016 Social Media Tips Just For Writers with Frances Caballo

May 5, 2016 by Lorna Faith

Subscribe: iTunes

I had a fun chat with Frances Caballo in this Podcast Interview. Frances is a social media strategist and manager for writers. She helps authors to get past the barriers that hold them back from flourishing online and selling more of their books.

Frances talked about creating great images for sharing on social media and your author website, which inspired many ideas 🙂 Also, her tips on how to understand your reading audience better by searching your google analytics for your website and on Facebook, were a big help.

You can find Frances by going to her website, socialmediajustforwriters.com and you can connect with her on Twitter, and Facebook.

Watch the Video Interview

Heres’s some resources I share in the update:

1.Books I’ve found super helpful by Frances Caballo are: Avoid Social Media Time Suck; Social Media Just for Writers; Blogging Just for Writers; and her newest book available for pre-order, The Author’s Guide to Goodreads: How to Engage with Readers and Market Your Books.

2.I discovered an amazing new book for writers by James Scott Bell… 😉 Just Write: Creating Unforgettable Fiction and a Rewarding Writing Life. Some aha moments from reading this book were, his tips on how to set up your writing project so it’s not so overwhelming and his 10 ways to inspire your muse.

Also, I would love to hear about the book you’re writing now, or one that you’ve just finished. If you Tweet me a one sentence summary of your story along with your name and website on Twitter (connect with me @lornafaith), I’d love to mention you, your story(your work in progress or published book) and your website in the updates of the next Podcast.

Summary of Interview

*Frances starts by sharing her inspiration to move into the writing and social media realm. She worked as a reporter before she moved into the field of public relations. When social media emerged it seemed like a natural next step.

In her book, Frances encourages writers to tweak these 4 steps to attract your readers and grow your audience:

1.Focus on Social Media networks where your readers are. Frances encourages writers to don’t feel like they need to be on every social media network, because it’s a huge waste of time when you really want to spend the majority of your time writing.

2.Study where people are on social media. Find out if your demographic is on Facebook (usually 45 plus) or if your audience is mostly women – women dominate Facebook and Pinterest…. which is also a great place for romance authors. LinkedIn is for professionals – so if you have a nonfiction book, that’s a great place for you to be. SnapChat, Instagram and Tumblr are great places to be if you’re writing a YA novel.

3.Have good content. People wanted to be entertained and/or given great information. 80% should be about you curating other people’s content and sharing it, and 20% is your stuff.

4. Check your analytics on google. If you haven’t signed up for your website to have google analytics, that would be super helpful. Here’s a blogpost & video and shows you how to set that up. Find out what gender the people are who visit your blog. Also check Facebook analytics to find out what ages and gender people are who visit your page. Ideally you want your analytics on your Facebook page and your author website to match. For example, if you are reaching ages 45 to 60 on Facebook then you should be reaching the same age group on your website. If it’s not the same, you might need to recalibrate and rethink of your marketing messages and what you’re sharing in your website and on social media.

* Frances also encourages authors to survey their readers to ask them want they want you to talk about and share on social media or on your blog. This is important for fiction and nonfiction authors. Try the free version of SurveyMonkey to get started.

*Here are 38 blogging topics for writers that might give you ideas if you’re unsure what to write about.

Free Images for blogging or social media: unsplash.com; pixabay.com; pexels.com; wikimedia.com; morguefile.com; deathtostockphoto.com. Use the Free version of canva.com, to resize your pictures and to add text.

To Compress your Images so they load faster on mobile devices go to this link.

On being Authentic: Self-Reflect before you Self-Reveal

*Ask yourself, how comfortable am I sharing this information about myself? See how your readers respond to photos you share.

*Frances talks about the importance of being genuine and authentic on social media. Care about your readers by replying to questions/ educating and entertaining them. Treat your readers how you would treat them if you asked them out for coffee.

Your brand as an author rests on your ability to be authentic. As humans it’s innate for us to be drawn to people who are the most authentic in our lives.

*If you’ve chosen to use a pen name as an author, you can still be authentic to your author brand and your niche. Frances gives the example of writer and editor C.S. Lakin who writes under the pen name Charlene Whitman as a Western romance author.

*For new writers, Frances recommends starting with one social media network, to avoid overwhelm. Then after 6 months start a new social media account.

As you’re comfortable, begin being a guest blogger for your friends websites and then at some point, you’ll begin blogging for high traffic websites.

