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A recent study by the National Endowment for the Arts showed that fiction reading is on the rise, especially among 18- to 24-year-olds.
–Newsweek
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When you’re in the middle of writing a book, it’s easy to get discouraged. You might not be sure what’s supposed to happen next. You certainly can’t remember what happened two chapters ago. The main characters you thought you knew so well seem wobbly, like you don’t know them at all.
This is when it gets tempting to avoid writing.
When everything inside you is screaming to do ANYTHING but write (hello, laundry! Why, yes, I need to scrub my stovetop right this minute…), extinguish those screams.
Sit down.
Write something.
Anything. Even if it’s ten words. Five.
When I’m writing a novel, I’m learning more about my characters as I draft the opening chapters. Then the things I thought were going to happen in the middle of the book sometimes change. I may have realized the heroine has a slightly different story goal than the one I initially pictured. Or her motivation to achieve this goal could be different.
Sometimes the scenes I’d envisioned no longer work when I have these insights. And it’s hard to figure out how to blend the new information with the upcoming plot points that need to happen.
Inevitably, if I stick with it, I figure it out. I’ve learned the hard way, though, the more I procrastinate, the longer it takes me to figure it out.
Which means it takes me much longer to write the book.
How do you take your writing ideas, write a book, and become a published author? This question typically is met with practical advice, tactical tasks, and skill-based tips.
There are other ways to help yourself become an author that have little to do with book structure, producing business and promotion plans, or even writing ability. However, they have a great deal to do with realizing your book idea and writing career.
My book, Creative Visualization for Writers, is divided into five sections. I believe these areas provide untraditional methods to help you make your writing dreams real. Let’s look at each one.
Personal development or growth lies at the heart of every writer’s ability to succeed. In fact, it’s the foundation upon which most successful people build their careers.
We all have unsupportive habits, negative thoughts, and limiting beliefs that hold us back. The best way to change these into supportive habits, positive thoughts, and unlimited beliefs is to explore our minds, emotions, and behavior for areas that need improvement.
If, for example, you want to become an author but you never write, you can explore why that is so. Are you afraid? Do you believe you are not good enough? Or is authorship an attractive idea but not your purpose or passion. Have lost interest in your current project?
byClayton Noblit
Getting a newly published eBook off to a good start is a great thing. It can teach retailer algorithms that the book is popular and can seed your title with reviews that help with future sales. So, how do you release an eBook with a bang? One great tactic is to use eBook pre-orders.
In this post we will detail different strategies for promoting an eBook pre-order and some common questions. Then, we will lay out the steps to set up pre-orders on different retailers and call out some differences between them.
How to promote an eBook pre-order
How long should a pre-order last?
How should an eBook pre-order be priced?
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Amazon
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Nook
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Apple Books
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Google Play
How to Set Up eBook Pre-Orders on Kobo
Ranking well on retailers like Amazon and Apple can have an outsize impact on your book sales. The higher your book is ranked, the more exposure you get.
Authors across all genres plan promo stacks to generate sales, which shoot their books up the charts. And, as their books climb the charts, they generate even more sales from the increase in exposure.
Think of pre-orders as a tool in your promo stack toolkit for new releases. They shouldn’t be the only marketing activity you undertake for a new release, but they certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.
By generating sales before your eBook’s release date, you are signaling the retailer that your book is in demand. This makes it easier for your book to get algorithmic momentum on release day.
Pre-orders may not be an effective strategy for every author. If you are publishing your first book, it may be difficult to generate enough pre-orders to have a significant impact. So your marketing dollars and time may be better spent after your book is released.
If you are an author with a mailing list and some dedicated fans, pre-orders are a great way to release your new title with a bang. Readers who know your work are much more likely to pre-order your next book. Especially if it’s the next book in a series.
Keep in mind that what works for one author may not work for another. Like everything with digital marketing, it’s important to test different methods to see what works for you.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
When it comes to how to sell books on Amazon, authors often forget to include the seasonal pivot in their book marketing plan. But there’s no time like the present to make a few tweaks and help get your book in front of new readers eager to add your title to their summer reading list.
With travel still up in the air for most of us, reading preferences have changed – a lot. In non-pandemic years, summer read books typically consisted of breezy books, or genre fiction. But with a lot of folks choosing staycations, many might be using their time off to finish up crafts they started when we were all at home, to work on home repairs, or to continue that garden project.
So, while our minds go to the fiction books we can escape into on a beach somewhere, other types of books warrant consideration this summer as well.
And these tweaks I’m suggesting aren’t exclusive to summer! I’ve known some savvy authors to change or modify the points below whenever they want to tie their book marketing plan into a particular season or holiday.
