted to share practical info that I do myself and recommend for my clients. I’ve tried many things over the past eighteen months to prepare and sell my own books as well as help other authors with theirs and I see sales numbers constantly. I also monitor multiple social media accounts very closely. It’s quite clear what works and what doesn’t. Thanks for reading and commenting.
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Glad you stopped by and read it, Marjorie and thank you. I hope it helps. I know it’s A LOT of info and even doing just a small bit will help. Any questions, ask. 🙂
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Hi Karen — yes, in answer to your question. I did exactly that. WP has a plug-in that transfers your content over. It takes minutes, really. Sometimes the formatting is a little jiggy but it’s fixable. And you know who helped me? Barb aka @sugarbeatbc. She’s an expert and super patient w/ all this stuff. I’d be lost without her, truly. Thanks for reading and commenting, K.
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Really great stuff. There is so much to implement and so little time. I need a couple of secretaries to get it all done. Unfortunately, I’m an army of one. Will try the most time effective things first and then slowly add more as time allows. Thanks so much for posting this. Oh, here’s something that may interest you. Pimp ur Blog Episode One: Boost Search Results with Social Bookmarking By Paul Rice and Messie Jessie He’s at @gettingwell4 It’s all about how to do social media bookmarking to drive up your search engine ratings so your stuff appears first when someone does a search. Great stuff.
Reply I’ll check them out, Daniel. I use WP plug-ins here that do much of that stuff automatically for me (why so many people already love WP so much!) but I will check them out. Google has seriously cracked down on over tagging and back links (which I don’t do) but social media bookmarking appears to be on the upswing. Thanks for the info. Will take a look!
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This is great advice. I have a book coming out int eh ext few months – not self-published but micro-publisher and I donating all royalties to mental health charities. Therefore extra important to make the most of the marketing time I have available. The tips you have given here are invaluable as I had been SO worried about spamming my precious twitter and Facebook followers. Will have to pluck up the courage to do YouTube. Does it help for people to actually see your face? I am shy in front of a camera and don’t want to put people off!!
Reply Yes, it does help because people love to put a face with the name. However, lots of people are shy like you. You could do this instead: put together a little trailer using pics of your book and of you with some voice and music in the background. If you’re not sure how, ask for help. I had NO clue, so I asked a friend @BK36 to do what’s called a ‘branding trailer’ for me. She’s awesome and works within your budget. If not her, look at programs that do similar things (but take into account the learning curve). Hope that helps!
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Finally had time to read this. (Right after I took the link to my Amazon page out of my bio. Putting it back.) I’m also going to look into ads. It’s about time I start putting some money into my marketing. Do you have more info about doing a branding trailer? Thank you!
Reply Hi Amelia! I do — contact @BK36 on Twitter. She also run the Virtual Book Tour Cafe (affordable book tours). Very talented lady. If you look at my http://RachelintheOC.com site, you’ll see my branding trailer on the right sidebar. (Also on my Amazon bio.) The great thing about adding the Amazon link to your bio via a customized Bit.ly link is you can track the clicks. I love that. 😉 You can’t track BUYS but we can’t have it all now, can we? Let me know how it goes w/ BK. xo
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You are welcome and please, pass on to anyone you know who is annoying you with spam :)…xo
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Reply […] grow my core group. (For specific info on how to sell your book without constantly spamming links, see my previous article about just […]
Reply […] grow my core group. (For specific info on how to sell your book without constantly spamming links, see my previous article about just […]
Reply […] grow my core group. (For specific info on how to sell your book without constantly spamming links, see my previous article about just […]
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Fantastic blog Rachel. This is now in my favourites as I will be referring to it again and again. Top stuff. About to step onto the WP and blog train myself, been putting it off with the fear that I might crash the internet or something. But, I have to dive in at some point right. Time to pinch my nose and take the plunge. Massive thanks for the advice 🙂
Reply Thank you, Dave! Quite welcome. Blogging is great, and the platform really isn’t so bad once you get into it. I personally spent a few hours w/ @sugarbeatbc aka Barb Drozdowich, who coaches people on WP. She’s extremely knowledgeable and I can’t say enough great things about her. Her goal is to get you to learn yourself and I do pretty well. And she’s affordable. Best of luck.
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Wonderfully informative article, Rachel! While I’ve been published for several years, I (admittedly) have been remiss in promotion. Only recently (with three novels and one anthology contribution under my belt) have I began seriously looking at promotion online and how to effectively do that. On a whole, I consider myself current on most things. But I hadn’t heard of several of these items. Hootsuite and Tweetdeck confuse me, but I’m trying one of them out to see how it goes; and Triberr…well, it confuses me moreso. But I’m sure it works, so I’ll figure it out!
