#IWSG Septenber 1 post - What makes a successful writer amongst other things?

 Hello all! 

Time to rock the writing world, or give it a bit of a shake, eh? Let's hear what you've got this month.

Alex's awesome co-hosts for the September 1 posting of the IWSG are Rebecca Douglass, T. Powell Coltrin @Journaling Woman, Natalie Aguirre, Karen Lynn, and C. Lee McKenzie! Pop by and thank them for giving their time!

  Be sure to visit the

Insecure Writer’s Support Group Website!!!

How has your month been? Success with submissions, angst from agents,  peanuts from publishers ... or have you defined your writing month by your own terms? 

SOURCE

You've been in a little cabin at the beach with the water at your toes and your fingers on your laptop, haven't you? No interruptions. Isolated. Freedom to create. Lots of wine, coffee or tea at hand to celebrate finishing that novel. Ah, sorry, got carried away. That's my fantasy. You may be happier writing at the kitchen counter with your family raging around you.

September 1 question - How do you define success as a writer? Is it holding your book in your hand? Having a short story published? Making a certain amount of income from your writing?

There's nothing uniform about writing or writers. We all write with whatever time/place/talent we have and can't control everything. And if I interviewed everyone of you who came by today, success would be something different. I follow a lot of FB posts where authors take a photo/video as they open a box of their published books. I find that scintillating. Their pride resonates with me. But I'm not there yet.  

I think all the questions this month are legit. Some writers post about their submissions for the month. That's cool. I'm not a submitter, preferring to tap away doing my own thing. Save myself the angst of rejection, LOL. 

But there's nothing wrong with making a bit of money from this writing gig and that's one of my goals. Whether you look at your writing as a profession, a career or a hobby, I totally believe in financial rewards, however small. But unless you have bucketloads of luck, even though you have it all sorted - the writing courses, craft books, beta readers, alpha readers, editors, cover artists, formatters ... phew ... wringing a few dollars out of our books is hard ...(someone I know with about 20 books on Amazon reckons they've made 45cents when he/she deducts expenses). Who'd work for that wage?

...which is why I'd like you to give me a few tips on your most successful marketing tool. I'd greatly appreciate it. Currently I'm building my mailing list through Bookfunnel which has been ultra successful, and now this month I'm trying out their sales promos. Will let you know if it's successful in gaining new readers who're willing to pay for one of my books rather than get them for free. All part of the process.

So, here are my questions to you. Choose one/all ...

* what has been your most successful marketing tool? 

* have you built a mailing list and if so, how?

* what is your favorite marketing book?

* what is your process in writing a book - ideas, premise, writing/self-editing, beta readers, editors, cover artists? 

* what authors do you currently admire - classic? modern? risk takers? genres?

~*~

Just letting you know  - I FINALLY have my first in my Renaissance Vampire Romance series up for pre-order and about to go live - on September 8. There are at least 5 books in the series, have written 3 in full (as I'm a slow writer).

HERE is the link to BETRAYED.

Let me take you on a trip to Florence, that insanely beautiful jewel in the center of Italy. A city of art and architecture thanks to the ruling family of hundreds of years, the de' Medici, who feature in Book One. #historicalfiction, #paranormalromance,#vampires ...

And the fun doesn't stop here. WEP's October challenge is near. Our Year of Art continues with Munch's The Scream. How could you fail to be inspired by this work of art made fetchingly into a badge by Olga Godim? 

Join us HERE. We LOVE new writers! It's a chance to get feedback on a WIP or a story before submission. There's a critique prize for the winning entry. Our prize for August is a first chapter critique or query/synopsis critique from our very own Jemi Fraser, our most recent recruit to the WEP team.

Happy writing!

Denise

#IWSG post - It takes a tribe to publish and market a book. Here's 5 Tips to Marketing to try!

Hi friends!

If we feel insecure about our writing and marketing, we need help and that's what this group is all about. Today I've invited someone to guest post who may be able to help you with your marketing. We all know marketing is easy, right? Wrong! And it's complicated. My guest Tania Joyce tells us just how complicated it is!

Before Tania gets underway, I want to thank Alex's awesome co-hosts for the March 4 posting of the IWSG:  Jacqui Murray, Lisa Buie-Collard, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and Shannon Lawrence! Visit if you can.

Click HERE for the list of participants to read more...

You do it, don't you? Scan the Acknowledgements in traditionally-published books. Read all about those who've helped the author - agents, early readers, publishers, researchers, fact checkers, more readers, editors, book cover artists - I usually count at least 40 people involved in one book.

