C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

06/28/2012 • 5:05 PM 9

AB Challenge 28: Top 10 How to keep the blog ball rolling, George Clooney!

GET BIGGER THAN JESUS FREE ON AMAZON TODAY JUNE 28

What can bloggers do to keep their blog fresh and moving forward? Everyone experiences blog fade at some point. You have lots of other stuff to do or run out of ideas or just don’t feel like blogging all the time. You can still keep your blog traffic motoring on. Here’s how:

1. Guest blogs. New people fresh energy. Interact. Engage. Find allies in the struggle. Kill their enemies to make more solid friends.

2. Interviews. Interacting with new people on your blog equals even more energy. Your blog is about you. Too much about you becomes boring and pathological. And by you, I mean me.

3. Scoopit! I monitor a bunch of choice feeds and when I see something I think is helpful, entertaining, educational or strange about publishing, I use the Scoopit tool to point my readers to the useful link. It’s a great curation tool that makes your blog a hub of whatever niche topic you want to research.

4. Read other blogs. This is where many bloggers fall down. They don’t read enough input to enhance their output. Reading and commenting on blogs is another way to feed #1 and #2, as well.

5. Watch forums for current topics to discover what issues already interest your target readers. If I ever get stuck for a writing prompt, I can always go over to a publishing forum and within a minute, I’ll read something that irks, spurs or inspires me to write about the topic in question. (Today I looked and it was disrespect for indies on a Kindle forum. Filed for later use.) Whatever your topic, there’s a forum for that.

6. Step away from it. Don’t blog just for the sake of blogging. If you aren’t interested in a topic, don’t force it. Better to rest, wait and recharge. Yes, more posts lead to increased traffic, but don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.

7. Blog your experience. Whatever you do, there’s something about it that someone needs to learn about. Any post that begins with “How to” will be read. Evergreen topics, like How to format with Scrivener, for instance, will be an anchor for traffic to your blog for a long time. Think small. Go into step-by-step details to help your readers if you have the tech and teaching skills. Every time I run into an obstacle with book production — and there’s always something — as frustrating as it is, I also think Hey, this is material.

8. Revisit old blog posts and update them from a fresh angle. The SEO spiders will notice changes to your blog and that helps your SEO. Your readers will appreciate the update, too. My feelings have changed about using CreateSpace, for instance. I’m more in favour of CreateSpace than I used to be and I’ve cooled on Lightning Source.

9. Think big, as in sprawling, iconic examples and topics. One of my most popular posts that gets traffic forever is Create More Interesting Characters (Superman vs. Batman). Lots of people are probably discovering the blog simply because they’re searching for the superheroes and need them to save their city. That’s okay. Lots of comic book nerds are interested in issues of character development using familiar examples. (I say this as a comic book nerd.) All that helpful editorial advice will distract them as the Joker and Lex Luthor team up to watch their cities burn.

10. Write top ten lists of something (easy ones, like this!) They’re easy to write and people love them. Well, not this one, but usually. Pick a film genre, book genre, blogs, celebrities, roles, whatever. Relate it to a trending topic on Twitter (or George Clooney at any time) and watch your readership climb higher. Make George Clooney relevant, though, not some tenuous, lame joke to illustrate your point like I just tried.

AB Challenge 27: 10 rewards of regular blogging (plus a reward for you) (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon.com, Bigger than Jesus, blogger, blogging, niche topic, publishing, publishing forum, Robert Chazz Chute, Search engine optimization, self-publishing, target readers, watch forums, writer, writing

06/16/2012 • 10:01 PM 7

Author Blog Challenge 16: Why ebooks?

One of the writing prompts for the Author Blog Challenge questions how we came to choose ebooks. Did you ever see the movie Annie Hall? Woody Allen gets stopped by a cop after crashing into several cars. He drops his license and the cop says, “Pick that up.” Woody tells him he has to ask nicely because he has a problem with authority. The cops sighs and says, “Please.” Woody picks up the license. “I just have a thing about authority,” he says, “don’t take it personally,” as he tears the license to bits and lets the wind carry the shreds away.