On the question of blogging for authors…

*Frances begins by saying there’s many different opinions on this. She refers to the book The Martian, by Andy Weir and how he began by blogging that book on his website. Then scientists found his chapters and gave him tips on some facts he had wrong, and then it was through the many views he had on his blog that his book got noticed by a publisher.

If you decide to blog, consider blogging once a week to keep readers updated on what you’re doing and that they hear from you regularly.

*Some ideas to get your blog noticed: use keywords. Keywords are the words that a reader would type in “google search” to find a subject they are looking for. So start using keywords in your blog and in your guest posts.

You can grab your free copy of Twitter Just for Writers on France Caballo’s website, socialmediajustforwriters.com. She also helps people who just need help getting started on social media and offers training sessions on her website.

What is the area you struggle with most as a writer on social media? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

*Photo Credit: Frances Caballo

*Some of the above links are affiliate links and help to support this blog

008 Outline Your Novel using 4 Part Story Structure and Create a Marketing Plan with Nick Thacker

January 21, 2016 by Lorna Faith

Subscribe: iTunes | Android

I learned a lot in this interview with bestselling thriller author Nick Thacker. Originally from Texas, Nick now lives in the mountains of Colorado with his wife, daughter, a tortoise and 3 dogs:) He’s a prolific writer of many bestselling thriller novels, which you can find at his author website nickthacker.com.

Nick also helps authors write, publish and market their books at his website writehacked.com. You can connect with Nick on Facebook or Twitter or email him at nick(at)nickthacker(dot)com.

Sorry, I wasn’t able to record this interview via Video. For some reason my Skype/eCamm connection wasn’t working properly the day we recorded this – so it was actually Nick who recorded the audio for me…. for which I’m very grateful 🙂

Interview Summary

*Nick shares how he got started writing. He says he really doesn’t like sitting down and trying to get words up on the screen every day – rather he likes to have written. He didn’t start writing until 2010-2011. He remembers he loved reading thrillers, like Dan Brown books, etc., but he also found some thrillers he didn’t like. Nick says he’s happiest when he’s writing books that entertain.

He thought if other people can write, I can too. That was his first book The Golden Crystal (Techno Thriller Military Science Fiction Best Sellers): A Technotriller Novel. Nick wrote this first book for his Dad and gave it to him on Christmas.

*With his first book he got stuck in the ‘muddy middle’ and started reading books on writing for about 3 months. A book that really helped him to understand how to write better scenes and how to write your sentence structure in a linear way was by reading Dwight Swain’s book Techniques of the Selling Writer.

*Nick says he’s read this writing book over and over again and talks about what he learned of how to gives awesome detail of the scene. First you have a goal, then a conflict and then a disaster. Example: Goal is the character wants to call her friend. Conflict is she’s trying to call her friend but she keeps getting another incoming call so she can’t call her friend. Disaster is her phone dies.

*The Sequel is the opposite of that: Reaction is “Oh my gosh, my phone died, I better plug it in. The Dilemma is she can’t find her charger. The Decision is I’m going to buy a charger from the store.

*Nick says then he used Dwight Swain’s writing book to rewrite the beginning and middle of his first novel and he still references it to this day.

*He says he was writing a blog about marketing and then he shifted his blog about writing and marketing books. Later Nick started his podcast, Self Publishing Answers which he now does with two other writers, Kevin Tumlinson, and Justin Sloan.

*Everyone writes and outlines differently and Nick recommends to keep trying different ideas to find what works for you. He starts by describing his book in two sentences – this also works well as a blurb for your book. Nick wrote a more detailed blogpost about it here.

*Nick says he loves Larry Brooks website StoryFix.com. He helps writers learn how to write and how not to write. Nick says he writes to the 4 part story structure and it helps him not to worry about what happens next when he’s in the middle of writing. Larry Brooks has a series on story structure here.

*To outline his story, Nick uses Evernote and then he writes his story using Scrivener . He says sometimes he’ll use the Evernote app on his smartphone and then it syncs to his computer. If he needs to, Nick adds folders on the left-hand side of the Scrivener screen, and creates Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and Act 4. In this interview, I mention how much Joseph Michael’s Learn Scrivener Fast training course has helped me. I often go back and listen to those short videos for whatever I need help within Scrivener.

*On his blog, Nick writes a great blogpost on how to market your book here. His biggest recommendation is to get started with an email list. He also says Facebook Ads have really worked well for him. He says it’s amazing(and slightly creepy)… how well you can track your customers on Facebook.