So why do many self-published authors think they can do it without a tribe of their own?

I've been gathering a tribe around me for years. But the most important members of my tribe are my critique partners - Tania Joyce and Sheila Korner Grice. We formed an alliance after meeting each other at a Margie Lawson Immersion Class 3 years ago and have critiqued each other's work ever since.

My fabulous critters, Tania (left), Sheila (right)

I forgot to give Tania a word limit when I asked her to guest blog, but with the number of times I read bloggers feeling insecure about marketing, rather than try to edit this article down, I'm going to leave it to you to take what you wish from it. Some parts are so technical I shudder and roll my eyes and pray for understanding, LOL. If you, like me, have any questions, ask away in the comments.

Here we go...

Five Things I’ve Learned About Marketing Other Than Putting Half-Naked Men on my Covers

1.     You have to treat being an author like a business. It takes time, effort, a lot of trial, error, research and investment to know where you fit into the author landscape and the marketing strategies you want to undertake. The best thing though is, in this business, you can start with a small budget and work your way up. But you do have to spend money to make money.

When I first started creative writing at the tender age of 36, the first thing I learnt about author marketing is there is so much to learn. With fifteen years’ experience in corporate marketing, I thought I knew how to market, but author marketing was a whole different world. I had to start from scratch. Online marketing, social media and promotions unveiled an entirely different approach to product marketing. It’s exciting and forever changing. I knew nothing about Facebook Advertising and Amazon Advertising. I dabbled at first and have slowly built my brand awareness and product sales by reading, going to conferences and doing online courses. Enrolling in Mark Dawson’s Self Publish Formula course and studying Brian Meek’s Mastering Amazon Ads provided the foundation and turning point in my author career. I have done courses, read books and I’m involved with many online groups like 20Booksto50k. It takes time to sift through the clutter of ads, offerings and advice to find what works for you. I do well with AMS ads, but I’m still trying to master FB ads. Grrr! What works for one person, may not work for another. Being flexible, patient and persistent is key.

FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/20Booksto50k/

Mark Dawson’s SPF Course: https://selfpublishingformula.com/

2.   Finding your tribe and people who can help you is essential. There are numerous best-selling authors and industry experts out there who can help you learn and achieve success, but for me it has been fundamental in finding a group of local authors who are on the same journey. I’m fortunate enough to have joined a romance writing group when we were all newbie authors, unpublished and had no clue on how to do this authoring thing. We met at the Romance Writers of Australia annual conference. Over the years (since 2012), we’ve all been published (some traditional, some self-published, some hybrid). We’ve all done various courses, workshops, attended conferences and continued with online training. We share our findings, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and we constantly help each other. It’s incredible to have this trust and be always willing to help and share our knowledge. 

I was traditionally published. I quickly learnt that traditional publishers do not have outlandish budgets for new authors — there were no book tours, no advertisements, no book launch party, didn’t even get my books into stores. I got a couple of online blogs. That’s it. I learnt that most, if not all, marketing fell onto my shoulders. At launch, I had no idea how the book was doing, because I had no access to sales data. The royalty check at six months was my only indicator. It was dismal.

When the division of my publisher folded, I opted to get my rights back. … I’m now 100% indie. It has been the best thing. I got control. I got access to data. I could now change covers, blurbs, run ads, manage keywords, fix that one annoying typo in my manuscript, see instant sales data and ad performance all within a quick click. While the learning curve has been steep and challenging, it has been totally awesome!

3.       Love your data. You may hate it, but you have to do some maths. The platforms you sell on eg Amazon, provide you with a bucket load of information, but it’s a matter of sifting through it, and analysing your results so you can work out what is and isn’t working, only then can you work on improving and scaling marketing strategies.

Learn what your clickthrough ratio is (Impressions/clicks), your conversion rate (clicks/sales), and if writing a series, your readthrough rates (sales_Book2/Sales_Book1 etc). They are vital statistics for advertising purposes and to see if your books are actually selling.

The unfortunate thing here is places like Amazon do not give you all the information in one nice report. Current AMS ads reports do not include Kindle Unlimited information. You have to download data from different places to work out your ratios and rates, but it’s worth it.  I have this down to a fine art. It takes me 15-20minutes a day to download my data, enter it into my spreadsheet, add in my expenses and sales figures. I can see what ads are performing, the ones that are not, and make any tweaks if necessary.