Cut to a few years ago: I was at a writing conference in Victoria, British Columbia. There I met the first person I’d ever met who had given up on paper books completely. It was ebooks or nothing for her. It was the early days of early adopters and missionary zeal. It all seems evident to most of us now, but at the time, the self-publishing revolution was still new to many. Naysayers and doubters noted that Stephen King had tried an ebook and it hadn’t achieved flight. Actually, what hurt that venture was a lack of convenient reading technology and he said he wouldn’t continue the story instalments if there was an insufficient audience of subscribers. It wasn’t the death knell to ebooks. Mr. King was just a little ahead of the audience. Seeing the future at that writing conference was the moment I’d been waiting for: the technology was catching up with my anti-authoritarian temperament.

For me, the revolution was less about ebooks per se and more about the potential for achieving autonomy. I began to prepare in earnest. I stopped buying Writers Digest and started researching the net for all the latest information. I didn’t want to read the old guard’s bias toward so-called “real” publishing still evident in industry magazines. The web was full of what I needed: new friends and DIY information.

Go back farther for a little history: Before Amazon, ebooks and CreateSpace, there were vanity publishers and scandals and writers defrauded, writers ignored by the establishment and a market that was very much a buyer’s market. By “buyers” I don’t mean actual readers like now. I mean agents and editors who were reluctant to take a chance on new authors. I didn’t even bother knocking on the palace door.

I had worked in traditional publishing for five years in a variety of capacities and I wasn’t that impressed with most of my colleagues. Almost all of the publishers I worked with from those days are gone. Harlequin (where I got my first publishing job) is still around. So is Douglas & McIntyre. That’s about it. Cannon Book Distributors, Lester & Orpen Dennys, The Canadian Book Information Centre, and numerous publishers I repped are all bankrupt and gone.

Instead, I wrote for myself, not a nameless agent’s whims. I went away and did other things: magazine columns and editing. I dabbled and freelanced. I wrote short stories and entered contests and several of those ended up winning awards. Eventually those stories found their way into my collections (Self-help for Stoners and Sex, Death & Mind Control.) I wrote several books, but given my experience with traditional publishing, I was averse to even trying to get my work published. I just wasn’t interested in going anywhere to a gatekeeper on bended knee. Let the palace burn. My practice was to write a book and then, before I could even think of sending it anywhere, I wrote the next one. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? Like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, I was headed to jail and I didn’t care. Jail was preferable to being a cog in a machine. I hate having a boss so much, I haven’t worked for anyone else since 1991.

With self-publishing, finally what some considered a flaw in my character can be a virtue. I approach the work not as a self-publisher, but as a publisher. I have higher hopes and lower overhead than all those companies I worked for so long ago. It’s not a question of whether founding Ex Parte Press and doing the DIY thing is a good idea. My personality allows nothing else: Does not share toys, does not play well with others. Many are familiar with “ex parte” from watching Law & Order. The strict Latin definition means “from one.” Sure, I still hire out jobs I need done that other people can do better, but basically, Ex Parte Press is “from one.” Is it scary? Sure. But then, this morning, I got two beautiful reviews, one for my new crime novel, Bigger Than Jesus and the other for Self-help for Stoners. I get all the blame and all the credit and I didn’t have to ask permission from The Man. I haven’t felt this free since I was twelve when I didn’t have to work at all. I am Spartacus. I am Woody Allen in Annie Hall. I am a child again. I am a free man.

Day 8 of the Author Blog Challenge: Indie Self-defence (chazzwrites.com)
Self-publishing, why did you? Questionnaire (wordznerd.wordpress.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon.com, Annie Hall, anti-authoritarian, Business, E-book, ex parte press, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publishing, traditional publishing, Woody Allen

06/14/2012 • 10:36 PM 12

Author Blog Challenge 14: Eleven ways writers get surprised

Gremlins will push you ’round^ Look where you’re going^ Back up our battleskies^ – NARA – 535380 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Some surprises you’re in for when you publish your book

Please note: This list of surprises for writers is not meant to be comprehensive. The worst surprises, like dying by flaming harpoon attack to the forehead (before you finish your novel) or a hard drive exploding and taking out two floors of your house are not included. Those circumstances just aren’t lighthearted enough for my intent here. Oops. Well, I guess you’re worried about that stuff now, too.

1. You thought your manuscript was clean and it was, it was! Gremlins went in and put those ugly typos in there! That’s the only reasonable explanation.

2. Publishing your book is a huge event in your life. Remember when you had a baby and you expected the world to pause to acknowledge your contribution to, and sacrifice for, the human race? Wars should stop and the earth’s rotation should cease for a moment, if only so we can all bow. Sadly, it’s not a huge event in everyone’s else’s life. Many people are indifferent and it’s just not efficient to go out and kill all of them with a rusty axe.