Using these updates to remind readers what your book aligns with is a great way to push more reader exposure and sell more books. Ready? Let’s explore these ideas!
Reading Time: 3 minutes
When it comes to how to sell books on Amazon, authors often forget to include the seasonal pivot in their book marketing plan. But there’s no time like the present to make a few tweaks and help get your book in front of new readers eager to add your title to their summer reading list.
With travel still up in the air for most of us, reading preferences have changed – a lot. In non-pandemic years, summer read books typically consisted of breezy books, or genre fiction. But with a lot of folks choosing staycations, many might be using their time off to finish up crafts they started when we were all at home, to work on home repairs, or to continue that garden project.
So, while our minds go to the fiction books we can escape into on a beach somewhere, other types of books warrant consideration this summer as well.
And these tweaks I’m suggesting aren’t exclusive to summer! I’ve known some savvy authors to change or modify the points below whenever they want to tie their book marketing plan into a particular season or holiday.
Using these updates to remind readers what your book aligns with is a great way to push more reader exposure and sell more books. Ready? Let’s explore these ideas!
https://www.amarketingexpert.com/2021/05/18/how-to-sell-books-on-amazon-promoting-your-summer-read/
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Updated by David Gaughran 9 May 2021. Amazon, Publishing • 36 Comments.
Choosing the right Amazon categories for your book is such an important factor in your success. Being smart here can greatly increase your visibility, making your work more likely to be discovered, purchased, and recommended.
But if you make bad decisions here – or opt to do nothing at all – you can limit your book’s success. Sometimes you can even nudge Amazon towards recommend your book to all the wrong people! Which invariably fails, of course, and causes Amazon to think you have written a dud. Meaning Amazon is less likely to recommend your book at all. This is something you really want to avoid.
You should revisit your book’s categories on a regular basis. Not just to ensure you are maximizing visibility, but to check Amazon hasn’t placed you in a bad category. You need to know exactly which categories and sub-categories your book is in. (Amazon doesn’t make that part easy.) And then keep on top of changes to the category system as well.
The advice in this comprehensive guide draws from a book I wrote called Amazon Decoded. This book is the culmination of years of research. It breaks down exactly how the Kindle Store works, how you can design marketing plans which seduce the algorithms instead of fighting them, and the exact ways you need to tweak your metadata to get the biggest halo from every promotion you run.
I’m going to tap into that research today to explain exactly how you can get Amazon’s category system working for your book, instead of against it.
Here, you will learn why the Kindle Store is broken down into so many categories (and the massive opportunity this presents). How you only get access to a limited menu in KDP. The ways you can expand the number of categories for your book to 10 specific sub-categories – and more! Why it’s important to only place your book in relevant categories. And how you can remove your book from bad categories (and why that is important).
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Just when I thought I had moved on, was on solid ground, didn’t have anything to say, something else comes to mind. As a lot of us are, I am huge on family. My family is my world. Now that includes many people who are not blood related family. Family is the people that you love and that love you. You surround yourself with them and them with you.
November is a tough month for my family. We lost are family corner stone. My Mom. It was 2015 so for us the wound is still fresh. My Mom was my best friend, a great person and a loving giver. My Mom was also the ultimate horror fan. Oh my goodness how she loved the old black and white horror films. She devoured Stephen King, John Saul, Dean Knoontz, John Grisham and the likes. She came up with this awesome story…
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How to BookBub
freely
&
How to write from concept to outline
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A couple of years ago, a friend of mine was in a meeting to pitch his screenplay to a movie exec. My friend sold that plot with all the gusto he knew he needed in these rare moments. And he did well. He’d rehearsed that pitch till he could recite it backwards. On a tightrope. While juggling.
The exec was impressed. He picked up the screenplay from his desk and flicked through the pages. He turned to page 10. Not 8, 9, 11 or 12; 10. Then he turned to page 25. Again, not 24 or 26; 25. He put down the screenplay, the disappointment clear on his face.
“I don’t see the inciting incident or the shift to act two.” To this exec, the inciting incident comes 10% of the way into the story, and the main character crosses the threshold into act two at the 25% mark. No earlier, no later.
This is taking story structure to an extremely literal limit. It has to hit those beats, he reasoned, and it has to hit them at these exact times.
I wonder what this exec would have made of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. There, she sees the rabbit in paragraph two, by the fourth para, she’s down the rabbit hole. From inciting incident (seeing the rabbit) to crossing the threshold (going down the rabbit hole) in roughly the same amount of words as it’s taken me to get to this point in the article.
That’s how good a storyteller Lewis Carrol was.