Out of my six books and 1 x duo bundle, I have 213 AMS ads running. My average ad clickthrough ratio is 1:930 (1 x click per 930 impressions…which is good), my clicks to sales is 1:6 (one sale every 6 clicks…freaking awesome!), my readthrough on KU is 75%. My ROI is 43% (and slowly getting better.) Learn to love your data.

While the information in this book is dated in regards to cost-per-click data and some ad types have changed, this resource has all the formulas in it and is a great place to start for ads. Brian Meeks: Mastering AMS Ads: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072SNXYMY

4.       Be prepared to change. The market is a continual moving set of goal posts and you must be prepared to move with it. Facebook and Amazon continually change and update their algorithms. What works for you one month, may not work the next. 

Know your genre, sub-genre, analyse the top-selling authors in your genre, study their image, their book covers, their blurbs. Use this research to market your books. (Sorry…half-naked men on covers works for my genre!) When I first got published, I didn’t want bare-chested men on my books. I wanted to be professional and classy. My books didn’t sell. I changed the covers and instantly saw a change in sales. Follow market trends in what is working in artwork and graphic design. Your cover needs to sell your book, genre, capture the eye, and be in line with your branding and image.

5.       Be relevant. This is critical for advertising. Learn to target correctly. Use refined keywords, target like-authors, similar book titles and niche genres. Platforms like Facebook and Amazon “learn” through its algorithms where to place your ads and to which customers it should show your ads. Just because you like reading Stephen King novels, don’t use “Stephen King” as a keyword if you write sweet romance. It’s not relevant.

I write rock star romance, which falls into the category of New Adult Romance. But this category includes everything from vampires, shapeshifters and witches, through to bad boys, bikers and billionaires. It is important to zone in on your niche. I make sure I only target ‘rock star romance’ books, authors and keywords. It takes more time but conversation rates will be better and making sales is what it’s all about.

As an indie author, marketing is a constant and essential part of my business. New ads, new graphics, new content for social media posts, promotions, learning and data analysis all have to fit around writing the next book and my family. Time management is critical. A great support network is imperative. I’m fortunate to have the best critique partners in the world. Our tight timeframes keep me from spending too much time on Facebook, obsessing over ads and drowning in information overload. Love your data, embrace marketing, make it fun! And hopefully make money along the way!

About Tania Joyce

I'm an author of New Adult and Contemporary Romance novels. My stories thread romance, drama and passion into beautiful locations ranging from the dazzling lights and glitter of New York, to the rural countryside of the Hunter Valley in Australia.

I like to write about strong-minded, career-oriented heroes and heroines that go through drama-filled hell, have steamy encounters and risk everything as they endeavour to find their happily-ever-after.

I call Brisbane, Australia, home.

LATEST RELEASE

RAPT – The Price of Love. Everhide Rockstar Romance Series Book #3

Genre: Romantic Suspense

Today I was supposed to marry the girl of my dreams. She didn’t turn up.

Life in world-famous rock band, Everhide, has pushed Kyle's and Gemma's hearts, careers and friendship to the limits. But they are soulmates. Their love is profound. Intense. Getting married is their dream come true.

But not everyone feels the same way.
Someone obsessed with Kyle wants Gemma dead.

DEAD!

Surely the danger isn't real? It's just some crazed fan pulling a prank.

When the threats escalate, Kyle's over-protectiveness kicks in and Gemma's grip on sanity wears thin. With concerts and festivals to play before their big day, she won't let anyone derail their wedding plans.

But one false move puts her in danger.

When life teeters on its edge and she risks everything she loves, can Gemma find the strength to let Kyle into her guarded heart before it's too late?

If you like sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense, full of intrigue and heart wrenching romance, RAPT – The Price of Love will captivate you. With strong heroines, and intense heroes, this rock star romance will make your heart race right up to the epic emotional ending. Be prepared. Grab your copy today.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0825526VR

• Did you enjoy Tania's article? Any questions? Ask in comments...
• Do you have a marketing tip or two? Do tell...

LOVE IT - TWEET IT! LOVE IT - TWEET IT!

@TaniaJoyceBooks @DeniseCCovey, #author shares #marketindtips  https://dencovey.blogspot.com/2020/03/iwsg-post-it-takes-tribe-to-publish-and.html #amwriting #ammarketing #amazonads

Learn some #marketingtips https://dencovey.blogspot.com/2020/03/iwsg-post-it-takes-tribe-to-publish-and.html @TaniaJoyceBooks @DeniseCCovey,#amwriting #ammarketing #amazonads

#IWSG post -- What I've learned through my self-publishing experiment.

