by john | Jun 6, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Promos/Giveaways
Hey there!
If you follow me on social media, you might have seen a few pre-written tweet and Facebook messages that come out from my account. You might actually have seen enough to make you dread the thought of ever hearing from me again. But obviously not, because now you’re here to read even more of my crap, so either something I’m doing is working, or there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.
Or both.
Be that as it may, I do post a LOT of tweets and pre-scheduled social media messages. There are a few reasons for this –
- If commercials and junk mail (what I often refer to as the “shotgun approach” to marketing) didn’t still work to some degree, companies with a lot more money to buy marketing and analyze its effectiveness wouldn’t still do it.
- It takes multiple mentions of a product for it to stick in someone’s mind. That product may be a specific book, but more often than not, that product is YOU. So you need a fair amount of visibility. That means being active all through the day, particularly when the bulk of people are in a place to see it. My completely non-scientific belief is that most people fuck off in front of their computers the most from 9AM-5PM Eastern time. And even more between 11AM-2PM, because that’s lunch. That’s when I post most heavily.
- Facebook and Twitter throttle your posts so that only a small percentage of things you put out in the world are seen unless you’re willing to pay for the privilege. To combat this, I send out the same message once per day, six days a week. My hope is that different people will see it each time, or at least that a few new people will see it each time.
So that’s the “why” I post a bunch. But what about the “how?” What makes a good social media post? Well, here are a few things that I try to include in most of my posts, and this is something that is constantly being refined as I learn more and look at what posts get the most interaction.
By the way, I will refer to all of these as tweets, even though I have HootSuite set up to cross-post to Facebook and Twitter. Each message I create goes to five different feeds – my Twitter, the Falstaff Books Twitter, my Facebook page, my Author page, and the Falstaff page. But it’s identical, because I only have so much time in my life.
I try to be funny, witty, or at least entertaining. I frequently use over-the-top examples to push the humor if it’s a funny book or story, or I try to tie it to something that will make the person who sees it go “Wait, what?” In a tweet for the book Changeling’s Fall, I make mention of the fact that unless you read the book, you won’t know what part of a goblin glows in the dark. This is something that people aren’t expecting, and makes them want to look further.
You’re always working toward the click in social media. With pre-written messages, you aren’t just looking to make people remember your name, you’re looking for something that makes them think “I need to know what the hell he’s talking about” and click the link. They can’t buy your shit if they don’t click the link. And that’s the endgame – getting people to buy your shit. You are not playing around on social media because you’re a great artist, you’re playing around on social media because you are in business to make money.
So a good tweet is made up of three things – a hook, a hashtag, and a link.
I’ve already talked about the hook. It’s kinda like your back cover matter, only super-condensed. Or it’s a cover blurb, only super-condensed. When I tweeted about Midsummer, a Bubba meets Shakespeare novella, I made mention of A.J. Hartley, because he’s a Shakespeare expert. When I tweet about Of Lips and Tongue, I mention that it’s one of the best novellas released last year. When I tweet about Pawn’s Gambit and War Pigs, I’ll mention that they are finalists for the 2017 Manly Wade Wellman Award (Congrats to Darin Kennedy and Jay Requard!).
Your hook is that “Wait, what?” moment. It’s what makes the person seeing it read further. It’s what cuts through the noise, and there’s plenty of noise out there. You can (and will) have multiple tweets about each release. You can make one funny, one serious, one scary, one referential to another work out there, whatever. Just use part of your 140 characters to make it interesting.
You need at least one hashtag, preferably two. I’m just getting better at this, because hashtags baffled me for a long time. Hashtags are the way people filter social media. If someone wants to see all the tweets and posts about ConCarolinas, they can search using #concarolinas, and all the posts using that hashtag will pop up.
Do not use very specific hashtags. If you’re reading this, I’m going to assume that you aren’t a huge bestseller. If you aren’t James Patterson, using a hashtag with your name is useless. If no one will ever search for the hashtag, it’s just a waste of space. I find that #kindle #amazon #audible #audiobook #ebook #bargain #free #fantasy #horror #scifi are all broad enough to be useful, while #falstaffbooks or #johnhartness would be absolutely useless. No one is searching twitter feeds for those terms, so don’t bother with them.
Don’t overdo it with hashtags, either. After a while, it just becomes a parody of your content and the message is lost. I think one or two is plenty.
