self-publish « Robin Writes

I’ve touched on this before, the importance of marketing yourself and your book(s) and how you conduct yourself on social media, but today I’m going to take you step-by-step on how to do this effectively.

Step One:

Who are you? Take some time to think about this. Then think about your book(s). How do you relate to those books you’ve written? Where did the character come from, or the plot? Surely, it’s a part of you.

Step Two:

Think of all the qualities that make up you, and then combine that with the characteristics of your books. Some of you write in more than one genre, so there may be a third combination. The only real difficulty would be if you wrote both children’s books and erotica; that could pose a problem!

Step Three:

As a writer, you’re also a reader. Probably, as a writer, when you read you become the character, yes? Do you ever notice yourself doing or saying something that, at least in your head, SOUNDS like something a book character would do or say?

Step Four:

Create your look. Think of yourself as a successful author of [fill in the blank]. How would you look? How would you dress? Let’s say you’ve been invited to appear on the Today Show. What would you do or say to complement your book?

For myself, I’d still wear jeans and boots and my leather blazer. I write dystopian fiction—I don’t want to look as though I write romance. An author must “fit” with her book. If I DID write romance, I’d opt for probably a pink suit (cliché, yes!), stockings, heels, fancy hairdo, perfect manicure, etc.

How do you picture yourself in terms of your book? Don’t you “get into character” when you write? Quite often, but not always of course, a writer projects much of his or her own quirks and mannerisms into a book and/or character. Use what you’ve got!

Step Five:

Your voice is important too—your speaking voice, not your writing style. Think about all the authors you’ve seen or know of who make professional appearances and study what they say and how they say it. Modulate your tones to complement your book.

Look at this way: if you watched a non-fiction author of, say, an historical tome about the Holocaust, doing a live TV interview, and she was giggly and distracted, what would you think? I would think she’s kind of an airhead and just maybe her book is also full of distractions and possibly not very well-researched. Maybe that’s unfair, but hey, first impressions . . .

Step Six:

Pull all this together and you have YOUR IMAGE. This is it, there may be a few tweaks over time and with more experience (and more books!), but now you have an image and it’s time to plaster that image all over the Internet and anywhere else you can.

Step Seven:

Be consistent.

I already covered the dos and don’ts of Internet promotion, so I’m just going to add that it’s VERY IMPORTANT to stick with this image you’ve created. Even on your “personal” pages and accounts, to a point. Sure, you can talk about personal stuff, but ALWAYS remember your image.

Particularly important are those times you mess up—using “to” when you mean “too,” “apart of” when you mean “a part of,” and other things like that. Frankly, it makes you look like an idiot and really, who wants to read a book full of that?

HINT: If you simply make a mistake, and are not truly an idiot, there is an “edit” button on Facebook and you can delete the Tweet and re-do it. So it’s completely inexcusable.

And finally, stay out of arguments, political, religious, or actual or imagined slights from others online. That person you have a problem with is online, and that person has friends and acquaintances. You could have a huge blow-up, and that’s going to hurt your image, unless, of course, your image is a whiny, self-indulgent attention seeker. But that’s not going to help your career.

All of this sound familiar? It is. And it bear repeating, over and over. Your image isn’t something that just occurs to you one day, and it’s not automatic. It takes work, just like writing. Go do it.

Writing a book is hard. Even writing a bad book is hard, so they say, but sometimes I wonder . . .

What comes after the writing is finished? It depends.

The logical progression is to check your work (just like school), send the ms off to beta readers, tweak whatever needs tweaking—maybe a lot, maybe just a little, and either start querying or begin the SP process.

Except.

If you’re an unknown writer, you need to do a lot more.

First, you have to start getting your name out there—you could blog about the process of writing that book. Or about the book/story itself. Or a character. You can start this before the book is finished, or you can start when it IS finished. But you have to start before it’s published. At minimum.

If you’re in the blogosphere, if you’re in online groups, if you belong to actual, physical groups in your area, you have a much better chance of being recognized and creating opportunities. Or, sometimes, having opportunities drop into your lap.

Oh, it’s not that easy—it takes time. And persistence. And continuity.

Take social media, for instance. It’s a here and now thing. If you post something about yourself or your book today, a certain number of people will see it in the next half-hour, tops. So you post again later that day, or even tomorrow. But if you wait a few days, or a week, no one will remember the last one and no one will pay attention in a cumulative manner.

What’s that saying about sales? A person has to see something at least three times before they’ll remember it. Some blogs/articles will tell you the number is seven, and one says that 20 is the magic number. The point is that a once-a-week “ad” will take forever to see results.

Now, at the same time, you can’t, as we’ve all heard, scream, “BUY MY BOOK!” You have to give value to your potential readers—and by “give,” I mean exactly that. For free.

It could be other blog posts of interest, relative to you or your topic; it could be a freebie to current fans and readers. It could be introductions to other books similar to yours. Anything that your readers would consider “valuable.”

Just don’t be a pest.

Here’s another way to look at it—like a job interview. If you apply for a job, you don’t stop there, right? You follow up in a few days. Maybe again in a couple weeks. If you’re doing online promotion, that translates into a follow-up after a few hours and/or a couple days. At the most.

Same thing for booking personal appearances. BE personable—that’s what it’s all about, after all. Call or email. Or write, via snailmail. Then follow up in a few days, maybe even with a phone call. Be persistent.

But not a pest.

You won’t sell books by doing one event a year; or even two or three. Put yourself out there. Look at spin-offs: lecturing, classes, speaking gigs. Create your own income lines and tie those into your book.

But here’s the rub: you might not sell books at these events. You might sell some, but not make much/any money because of the terms offered. You can’t look at this as a money project—the purpose of events is to get you and your book out there, to become recognized and recognizable.

Of course, you might sell a lot of books too—the point is that a no-sale event is not a failure, it’s just another step.

Start at the beginning and take it one step at a time. Even if your book has been out for a while, it’s never too late to get going. Sometimes, you have to start at the beginning more than once . . .