Howdy people!

Thanks to Alex J Cavanaugh and his awesome co-hosts for February 1: Misha Gericke, LK Hill, Juneta Key, Christy and Joylene Buter!

The IWSG question of the month is: How has being a writer changed your experience as a reader?

Short answer: It's made me aware of all the 'so-called' rules of writing that are broken constantly by famous authors. But also, it's helped me to learn plot and structure which is hard to get just by reading the theory. Not that I'm there yet, but I've improved.

Long Answer: Go to Write...Edit...Publish where Pat Garcia has a great guest post on Critical Reading.

But today I want to come clean about what I see in the tricky world of publishing, in particular, self-publishing.  

WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT SELF-PUBLISHING and selling books. (Not much, but I'm not overly insecure about it, just realistic.)

I formatted a book for Amazon just to test how it all worked. It stands alongside other compilations which include a story of mine. I received some great reviews for Under the Tuscan Moon, my vampire fantasy, but haven't sold many copies. I'll definitely be trying traditional publishing for my Paris novel.

This is my self-pub story...(not an episode of Law and Order).

• Formatting on Amazon is not hard if you follow their intricate instructions, just tedious. I always planned to hire someone to format for me, but as I said, I wanted to try it for myself at least once. Tick. :-)
• Amazon is very helpful, answering emails quickly and doing what they can to help you which is opposite to what I've read on some blogs. Tick. :-)
• Their 75% royalties only eventuate if you price your book high enough. :-(
• Setting up a bank account for receiving those non-existent royalties is a right royal pain. No doubt it's easier if you live in the US. I really think Amazon is for American citizens, so Donald Trump will most likely leave it alone. :-(
• You don't sell any/many books unless you make the first few pages of Amazon searches and how do you do that? A lot of spamming I'd wager. Or friendly bloggers could get together and all buy each other's books on the same day. :-(
• Self-publishing is difficult for people who hate self promotion or are basically lazy or don't care less if they sell a book or not. It takes a lot of effort to crack the market as exhausted authors will tell you. :-(
• Self-publishing works best for people who don't need sleep or are already traditionally-published best-selling authors (name recognition). :-(

Okay, IWSG-ers, if you have a moment, would you answer one/some/all of these questions for me? 

• Do you have any help to offer re selling books that  you're willing to share?
• Are you happy with Amazon if you're self-published? Do you sell most of your books through them? 
• Do you have a marketing plan?
• Do you see social media as an important marketing tool? (A future post).

Thanks for coming by. I hope to see you again!

While you're here, I'll do a plug for Write...Edit...Publish who announce their new challenge today. Please think about joining us if you haven't before or if you haven't for awhile. A new challenge comes out every second month. Check out the schedule at the top of my sidebar. There might be something that catches your imagination.

THIS MONTH, Back of the Drawer (not your average Valentine's challenge). Tell us your interpretation in a poem, a flash fiction piece of 1000 words or less, a non-fiction piece detailing your personal experience or someone else's experience, write a script, draw your dreams, or post a photograph or a photo essay. The genre is up to you. The artistic choice is completely yours.

.

N R Williams on finding readers for her books. Marketing tips, anyone?

I saw a facebook post recently that warmed my heart. A blogger who was ready to self-publish her flash fiction collection in time for Halloween was let down by her cover artist. She bemoaned that fact on facebook. There were many encouraging replies to her post, but a fellow blogger did something about it--she offered to do a cover for free...and quickly, so said author could go ahead and post.

That author was N. R. Williams. The very generous author who provided the brilliant cover was Nicole McDonald. 

Greetings fellow bloggers. Thank you for coming to visit and read my post. Denise has graciously asked me to write about my Halloween series and if I intend to continue publishing a book each October. I can’t really answer that without talking about what led me to develop the series in the first place. It is my hope that this post will inspire some of you.

Challenges

My life has been filled with challenges. As a child, I had to overcome being switched from my left hand to my right hand. This left me with a learning disability which made English grammar as formidable as a foreign language. I struggle with both. Wait, you say, aren’t you a writer? Yes, I am. I have overcome the grammar challenge.

As a child, I was an artist. Color has always been important to me. But I am also a perfectionist and so art in many forms began to frustrate me. I have transformed my gift of observation into a gift for description. Embracing the challenge.