I did have one question about WP (because I hear it praised so often). I’m considering the switch BUT I have a blog tour set up at the moment with my Blogger account. What happens if I switch now? Do I need to recontact everyone and give them my new WP addy? Or will it “roll over” with some of the plug-ins you mentioned like with the old articles, etc. And do I lose my followers, or do they magically become transported to my new, improved WP site?
Sorry if I sound a bit naive about this. I’m a “show it to me” sort. And, before I go hinking with my brand contact info, I want to make sure my house doesn’t come crumbling down. On my head. lol
I am, most definitely, sharing this article with several friends who are as baffled about proper promotion as I am.
BC Brown ~ Paranormal, Mystery, Romance, Fantasy
“Because Weird is Good.”
Hi BC, and all good questions.
Yes, there’s a ‘rollover’ plug-in. I did the same thing — moved from Blogger to WP. Easy. Make sure you’re on WP.org not .com (the free one) so you can use all the fabulous plug-ins. It’s not expensive — like $5/month.
WP.org is great because it’s so much easier to tag and optimize your posts. Instead of having to do it each time, it remembers your most used tags and suggests them to you. I also like Zemanta — it links to previous articles of yours or others you mention or recommend (just fill out a quick form).
As for followers, they will be automatically redirected so that’s easy. And you can install a Google Friend Connect widget on your blog (as I have) w/ your blogger credentials and blogger friends can still connect.
I prefer Hootsuite over Tweetdeck but that’s a personal choice. From an SEO standpoint, you get more ‘credit’ for a Tweetdeck-generated tweet than anywhere else since it’s owned by Twitter. From a scheduling standpoint, Hootsuite (in my opinion), is the standout.
I hope that answers your questions! If not, my email is over there —->>>>feel free to drop me a line. 🙂
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I use Hootsuite too, but to promote my blog posts. Still, it doesn’t stop me from checking Twitter every thirty minutes. 🙁
Reply Yea, people are addicted to Twitter, that’s for sure. I turn off the notifications so as to get work done. So distracting!
Reply […] Top 25 Ways to Sell Your Book Without Spamming Links(badredheadmedia.com) […]
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I am a new fan! Thanks for sharing. I just love your blog. You have GREAT content here. As an author of four books, I am always trying to find ways to get the word out and connect with new readers. Oh.. and I am a snarky redhead too!
Reply Thank you, Marla! Snarky and redhead just seem to go together.
Glad you’ve found useful info here. That’s truly my main goal: help authors sell more books.
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This is great information. I wish I would have found it sooner. I see several things I can do right away.
Reply So glad you found me, then! Thank you so much. I’m also on Twitter and Facebook. It’s fun to take action and see results. That’s what I hope to get across.
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Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the mention of BookBuzzr. Regarding Google Ads I’d like to share our experience:
We ran a small test campaign on Google for the Hunger Games Fan Festival which we conducted on Freado. We did this mainly because we’d received a free advertising coupon from Google and took it as an opportunity to test the efficacy of Google ads.
We tested with a bunch of keywords such as Hunger Games Trilogy, Peeta, Katniss etc. In the beginning, we set it for the default values suggested by Google which was approximately 70 cents per click. Initially, these keywords were not working for us (i.e. the people who were clicking on the keywords were not performing the desired activities when they came to Freado.com.) Later, one of our team members went in and played around with the bids for each of the keywords and in the end our cost came down to approximately 35 cents per click. The other big learning was that specific keywords such as Katniss or Peeta worked better than general keywords such as Hunger Games.
Since the entire campaign was essentially a free trial of Google ads for us we did not feel the pinch. Had we been paying real money, we would have wanted to spend a lot less than 35 cents per click to be really satisfied and recommend this to others.
You can read the full article here – http://www.bookbuzzr.com/blog/book-marketing/how-to-market-your-book-through-google-ads/
It will be interesting to see how much you normally spend for Google ads and what kind of conversion ratios you expect.
Cheers,
Vikram Narayan
Founder BookBuzzr (& Freado)
The information in this article is a must for anyone who wants to build sales of their book. I have stumbled into using some of the suggestions on my own, but there are so many things I did not think about. I will be using Rachael’s ideas as a guide for further marketing of my book, Desert Victim on my web site, http://www.NuBeeWriter.Com, and elsewhere. Thanks Rachael.
Reply Thank you, Ron. I’m so glad you found my suggestions helpful. I see lots of authors only spamming links on Twitter or Facebook and that simply doesn’t work. In fact, it turns people off completely. One of the easiest ways to provide a link is to shorten it and add it to your Twitter bio. And you can track clicks (if you use bit.ly to shorten it). It’s great.
Best of luck (and planning 🙂 with your new book.
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BookBuzzr,
With regard to Adwords.
I wanted to go beyond focusing on conversion ratios. There are many reasons to run an AdWords campaign. A well-optimized and targeted AdWords campaign can offer many benefits and insights. For example,
• Does your landing page really sell? If you are getting a lot of qualified clicks and no sales. Then the question becomes why is my Amazon page or website not enticing visitors to take action?