3. The people you thought would love your book? They don’t. My dad still hasn’t read anything I’ve written. He’s waiting for me to write about him. (What he doesn’t know is that he really doesn’t want that!)

4. Lots of people are readers but they do not write reviews. You’ll expect reviews. Eventually you probably beg for reviews. Worse? You still won’t get them, even from friends and family! I thought about it, but there is no joke I can tag on this item that will soothe the sting. It’s more tragic than a flaming harpoon to the crotch.

5. Someone will object to something you wrote. What will surprise you is what they object to. For example, some people get riled up about which font you chose for your cover. You’ll assume that joke your main character made about religion was, at most, funny. At worst? Somewhat innocuous. Some blogger, somewhere, will call you the Anti-Christ and call on Jesus to smite you because, apparently, Jesus loved capital punishment. Oh, wait… (At least outrage and threats of censorship increase sales, so there’s that.)

6. Some people will treat you better, briefly, because you’re an author. Then they’ll treat you worse when they find out you’re a self-published author. For some reason, you have to answer for every grammatical mistake and every (so-called) undeserved success of your breed. Corollary: If you become a very successful traditionally published author, some people will hate you because lots of people read your books. Or the haters will hate because they aren’t you. Suggestion: A dog is reliably faithful. Definitely buy a dog. They can’t read so they’re blameless.

7. Formatting will be tough the first time. The first time, you’re a dim-witted chimpanzee with a keyboard. The second time you do it, you’ll be surprised how easy it is. You will have evolved to a very intelligent Rhesus monkey.

8. By the time you’re through revisions and formatting, you and your editorial team will have gone through the manuscript so many times you’ll be sick of it. This is the story you loved so much. Now your cute baby has grown into an angry, gangly, acne-scarred teenager and you just want them out of the house they can go make money and so you can make room for a sweet new baby who loves to cuddle.

9. Actual publication won’t be quite as momentous as you anticipated. How could it equal all those dreams you’ve had since childhood? You pictured a limo and an elegant cocktail party. Instead, it’s you in sweats, late at night and a little drunk on weighty potential and rum and Coke, debating if you’ve done everything you can before pushing a button. It will feel more like pulling a trigger. You may be filled with more dread of bloody failure than anticipation of success. I’m about to push that button and I’ve had stress headaches all week. I just want to sleep instead of poking around Scrivener‘s bowels to prep the manuscript for Amazon and CreateSpace. You’re not alone in the struggle, but that’s of little solace because you are alone in the room.

10. Getting someone to read your book is harder than writing your book. You’ll spend more time marketing than you ever dreamed necessary, even if you figured it would take a lot of time. Triple your marketing expectations and get a treadmill desk so your ass won’t get as big and wide as your hopes and dreams for your writing career.

11. But here’s the biggest surprise: Though you will get luckier the harder you work, it’s still a lot about luck and timing and some happenstance. Nobody admits this variable. When you win, it’s all attributable your meteoric wisdom. When you succeed, you’ll figure it’s because you made all the right moves and you knew what you were doing with every step. Revising history and shining up the truth is natural. Everybody does that. It keeps us from running away screaming from that “Click to Publish” button.

Author Blog Challenge 11: How I became God (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 12: How to not write your book (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 13: The meek will not inherit the earth or a book deal (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 10: How to make me want to spread your word (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge: The Writing Mistake You Might be Making (chazzwrites.com)
The Author Blog Challenge: My Earliest Memory of Writing is the Typebrighter (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge 9: The key to a great critique group is… (plus a funny bonus) (chazzwrites.com)
Author Blog Challenge: Writers to adore (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Amazon.com, Author, book, ebook, editing, formatting, Publish, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, Scrivener, self-publishing, writer, writing

02/20/2012 • 9:45 PM 0

Russell Blake’s KDP Select Experiment. Is KDP for you?