The link – this part is easy. You need something that people can take action on, namely to buy your shit. But there are a few things that go into making a link, and some of them you might not know about.
- Universal Links – We all know how much is sucks to have your book available on ten different platforms but you can only fit one link into each message. Well – Books2Read is your new best friend! Books2Read makes universal links for your book. You just go to their site, insert the buy link from any online store into the field, and it will scour the internet for everywhere else the book is available, and create a Universal Link that points to ALL of them! What happens is that your customer clicks the universal link, and they are directed to a page that says “Hey! This book is available all over the interwebs! Where do you want to buy it?” You customer says “Here!” and clicks their favorite ebook store. Books2Read sends them there, and remembers their choice for next time. So next time they click any Books2Read link, it takes them to the book on their selected store. This gives you the opportunity to share the link to all online stores in one shot, and your readers can get your shit wherever they want.
- Link shorteners – most social media aggregators like HootSuite or TweetDeck have a tool that will shorten a link for you. I don’t use them. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I use bit.ly. Bil.ly shortens the links, lets you customize the link, and gives you tracking for the link. All with a free account. I use them for all my link creation.
So there you go, the short version of how to build a tweet that sings instead of sucks. Build a hook, a hashtag, and a link, and then go promote the fuck out of your stuff! Remember, art is awesome, and as soon as you make enough money, you can make all the art you want!
by john | Feb 6, 2017 | Business of publishing, How to Sell Books, Writing
Now that I’m in publishing, I’m working with a lot of writers. A lot of these writers are publishing their first book, or their first stand-alone work, after having been in a number of anthologies over the years. One question I get a lot of times is “How do you sell books on social media?”
Well, there are a lot of disparate opinions on that. Some people, who sell a lot of books, think that you can’t actually sell anything on social media. They feel that it’s all about building your brand, and engagement, and getting people to like you and be interested enough in you to go buy your stuff. I tend to tell those people that they have very valid opinion, and it’s one way to approach social media. These folks frequently build a very rabid following for their blogs, or their twitter feeds, and are able to parlay those readerships into readerships for their books. Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi both built a lot of their fanbase off their blogs early in their careers, and still have very popular blogs today. They’ve done a great job of building engagement, and almost surreptitiously selling their fiction while building real engagement with other things they had to say. It’s very much a good way to work it, and can be very successful.
Some other folks think that social media is the devil, and they hate it, and just want to stay in their ivory towers and write. I usually tell those people that they are not going to make much money writing, and they should leave that J.D. Salinger/Emily Dickinson shit in previous centuries where it belongs.
My method is different, and it’s one that a lot of people don’t care for, but it results in actual sales for my books, so I’m not likely to change it anytime soon.
I promote the hell out of my stuff on social media.
Like, a LOT.
Every weekend, I spend an hour or so writing tweets or copying old tweets from a master list I keep on my desktop, and I paste them into Hootsuite to automate the cross-posting to Twitter, Facebook, and my author Facebook page. Every hour on the hour from 9AM – 5PM Eastern, I send out one tweet promoting one product. Sometimes, when a product is releasing that week, it will get two tweets per day, but usually just one.
Here are some samples of things I tweet –
You need more Sasquatch dick jokes in your life. Pick up Grits, Guns & Glory, Bubba Season 2 Today! http://amzn.to/1IZQSkO
Late to the Harker Party? Check out Harker Year One for the collected adventures of this badass magician! http://amzn.to/1TxBjVG
My Patrons get exclusive content like my writing advice blog posts, cool giveaways, and free stuff! https://www.patreon.com/johnhartness
Keep up to date with all my appearances, releases, podcasts, and get a #free #ebook! Sign up for my email list – http://eepurl.com/fV4In
Typically my breakdown will be – One post per day for my mailing list. One post per day for my Patreon. One post per day for the latest Harker release. One for the newest Bubba. One for the latest Black Knight. One for an older release. One for a recent audio release. One for a release that doesn’t sell as well and needs some love, and one flex slot. Some weeks the flex slot is pimping other writers, which engenders a lot of goodwill and retweets. Some weeks it’s pimping a con I’m going to, or other guests at that con. Some weeks it’s a podcast or an Audible subscription promo code. It just depends on what I’m thinking.