*Nick’s novel Atlantis: The Origin Mystery: The Atlantis Deception (Kindle Worlds Novella) is part of the Kindle Worlds series with Amazon. He says Amazon called him one morning and said A.G. Riddle is launching a kindle worlds, world with his books. He said A.G. Riddle had mentioned his name and asked Amazon to ask Nick to see if he’d want to write a book in the series. And they offered 50% commission for Nick to write it. So he wrote it – they said it needed to be done in a month – and he was surprised that it was one of the best novels he’s written.

*Nick says his friend Kevin describes this book as Jurassic Park in space. The main characters get locked into the center of their ship and all the creatures are trying to kill them. He said he just wanted people to be entertained – for readers he created a feeling of wonder with new ideas.

*I asked Nick how he overcomes resistance and failures. He says he has experienced plenty of failures, and what he’s found is that it’s important to know what brings you to a ‘downward spiral.’ Nick talks honestly of how he has something that happens at work, which later stops him from writing every day. So he’s found that he needs to put, what’s bothering him, in a box and close it temporarily and then open the writing box when it’s time to write. He mentions that his friend Keven Tumlinson writes in a journal every day and says affirmations – which seems to help get him be more of a prolific writer.

*Nick recommends that authors who are serious about writing as a career, to think of it as a business. He keeps his production plan written down in a document in Evernote where he writes his long-term plan. He writes down the books he wants to write by a certain date and he also writes down when he wants to get an agent, etc. When you have a business plan written down, it helps you to be more productive.

*I asked Nick what his thoughts were for the future of Indie Authors. He gives the example of how Amazon could – in the future – figure out how fast you read and when you read and by doing that recommend books specifically for your travels or whatever you are.

New books Nick’s writing now is the Harvey Bennet series. The Enigma Strain (Techno Thriller Science Fiction Best Sellers): Military Science Fiction Technothriller (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 1) which has over 400 reviews on Amazon, is about the world’s largest active volcano is under Yellowstone National Park and is based on the question of what happens if someone decides to blow up a bomb under the park? The next book in the series has the same good guys and bad guys – and Nick says he’s playing with the idea of video recording people’s dreams and memories. The setting is in the Amazon rainforest. He’s also working on finishing the Relics series – the first book is Relics: The Dawn: Relics Singularity Series Book 1. Nick’s also working on co-writing the series – The Lucid: Episode One: Post-Apocalyptic with Kevin Tumlinson and then co-writing another young adult fantasy book with his friends Kevin and Justin.

To connect with Nick, you can find him at NickThacker.com and you’ll get four books for Free when you sign up to the mailing list. Also check out writehacked.com where you can find the self-publishing book marketing plan. You can also connect with Nick on Facebook or Twitter.

Do you use 4 Part Story Structure to outline your novels? Please comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

7 Useful Self-Publishing Tools for Writers

December 8, 2015 by Lorna Faith

It takes a lot of hard work to write, edit, self-publish and have the courage to get your book into the world.

The more tools you have at your fingertips to help you get your book free of typos and looking great, the better.

As I’ve been working on editing Book #2 and writing my new contemporary romance, I’ve been doing some research on tools that would make self-publishing a book simpler and save time.

A few of these tools I’ve been using for awhile now, but some of them I’ve discovered recently.

1.Scrivener. This is a writing software that was truly designed with a writer in mind. You can write scenes out of order and you can also have a corkboard view(think index cards) of each scene. My favourite part however, is that you can create your own ebooks by compiling and exporting your manuscript using Scrivener. I didn’t know how to compile and format my book, so I took the Scrivener Coach’s Learn Scrivener Fast training course which breaks down all the details you need to know into little videos. I still go back and watch the videos when I get stuck.

When you buy Scrivener it’s yours for life and you can publish as many books as you want over and over again. I love that. There’s many other ways I find Scrivener useful: I also put picture of my characters and the settings in the research binder; I create character descriptions in the template sheets; and I love creating different colours of flag icons next to each chapter – for instance when I use a yellow flag it means go back and edit/rewrite this chapter and a green flag means this chapter is ready to go. This is lots of fun 🙂 I talk more about the 5 Reasons to Use Scrivener to Write Your Book in this post.