Via Scoop.it – Writing and reading fiction

(On the downside, I’m late to the party on finding Russell Blake’s blog. On the upside, I have a new boyfri…er…brother in arms. Click the link below for an excellent and evenhanded analysis/update on the KDP Select phenomenon. I’ll continue to follow Mr. Blake’s blog posts with interest. Bookmark it! ~ Chazz)
Via russellblake.com

How KDP Select Helps Book Ranking (texasdruids.com)
The Seduction of KDP Select | Pavarti (chazzwrites.com)
Should I use KDP Select? (insanityreignssupreme.wordpress.com)
Introducing “KDP Select” – A $6 Million Fund for Kindle Direct Publishing Authors and Publishers (teleread.com)
Another Day in The Life (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: authors, ebooks, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, self-publishing, Useful writing links, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, E-book, KDP Select, publishing

02/17/2012 • 8:01 PM 3

Phreaky Friday: Amazon Charging for Digital Publication?

Via Scoop.it – Devolution

Rob at Rob on Writing has an interesting take on what’s to come: Amazon charging authors to use their marketplace. This makes me all squirmy inside because he makes some good, scary points. Click the link below and see what you think. ~ Chazz
Via robonwriting.com

Filed under: ebooks, publishing, self-publishing, Amazon, Amazon.com, charging for publishing, self-publishing

12/31/2011 • 1:54 PM 5

Self-pub Highlights: The Best and Worst of the First and How to Succeed by Failing

Please click here to pick up Parting Shots.

When you can’t get out of the bathtub on your birthday, something’s gone wrong in your life. And by your life, of course, I mean mine. The other night I tore a rotator cuff muscle boxing. It hurts when you throw a hook and miss. I ripped it up pretty well. I’d had shoulder pain off and on for weeks due to to my incredibly sedentary lifestyle and the computer mouse. I sit very still to write. I can’t write and walk around at the same time. I’m chained to a desk by an intravenous tube that carries coffee. When the shoulder pain hit, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. The pain is enormous. I almost called my wife to help me out of the bathtub. On my birthday. Not one of my best birthdays, I have to say. In fact, it might have been the worst.

Long-term?

Pain is good.

I will use this.

I did manage to get myself out of the tub. Getting my shirt on? That was five minutes of hell and wishing the Advil would kick in faster. It didn’t. I’ve had shoulder pain this bad before (on the other shoulder.) When it hurts to laugh, you know it’s bad. When you have to devise new strategies to do mundane tasks, it’s makes you mad. When it happens on your birthday, it makes you sad.

However, I won’t let all this sadness and badness and madness go to waste. At some point, I’m sure I’ll have a hero try to fight the bad guy in a climactic scene and the hero’s shoulder will be all messed up. That’s the easy take away from this experience.

Let’s go deeper.

Staying home to write books full-time? This is awesome. This is the fulfilment of a dream. I am so lucky to be able to devote myself to this enterprise all day. However, if I don’t take better care of my physical body, I will lose this opportunity. When every movement reminds you of pain, it’s hard to concentrate on work. Pain saps productivity, whisks away opportunities and manufactures misery far from the site of origin.

But let’s go deeper.

The pain in my shoulder is not simply a rotator cuff tear. It’s a symptom. I have not been to the gym for quite some time. I have not been taking care of myself. Why is that?

My excuse…no…my dumb reason is that I have been swimming in the launch of my books. I have no excuse. I let myself forget that success is not a single facet. To get my shit together, I have to take time to take care of all aspects of my life: family, fitness and work. I am not of one dimension. I was so busy with work, it gave me the excuse to be lazy in other areas of my life.

Translation:

I have books to publish! I have no time for the gym! Publishing is so exciting I don’t even have to feel bad about not going to the gym because I’m being productive!

Yeah, right. But for low long, Spock? How long?!

Concentrating so much on marketing made the disappointment at the initial outcome darker. My sales aren’t anywhere near where they need to be (yet, goddamnit! Yet!) The reviews haven’t been rolling in (yet, goddamnit! Yet!) But I’ve started up businesses before. I know how this works…or doesn’t work. These things take time. Readers will get around to writing reviews. Word will spread. It doesn’t happen on a schedule. You may as well try predicting cloud formations as plot book sales. But I do have a strategy. While figuring out how to manage our time in the new year, I told She Who Must Be Obeyed that I think I’m through The Worst of the First.

The Worst of the First is the downside of that incredibly creative, energetic time when you start up a new enterprise. You have to get a business license and take care of paperwork that is not directly related to your success. You order business cards or figure out technical aspects that feel removed from the core of your enterprise. The Worst of the First is about trying to do everything at once, just to get things rolling forward. The Worst of the First is about the trivia that no reader ever sees. It’s the behind-the-scenes stuff no one cares about, including me, but it has to get done. It’s part of building inertia, too.