This is in direct opposition to what I and other people have said for years about social media. It’s using it as a billboard, and not as a conversation. It isn’t building real connections. It isn’t creating true fans. It’s very much a shotgun approach to marketing, with almost no way of knowing whether it has any effect or not.
Except on the weeks that I don’t do this promotion, I can see a noticeable dip in sales.
So it sells books.
That’s why I keep doing it. Because it sells books. And that’s my job. One of them, anyway. That’s what’s important to remember as a writer. You have many jobs, and one of those is to sell books. It doesn’t matter if you’ve written the next War and Peace if nobody reads it. So if you have to sell War and Peace as 50 Shades of Grey, so be it. Sell the book. If you want to be a professional writer, and pay your bills with your book sales, it’s on you to sell some damn books.
“But John, I only have three stories in anthologies and one book out. How am I supposed to make nine social media posts a day?”
You’re not. You should make five or six. Make one for each anthology you have a story in. The publishers will appreciate the fuck out of it, and are likely to invite you to be in more anthologies. Trust me, we notice who promotes a book and who doesn’t. Especially if it’s a Kickstarter anthology. We know who is working to promote the hell out a Kickstarter and who sends out one tweet in the 30-day funding period. You should make one post per day for the book that you have out. And one post per day about your mailing list.
Yes, I just said that you should be on social media EVERY SINGLE DAY telling people to buy your book. Yes, it is shameless. Yes, it is unseemly. Yes, it is brazen. Yes, some writers will consider you unprofessional for doing it. And yes, it will sell books. People cannot buy the book they have never heard of, so make sure they have heard of it.
I also said that you should have a mailing list, and be actively working to build it. You should have a website, and there should be a place on the website to sign up for the mailing list. Those are people who have already expressed an interest in your work, why wouldn’t you want to be able to reach out and touch them? Even if you only have one book out now, unless that’s the only book you ever plan on writing, you need to be building a mailing list. Right damn now.
If you want to promote other authors, great. It’s a great way to make friends and influence people. But you HAVE to be visible. I am at a place now where I have invited a bunch of authors to play in my Harker and Bubba sandboxes. Some of those authors were chosen because they are extremely talented. Some were chosen because they are some of my best friends, and extremely talented. And some were chosen because they are extremely active on social media, and extremely talented. Which ones do you think I expect to sell more books?
Get out there, get visible, get active. If you think you can “just write” and make a living, go lie in the dirt with Salinger, because that career path is as dead as old J.D.
This post is part of a book I’m working on about my methods for selling books and making a living. Pretty much everything that ends up in the book will be from either posts I make here or stuff I’ve written on Magical Words in the making Money Mondays posts. So you can get all the info for free. But if you like it and find what I’m writing useful, I’ hope you’ll buy the book when it comes out next year, or consider joining my Patreon.
by john | Nov 1, 2016 | Real Life, Writing
So once upon a time, there were blogs. And there were blog aggregators, and people read blogs, and blogs were super-active, and a thing, and some people wrote blogs about poker, and then they parlayed those blogs into jobs writing “news” articles about poker, and then they got fired from those jobs and turned to writing fiction (not that there hadn’t been some fiction in the other work).
Then there was Twitter, then Facebook, then Instagram, then Tumblr, then whatever, then whatchamacallit, then whodafuqknose…then most of that stopped being fun.
So there were still blogs. And some folks still owned blogs, no matter how infrequently they posted to them. And when Facebook and Twitter and all the other social media sites started throttling the amount of posts they displayed, it became a lot more effective to have a blog again.
At least I hope. I mean, I know I won’t be throttling this space down at all. In fact, I’m going to try very hard to do just the opposite. I’m going to try to be consistent with my posting here, and to post a lot of the crap I used to post on Facebook here instead.
So I think I’m back. We’ll see. I still have a fucking ton of books to write, but I think I can get some better mileage out of regular blog posts than I can out of just screeching into the void on FB.
Either way, Hi! Good to see you. Hope you’ll come back for a visit.
In the meantime, here’s my latest release – Heaven’s Door. It’s book 6 in the Quincy Harker series. I think it’s really damn good, and boy, you wanna talk about shit getting real? Shit gets real real up in here. So give it a look. It’s exclusive to Amazon, so if you need to read it on other platforms, print will be available in January, and all my releases are available to all my fans early using my Patreon.