But Carrol was writing at a time before there were whole libraries of books on story structure. The most popular among them being Story by Robert McKee, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, my personal favorite, The Anatomy of Story by John Truby and The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
This recap of “The Surprising Ways Book Reviews Can Help Launch Your Success” from the Book Marketing Tips & Author Success podcast is one of several episodes where we talk about how to market your book and, at the same time, make you a better writer.
Be sure to download and listen to the show for all the details, recommendations, and considerations!
How to market your book is something that most self-published authors must face. We’ve done several episodes about book reviews, how to generate them, and how to use blogger reviews and media, whether you are in the middle of a launch or not. These podcasts can be great refreshers. Check them out in the Resources and Downloads at the bottom of this page.
Book reviews obviously offer a lot of benefits. Digging into what consumers really want is ideally your goal for becoming the best writer you can be. While some reviewers’ feedback will be something you can’t do anything about, often there’ll be something you can use right away in your marketing strategies now or eventually down the road.
If you missed our 2nd saturday, please CLICK HERE TO view the replay
And then grab the meeting notes! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MEETING NOTES
LaShaunda Hoffman ROCKED!
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New Kindle Vella book – Building Your Readership
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Join The Social Butterfly Mastermind
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And don’t forget to join our live group on Facebook at
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See you next month on the 2nd Saturday
Still time to sign up for the #RochesterWriters Conference
http://www.RochesterWriters.com
I’ll be speaking about 21st Century Publishing Options and more!
If you missed our 2nd saturday, please CLICK HERE TO view the replay
And then grab the meeting notes! CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MEETING NOTES
LaShaunda Hoffman ROCKED!
Information about this presenter: https://lashaundahoffman.com
New Kindle Vella book – Building Your Readership
https://amzn.to/2Xg1JsK
Join The Social Butterfly Mastermind
https://lashaunda.kartra.com/page/SBMM
Canva Class with LaShaunda
https://lashaunda.kartra.com/page/canva123
And don’t forget to join our live group on Facebook at
http://facebook.com/groups/motownwriters
See you next month on the 2nd Saturday
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A 2017 Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts and a former attorney, Jean Alicia Elster (BA, University of Michigan; JD, University of Detroit School of Law) is most recently the author of the young adult novel How It Happens, published by Wayne State University Press and released in September 2021. She is the author of the novel The Colored Car—for ages 8 and older—published by Wayne State University Press and released in September 2013.The Colored Car was selected as a 2014 Michigan Notable Children’s Fiction for The Colored Car by the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. The Colored Car was chosen as an Honor Book for the 2014 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People. Elster is also the author of the novel Who’s Jim Hines?—for ages 8 and older—published by Wayne State University Press and released in August 2008. Who’s Jim Hines? was selected as one of the Library of Michigan’s 2009 Michigan Notable Books. In addition, the Michigan Reading Association placed Who’s Jim Hines? on the Great Lakes Great Books Award 2009-2010 ballot for grades 4-5. Who’s Jim Hines? was also a ForeWord Magazine 2008 Book of the Year Award Finalist in the category of Juvenile Fiction. Read More
Elster is the founder and president of Write Word LLC (established as Write Word, Inc. in 1994). She and her husband live in Detroit, Michigan and are the parents of two adult children.
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About book:
How It Happens follows the story of author Jean Alicia Elster’s maternal grandmother, Dorothy May Jackson. Born in Tennessee in 1890, Dorothy May was the middle daughter of Addie Jackson, a married African-American housekeeper at one of the white boardinghouses in town, and Tom Mitchell, a commanding white attorney from a prominent family. Through three successive generations of African-American women, Elster intertwines the fictionalized adaptations of the defining periods and challenges—race relations, miscegenation, sexual assault, and class divisions—in her family’s history.
A continuation of the plots begun in Elster’s two novels Who’s Jim Hines? and The Colored Car, How It Happens continues the story for an older audience and begins with Addie’s life before the turn of the century in the South as a married Black woman with three biracial daughters navigating the relationship between her husband and Tom Mitchell. Later the story shifts to Addie’s daughter Dorothy May’s experiences both as a child and later, as a teacher who, choosing between her career and marriage to a man she barely knows, moves to Detroit. The story moves along with Dorothy May’s daughter Jean, who, with the support of her mother and the memory of her grandmother, confronts and comes to terms with her role in society and the options available to her as a college-educated Black woman in the post–World War II industrial North. While there is struggle and hardship for each of these women, they each build off one other and continue to demand space in the world in which they live.
Written for young adult readers, How It Happens carries the heart through the obstacles that still face women of color today and persists in holding open the door of communication between generations.
Author Website | Buy Book | Other Book By Author
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Agents, Editors and You: The Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book Published (Writers Market Library)
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