2.Hemingway App. This is a very handy little tool that helps you get rid of complex sentences, adverbs, a passive voice and those perplexing 25cent words that need to be simplified. All you do is go to the app. Next you type in your sentences. The App will then give you a ‘readability index’ to tell you if someone in the fifth grade can understand what you’ve written. The clearer your writer, the lower the grade level. Ideally your writing should be so clear and simple that a 5th grader can understand it.

3.Grammarly. Sort of like the Hemingway App, Grammarly is a free spelling and grammar checker. It helps you choose the right word by mentioning synonyms and by asking you if it is the correct word to use in the context of your sentence.

Grammarly is great. I use the Free version and it really helps.

4.Canva. This has become my second favorite tool(next to Scrivener). It’s a really simple graphic design tool… that even I(someone who isn’t a designer) can understand…. and it’s free! I not only create social media graphics and FB Ads to share online using Canva, and tweak my own photos that I’ve uploaded, but more recently I’ve been learning how to create my own ebook covers with Canva.

Some of the problems Canva solved for me:

When I haven’t had extra in my budget for book design
I’m not very good at using(or understanding) PhotoShop
That the design looks great when it’s published and it doesn’t take to long to figure out.
I can reuse the design by changing the text or image

I also love it that many different sizes of designs have been preloaded onto Canva to help you create a Twitter or Facebook header, email Headers, infographics or ebook and kindle book covers. Some of the images that are a little better, you need to pay $1 for each new picture, but that’s affordable. Seriously it’s so easy to use. Check out canva.com to get a better idea of the different designs you can try out.

5.Bookshow.me. This is a handy little tool that you can send customers for your selling page in their country. So for example, if someone who wants to read your book lives in England, they click on that url and it takes them the UK digital retail store. So not only does it shorten your URL’s, but this tool directs the reader to the digital retail store where they can find your book/product in their country. It’s easy to use. All you need to do is go to http://bookshow.me/ and type in the URL for your book, click on the button and get a shortened URL that will direct any buyer to the right page in their country.

6.Yasiv. This is a Free tool, that you can use to help you decide on what Keywords to use as you’re getting ready to publish your book onto Amazon. This tool helps authors discover categories that will do well in their niche. It works with anything that is for sale on Amazon. It doesn’t tell you what the successful keywords are… you have to type in possible keywords in the top search bar. There’s a video tutorial on the first page that gives you tips on how to use Yasiv.

If you want to use a more in-depth keyword tool that isn’t free, but is super helpful, try Kindlespy. This tool shows you tons of stats for the books in your chosen category in one click and so saves you a lot of time.

Kindlespy then shows you the keywords that bestselling authors used to get their books on the bestseller list on Amazon. And it does a lot more. Go take a look. You’ll be amazed how fast your book will move up the rankings on Amazon, one you have the right categories and keywords in place. And it does a lot more than that.

7.BitLit. This is an app, I’ve only recently found. It allows you to get the eBook version for a print book you already own – for free or at a discounted price. I think it’s great because it promotes reading across all formats of book publishing.

I think it’s great if authors offer their books in both print and digital formats whenever they can. Some readers that I know still prefer print books, while many others love the convenience of eBooks. So BitLit helps readers to enjoy the books you’ve bought, in both formats. Another plus, is that readers also feel like they’ve been rewarded for their loyalty to an author when they are given a free or discounted eBook, when they already own the Print book. Since readers do have a ton of books to choose from, showing appreciation to readers is so critical for all authors whether they’re just starting out or have an established fanbase.

So I hope you find these tools helpful for you as you write, edit and publish your books.

I’ve really loved experimenting with these tools and I really hope you get some really great results with them too.

What are some other tools that you’ve found helpful as you write, edit and self-publish your book? Please share in the comments so we can all learn from your process 🙂

Note: Some of the above links are affiliate links that help to support this blog.

6 Ways to Market Your Book

October 15, 2015 by Lorna Faith

What are the steps authors can take to market their books to their targeted readers?

Getting books into the right readers hands is a little selling coffee.

Think about this scenario: What if a new flavour of coffee was offered at your favourite coffee shop, and it was a flavour of coffee you’d been waiting to hear about. But what if you went there day after day for weeks or months or even years – ordering the same regular coffee you always get – without realizing your favourite cup of coffee had been offered at your favourite coffee shop all along?

You might be a little upset that no one had told you about it.

Well, it’s very similar when you publish your book and upload it to digital retailers like Amazon, iBooks, Kobo and others. It’s not enough just to have your book sitting there, you need to have some kind of marketing strategy, or no one will know it’s there.

So what are some ways you can get your book into the hands of potential readers?