It can help you to really tweak other aspects of your book promotion activities that affect book sales.
Also, you’re right about key words; they can make or break a campaign. If you want to find book buyer key words and phrases, start at Amazon. It is the SECOND largest search engine and everyone there is a buyer! Find key words and phrase using their search bar. It will tell you exactly what buyers are searching on for a particular type of book in the dropdown menu. Using this technique has helped us to get CPC as low as $0.12 in the Search Network and $0.05 in the Display Network. It can help get rid of a lot of “lookie loo” clicks and will improve ROI (conversions).
I will follow up with you via email.
J.P. Thompson
http://theadwordsguy.com
Yes, I am Rachel’s husband!
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This is awesome, information. I tend to think I know a lot about social media, but you’ve talked about things I hadn’t even heard of before!
One request! May I please repost this to my own blog, with proper credit, and links back? I know I’m not as big as you are, but I get 12,000 visitors a month to my site who’d love to hear this information.
Let me know. I’ve checked off the “notify me of follow-up comments” section.
Thanks
Yamina
Reply Hi Yamina!
I’d be honored for you to repost this — are you kidding? *happy dance*
12K visitors/month is awesome. Good on ya. Thank you again and if you want to chat via email, I’m at BadRedheadMedia at gmail dot com.
Reply Ha ha, you’re fast Rachel! Wow. I will post it on Thursday or Friday and let you know when it’s up. I’ll grab your picture off this site and look for bio information to post in my bio section.
Thanks again.
A. Yamina Collins
so are you! 🙂
here’s my about page: https://badredheadmedia.com/about-me/
or on my author website: http://RachelintheOC.com you can take pics, book covers, or other bio info & social media. it should all be there.
Thanks again,
Rachel
Reply Thanks AdwordsGuy!
This is fantastic info and feedback. We really should connect offline and see how we can work together. I’m looking forward for your email!
Cheers,
Vikram
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Great piece Rachel. I often wonder about my twitter strategy… Question. Most of my tweets contain links to blog posts. My first book is still with my agent for edits. Would you consider that spam?
Course I interact everyday…sometimes for a while other times very quickly but I respond to everyone who @ me and try to send out RT every other day or say to kind folks that have RT my blog posts.
Reply First off, thank you. Secondly, the easy answer is looking out how your following is growing. Does you blog have a good following? Great. Make it even better by following those who comment.
The great thing about Twitter is we curate our own stream, follow who we want, RT stuff that interests us. Promoting others and using lists are also great ways of increasing an interactive and engaging following. It’s not about the numbers — it’s about what you do with it. Quality vs quantity, ya know.
Reply okay let’s try this again. I’m sorry I didn’t answer it before.
Think of tweeting like karma: give good tweet, get good tweet.
If ‘most of my tweets contain links to blog posts’ and you’re talking about only your own work exclusively, that would be spammy (and let’s be honest: how social is that, really?). But it sounds like you also interact with people and RT others, so you’re not spamming is a one-way only broadcast model, so that’s good.
(Many writers find that using a third-party app like Triberr increases their reach immensely while allowing them to still promote others. I’m in it and love it. Some people start in it and don’t like it. Find a similar tribe that interests you — that’s the key. It’s all about sharing blog posts.)
Also, lots of people just aren’t sure what to tweet about. Knowing your foundational keywords helps — what six to twelve words describe you/your book/your interests? Tweet about those. Let people see inside to who you are. It makes tweeting much more interesting and fun. Also using apps like Buffer or Pluggio along w/ Hootsuite (as I mention above) allows you to share content relevant to your key interests.
Does that help a bit more? Thanks for your question.
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Very helpful post thanks! I’m on my way to Triberr now to check that out and I’m bookmarking your site for the future
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Thanks Joe. I share what works for me and what I do for my own clients. Happy to help and good luck!
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Authors: Good ideas for promoting yr work, esp if it’s self-published: http://t.co/CW4ROIul
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Thanks for the advices. I am writting my first novel and struggling to find time and money to follow my writing career. I have a blog about my dreams but I don’t get a lot of visitors. I will put in place these recommendations. Thanks a lot.
Reply quite welcome. remember, it’s not a sprint. I started my blog in 2008 and released my first and second books in 2011 (next one is out in a few weeks). It’s about building your author platform via your site, blog, social media, guest posts, interviews, ads—really anything that creates a digital footprint. You can’t do it all at once so use the tools out there to help with time management and JUST KEEP WRITING!
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Hi Rachel,
Some fantastic advice here. I’ve never found advertising my book on twitter on forums to have worked. I’ll definitely be taking some of the above advice. It makes such good sense.
All the best
Tony
Thanks, Tony! I’ve tried it all, and still continue to do so. By far, Google AdWords seems to be the most effective, particularly if you can get the ad into the display network. BookBub is also a great venue — I really like their model.
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