As a writer, my first love is fantasy. I was bitten by the fantasy bug with Dr. Seuss first, then J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis and much later J. K. Rowling. I worked for over twenty years on my first book, learning all the rules of writing and grammar. People said, put your first book aside and do something different. I couldn’t. My first epic fantasy, The Treasures of Carmelidrium, lived with me and wouldn’t leave me alone. I was turned down by a lot of agents and publishers and so I met that challenge by self-publishing in 2011. Later that year publishers came out with a new designation. Young Adult. That fits me to a ‘T.’ My voice is ‘YA,’ but my characters are twenty something. Should I have waited to publish? I don’t know.

Now we come to the present and my new challenge. How to find readers and transform my books into best sellers? This is as difficult for me as grammar was. I don’t have the finances to do a lot of advertising. That in mind, I read that the more books you have available the easier to sell. Well…writing epic fantasy takes time and my time is at a premium. I nearly died two years ago, so I struggle with my health. That said, it’s taking even longer to write my fantasies. But, I am determined.

Halloween series

Amazon 
Cover by Nicole McDonald

Now we come to my Halloween series. Initially I thought that readers would also buy my epic fantasy. That hasn’t happened. Even so, it doesn’t hurt to attract more readers and to grow as a writer. Flash fiction is a useful tool. It makes you a better writer and it allows you to put together a number of stories quickly. I include seven flash fiction stories in each Halloween Collection book. Is that enough? I have no idea but I hope so.

I released the first collection in 2015, and my second in 2016.

I plan to continue to add one Halloween Collection per year and in February 2017 I am putting together a Valentine Faerie Collection. This will also be seven stories of tiny flying beings falling in love.  

We will have to have an update.



My question to you--how do you challenge yourself in your life?

N. R. Williams’s journey as a writer began in her formative years. Along the way to becoming a writer she found a voice in herself that couldn’t be silenced. N. R. Williams’s is a writer, a dreamer, a person who sees beyond the here and now and hopes for something better. Her stories evolve along with her characters often changing like the Colorado weather.

N. R. Williams's lives in Colorado with her husband. She is a mother and grandmother.

Nancy blogs HERE
Her AMAZON PAGE is HERE
Her first HALLOWEEN COLLECTION is HERE
Her TREASURES OF CARMELIDRIUM, my personal favourite, is HERE

Thanks for coming by! Don't forget to answer Nancy's question in the comments!

• And seeing Nancy is struggling with marketing, I'm pointing you to a post by Chrys Fey on 100 Marketing Tips.

• Do you have some marketing tips to share? What's worked best for you?

Do you have goals bloghop...share them....

On the spur of the moment I joined this regular bloghop hoted by Misha Gericke and Beth Fred . The idea is simple, really. It's to keep us honest to what we hope to achieve in our writing and we are to post about it the last Friday of every month. Can you believe it's the last Friday of February today?!?


You're more than welcome to join this bloghop. All you need to do is read and follow the guidelines then SIGN UP HERE...

1) Beth and I Misha will be co-hosts of this list.
2) If you do enter your link into the list, please be supportive of the other entrants.
3) Keep us up to date with how you're doing. Update Day is on the last Friday of every month. Even if you don't think you achieved much or anything, write a quick post to say so. We can't encourage if we don't know. 
4) When you enter your blog's address write your goal as the link title. For example, my link's title will be "earn $7500 per month." Not your name or your blog's. This is so we can keep track of who's doing what. 

MY WRITING GOALS for 2016

I signed up as 'publish a novel and submit short stories' this year. I have been researching for the second in my paranormal series to follow Under the Tuscan Moon and the adventures of Vipunin and Cuchulcain and have tons of notes. Now I need to get into the right headspace and get my notes into some sort of order. I was hoping to publish my second novella by the end of January, but this hasn't been possible as I've been away from home and not in a position to write as much as I wanted to. Just keeping up with the blogs and working on my Paris short story was all I achieved. 

So...in April I plan to create my own little NaNoWriMo again and write every day. Last April I wrote 25,000 words on a Paris Cookery novel and hope to pick it up again as I'm SO EXCITED about this book but haven't been able to get to it for months! But the research has been delicious!

Just writing the above has got me excited. Now I'm back home, I've dropped one day off my teaching schedule. Now I will have more time for writing.

Here is a great post from Juneta Keys with so many useful links regarding 

Marketing, Promotion, Self-Publishing For The Writer

How are you going with your 2016 Writing Goals? Please share or join the hop.