Then there is The Best of the First. Here are the highlights of my first couple of months as founder, president, author and Chief Dude in Charge of Wastebasket Emptying at Ex Parte Press: Three ebooks up on Amazon and just about everywhere else by November 1. Recorded a podcast, Self-help for Stoners, to help market my book of the same name. Tried and failed to get my first podcast published. Dave Jackson of the School of Podcasting helped me to get the podcast up and out there. He helped me get control of my author website, too (allthatchazz.com). Got the paperback formatted with Jeff Bennington’s help. Got new art for the paperback done with my graphic designer, Kit Foster. Published Self-help for Stoners through CreateSpace. Published three short stories in the last week (Parting Shots, Asia Unbound and Vengeance is #1) on Smashwords.com. Maintained my Scoopit! Page, three blogs, three Twitter accounts and published six podcasts. Now the podcast is also available on the Stitcher app as well as iTunes, so it’s everywhere.

When so much positive stuff was happening at once, I was riding high. But I wasn’t leaving my desk. I’ve been married to my Mac, which makes She Who Must Be Obeyed jealous. I’m through the imbalanced part now. My shoulder reminds me with every move that I have to concentrate on the core. That means publishing three novels in the next year, yes. That also means taking better care of me so I can accomplish those goals. It means eating right and getting to the gym. That’s also part of the writing process. It clears the brain and keeps my body ready for writing marathons. Sitting still for too long is too hard on the body. We’re made to move and if we don’t, we die.

On my birthday, I checked my book sales and found the accounting had finally come through. It wasn’t good, but the beginning is rarely good. I’ve been here before. I know the terrain. I know the pain hammering me in the shoulder is a reminder of what a low point feels like. The sinking feeling as I looked at my first sales numbers—on my birthday!—made me think for a moment that all my marketing efforts had been wasted. But no. It’s just a normal part of The Worst of the First. My readership hasn’t found me yet. You have to market your books when you think you should be using all your time to write. In weak moments I do think, All I should do is just write and revise and do nothing else. But then I remember this is not 1987. Seclusion is a luxury for old media authors. I’m a new media author. I must not hide from the world if anyone is to ever hear me.

The fattest kid at Fat Camp has the most potential. When you reach critical mass and are feeling low, you can look up. There is so much to learn and so much to conquer. I am grateful to have so much fun and trial ahead of me. When we succumb to the idea that the best times of our lives are behind us, we truly begin to die. This is just the beginning and there is so much to look forward to! Writing this post, holding tight to this pain and this disappointment? That’s going to make the triumph all that much sweeter, don’t you think? I’m going to appreciate the win more when it comes. And I’m through the gauntlet and into the glove already! I made it through the Worst of the First. Yes, there will be frustrating times ahead, but I got through the first couple of months of the enterprise. I got to the starting line. A lot of people dream of the starting line but never get there. They never get the chance, or take the chance, to run. Now I’m running and I’ve got some inertia behind me. I have you behind me. (I know because you’ve read this far.)

My resolutions for 2012?

I will use this. Failure is fuel.

Failure is only failure if you let it keep you stuck in the tub.

Happy new year.

If it isn’t happy,

MAKE IT SO.

Self-help for Stoners is now available on Stitcher (plus the Christmas message of hope and gooeyness) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Stuff to Listen to When You’re High (allthatchazz.com)
Self-publishers: Why I went multimedia (and why you should, too) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Book Marketing: What I didn’t know about resistance to ebooks (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
A Series is Born: Free ebook and Parting Shots, a new short story (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Podcast #3: How to Beat a Murder Charge with a Skunk and a Smile (allthatchazz.com)
How to sell cross-genre books in The Land of The Easy No (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: DIY, ebooks, getting it done, publishing, self-publishing, short stories, What about Chazz?, What about you?, Writers, writing tips, Advil, Amazon.com, Asia Unbound, iTunes, Parting Shots, Podcast, self-help for stoners, Stitcher, Twitter, vengeance is #1

11/05/2011 • 9:02 PM 4

I just received my first review on Goodreads! And it’s a good’un!

The ebook review was for The Dangerous Kind, a novelette:

Two orphaned brothers go into the woods on a hunting trip. Each has reason to want the other out of the way. Only one will ever see home again.

Read the review here!