*Photo created with Canva

6 Ways Authors Can Successfully Market Their Books

Marketing your book to your readers, is sometimes the most difficult task we do as authors. For two reasons: As writers, we would rather stick to what we know best… writing; and the other reason is that somewhere in our past, we’ve come to see marketing as sleazy and salesy. And that’s the last thing we want to be.

The good news, is that marketing your book to your specific readers, doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it can be interesting and even fun!

Here’s some tips that I want to pass along to you so that you can compel readers to look at and buy your book.

1.Understand Your Keyword Research. This is important to know which keywords to use for your book. What is a keyword? It’s simply a word or phrase that is associated with your book. So for my book – a Historical Romance – it’s important that I don’t just write “Historical Romance” in the Amazon search categories. I could also include: mystery, suspense, religious historical fiction and a few other keywords. Since Amazon allows you to type in 7 keywords and keyword phrases when you upload your book you can make this even more specific.

Use the keywords and keyword phrases that people will be searching for. You can go to the Google Keyword research to maximize your search discoverability for your book. Type in the genre of your book or your book title and see what comes up.

For non-fiction. You can choose a title that is the best by search the Google Adwords keyword research tool and choose a title based on search terms that is more popular.

2. Content Marketing. Blogging, Vlogging, Podcasting, creating Videos these are all forms of content marketing. When you are using content marketing – like blogging – the whole idea is that you are using attraction marketing. You are giving to your readers information that is helpful, entertaining, engaging, and original content.

So think about how you’re going to create content that will attract people to your book. Blogging is great because the more content you put out there, the more people see you as an expert because the more you share what you know – the more they see you that way the more they know like and trust you. When they trust you, it’s more likely they will buy your books and other products.

My blog is where I connect the most with people and where people can buy books as well as other future helpful courses. This can be for fiction or non-fiction.

Also consider audio. Podcasting or using Video is a great way to connect with people because they hear your voice and they start to know, like and trust you quite easily through this medium.

3. Optimize your Book Sales Page on your website. Make your book available on all the digital retail sites. And optimize your book sales page. Have a awesome book cover, and a sales description to pique readers interest. Use keywords, categories and tags(romance, suspense, memoir) for your book on each of the digital retail sites.

Also ask people who have read your book to review it. When you have reviews, the book sites algorithms moves your book higher up on the list so more readers see your book.

4. Build an Email List. Really important to create a email list specifically for your non-fiction and fiction books. Create a sign up at the end of your book with a link and the link should go to your webpage where people can sign-up to be notified when you have a new book.

You can say something on your webpage like: “If you enjoyed this first book, you might also like (the name of your next book). Add your name and email address to be notified when the next book is out! What really helps is when you give away a ebook or something else of value to your readers.

When you have people interested in your book and they signup to your email list, then you also have the potential for readers to review your books.

5. Use Social Media. You might not be sure about the usefulness of social media in marketing your book, or how to use it. In simple terms, social media is a great way to reach a huge global audience. It makes it really easy to chat with people who connect with you and you get to know them and they get to know you.

When using Facebook or Twitter(or really any of the social media channels), you don’t want to be all salesy and say “buy my book” all the time. Instead try to be helpful and inspiring to people. 80% of your tweets and updates should be about retweeting others and giving away great information, and only 20% should be about you and your books. This is what I’ve been trying to do, and it has really helped to connect with more people. I love tweeting and chatting on a daily basis and honestly after awhile I begin to see people I meet there as friends. It’s really quite fun.

Another tip is to double check that your profile is updated with what you are doing, your brand and how you help people and of course include a link to your website.

6. Set up your Author Profile on Amazon, Goodreads and any other digital retail sites. It’s important that you have your author profile set up on Amazon, Goodreads and any other place where you have your book up for sale. Readers will often read the author’s profile and then click the link to check out your website. So keeping it up to date is important too.

To set up a Author Page on Amazon, go here and follow the instructions. To sign up for a Goodreads Author profile go here. You can sign in with Kobo here and create a free account with iBooks here.

So those are the six ways that really help to get readers connected with you and your books so that you sell more books as an author.

The great thing about being a self-published author, is we can continue to tweak our books and our websites and social media profiles as often as we like. It’s really empowering to be able to change a book’s cover or title or even change our profiles on social media or webpages, if we discover a better way to do things. That kind of freedom is awesome 😉

What tips do you have for marketing your book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

*Photo created with Canva

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