Thanks to Mark Young for the nice review. It’s also kind of prescient of him. The setting for The Dangerous Kind is a small town in Maine called Poeticule Bay. Mark felt the novelette was a warm-up for more from Poeticule Bay and he’s right! I’m already working on the next Poeticule Bay book, a full-length novel.

If you’ve read Self-help for Stoners, Stuff to Read When You’re High, you’ll also recognize the name. In the very first story of that collection, an actress named Legs Gabrielle returns to Poeticule Bay for her father’s funeral. Complications ensue when she is not welcomed back as the local girl who made good. You can read that story for free here. Or buy it as part of the whole collection here. (All of $2.99.)

As for that awesome review of The Dangerous Kind, if you’re ready for a little suspense, just jump to buying it on Amazon.

Or Smashwords.

Or for your Nook.

Or you could, I suppose, go on with your life thinking that your world does not revolve around my dark tales of suspense.

You could, theoretically, pass this by and believe that you could do without fulfilling my petty desires.

But we both know that’s not true. (Er…right?)

Also, The Dangerous Kind is only 99 cents.

(It ain’t begging if you provide something in exchange for the couch change.)

Or click the link above to get that free taste of Self-help for Stoners and see if you think I’m wasting your time…or drawing you into my world.

Filed under: All That Chazz, My fiction, web reviews, What about Chazz?, Writers, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Barnes & Noble Nook Color, book review, E-book, Nook, Smashwords, The Dangerous Kind review

10/22/2011 • 12:48 PM 1

Sex Alert! It’s here to take you away

Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit), a collection of short fiction about our three favourite things, went up on Amazon just last night! Hurray!

Please check it out by clicking the cover below.

(I love them all and there are even a couple of award-winners in the mix.)

Also, note that you don’t have to own a Kindle to read anything from Amazon. Get your free reading app for your screen here.

Now available at Amazon!

The downside of cheap ebooks (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: My fiction, What about Chazz?, Amazon, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, E-book, fiction collection, Kindle, new release, publishing, short story

06/16/2011 • 1:05 AM 22

6 Effective Ways to Promote Your Book

Today’s guest post is from the author of Reunion, Jeff Bennington! I forget how I ran across Jeff, though it could have been a lot of places since Jeff is a powerful experimenter in the realm of book promotion. His site is The Writing Bomb. He’s also blogged here before on CreateSpace versus Lightning Source–a very popular post, and for good reason: Jeff’s generous with what he learns. Here’s what he picked up from his book campaigns:

In the world of publishing, authors have found many ways to promote their work ranging from book signings with a 3-piece orchestra to dressing up like their characters. After publishing two novels, I’ve tried some of those crazy stunts, but from my experience, there are a few affordable and effective ways to promote your book online that won’t leave you looking like Barney the dinosaur. In fact, online marketing has been touted, and likely is, the best way for an author to promote his or her work.

However, authors have to approach marketing differently based on their genre and subject matter. And let’s be clear, when you promote your book, you can’t always expect immediate gratification and you’re not guaranteed sales. Your premise will drive readers to read a sample and the excerpt will determine your sales. And so, the quality of your writing is ultimately the best sales pitch.

The best promotion for me has come from the following:

#1 Goodreads.com: Goodreads “giveaways” are an incredible tool to publicize your book. I recently posted Reunion in a giveaway and had 787 bites in 5 days, beating out bestsellers that have been on the list for months.

HINT: Don’t post more than one book to give away and do it in one-week spurts. You’ll have to trust me on this.

I also like what my ad on Goodreads is doing. The thing with Goodreads is not how many clicks or sales you get, but how many folks “add” your book to their “to be read” list. When they do that, they are more or less planning on buying your book when they get to it, and they will, because most readers on Goodreads are avid readers and love talking about what they read, so they will also rate and review your book, which is another benefit of that site.

Another secret here is that if you spend X amount of dollars on an ad, you will likely get a lot more “adds” than clicks, which is good because it is a pay-per-click system. But if folks add your book without clicking on the ad then you have effectively extended the life of your ad immeasurably.

#2 Blog: If you don’t have a blog or you’re afraid of starting one or you think it’s too much

Jeff Bennington

work, then plan on writing your book solely for your mother to enjoy because blogging is only the beginning of what it takes to market your book…and it’s the easiest. It’ll only get harder and more expensive from there.

#3 Kindlenation.com: This is a very good site but you’ll have to plan months in advance to run an ad. It will definitely make your money back and more because they have a lot of readers who buy what they advertise. Programs run from $119 to $349. Kindle Nation reaches from 7,500 to 15,000+ opt-in readers. I paid $99 for an ad that ran in mid May and sold over 200 copies that day. So if you make $2 or $3 a book and spend $119…do the math.

#4 Twitter, Facebook, email lists: These are the most obvious and basic starting points. I’ll put it this way, I got all four of my book blurbs through Twitter connections, two of which are bestselling authors. If you can get that elsewhere, go for it. Basically, you have to tell your social marketing pals about your book.

And, this is important, you have to share their work too.

If you blast your friends and followers with your personal spam, they will retweet and share less and less the more you do it. Share what they are doing and chat with them and you’ll notice a marked difference in how receptive they are to spreading the word about your book. I’ve experimented with this and I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that cross promotion helps.

Strict self-promotion hurts.

However, I have found that tweeting short blurbs, such as “A Riveting and Incredibly Powerful Story of Pain and Triumph!” grabs reader’s attention more than, “Check out my new book, REUNION”. Try both methods and see which works better. Be sure to include a “tiny url” to allow room for your #tags.

HINT: Use the twitter share button on the right side of your Amazon sales page. It has the shortest “tiny url” I’ve seen yet.

#5 Ereadernewstoday.com: I’m on the schedule, so I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard that Ereadernewstoday.com is a good site to advertise on. This program is $25 a day. Emails will reach about 10,000 book readers through opted-in email blasts.

#6 Blog Tour: Plan for a lot of work. It can be nearly free, but will be the most time consuming. However, if your book sucks, I think a blog tour can backfire. I’m just sayin’.

If you go this route, you better get your book professionally edited and proofed and have a great cover and good formatting because that’s what book bloggers and reviewers expect.

Basically, when it comes to promoting your book. You better make sure it is a damn good book or you’ll have a 7-digit Amazon ranking within a month. I know. I’ve seen it. But don’t get overwhelmed. I’m a newer author and I’m not breaking any records, but I believe these six methods of promotion will help you tremendously, especially if you are in the process of building your platform as I am.

Thanks for reading. What methods have you used to promote your book? How did it turn out? Let me know.

Jeff Bennington, author of REUNION & other thrillers

CLICK THE COVER TO BUY REUNION NOW:

And here are more of Jeff’s links:

The Rumblin’

Killing the Giants

The Writing Bomb

www.jeffbennington.com

Life & book marketing update shouted from a speeding car (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
The agony and ecstasy of self-publishing a book! (lindacassidylewis.com)
How to Get the Most out of GoodReads (unputdownables.net)
What’s goodreads good for? (debsanswers.wordpress.com)
How To Get the Most Out of GoodReads (blogher.com)
Promotional Strategies 101 (writingtomarketing.wordpress.com)
Find Your Next Book To Read With Goodreads [Android] (makeuseof.com)
Writers Need a Web Presence. Here’s What That Means (writeanything.wordpress.com)
Goodreads Makes Great Readers (freetech4teachers.com)

Filed under: Books, Guest blog post, Publicity & Promotion, Writers, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, Author, book promotion, Cross-promotion, Facebook, Goodreads, Jeff Bennington, Lightning Source, Reunion, Twitter

04/15/2011 • 5:41 AM 3

Support authors. Buy books.

FYI: I promised the big announcement today.

That post drops here

at 12:01 pm EST.

Now, to business:

Author Jeff Bennington from The Writing Bomb wrote a very helpful post for Chazz Writes comparing his publishing experience with Lightning Source vs CreateSpace.

Besides helping self-publishers out with some great information, Jeff’s written a great book. The early reviews are very exciting, so I’m not just asking that you help out an author. I’m asking that you enjoy a good book.

Jeff is trying to climb high in Amazon‘s rankings today so readers can find his novel. Get in on the ground floor and help kickstart Jeff’s career. He’s encouraging fans and future fans to buy Reunion today. The novel has received great reviews, so why not? It’s not expensive.

Check out the awesome reviews and blurbs here.

Why not buy two? I will.

For this strategy to work best, it would be great if you bought the book today, April 15, if you please. It’s tax day in the States, so console yourself and forget about that horror by reading Jeff’s cool horror story.

Please support the arts and chill with a good book. Thank you.