Author Marketing Online

[Ronald S. Barak]

Introduction

It’s no secret that every author today has to market. Even the most successful authors today are marketing, big time, one way or another. The most successful may have publicists and marketing consultants helping them, but they all are getting down in the trenches as well. Not yet an established, branded bestseller? Then you may be the only one doing your marketing, but someone sure has to be doing it! It might not be as much fun (at least not for me) as writing that next bestseller, but it doesn’t have to be all bad, at least not if you understand how to do it.

Some Pre-Marketing Preliminaries

Should you (try to) get a literary agent? Why not? While you’re at it, design a couple of patents that will save the world. That would be good too, especially for you.

Established and unestablished authors alike can and will benefit from having an agent, especially a good one. The difference is that most established authors can find a good agent. The rest of us will have a dickens of a time getting a good agent’s attention. What about a not so good agent, is that better than no agent at all? Not in my opinion.

So, how do you find a good agent? If you’re established, they’ll find you and if they don’t, you might not be as established as you think. Fortunately, however, finding one is not rocket science anyway. There are books that list tons of them. There’s also Google, which lists tons of…everything. If you’re not established, you could also pray a lot, or you could forget finding an agent for the time being.

Concentrate on your writing and concentrate on your marketing. Just like you’ll have to do even if you already have, or go out and find, a great agent.

Publishing House versus Self-Publishing? A great publishing house is good to have around the house. Even a reputable not so great publishing house can be a real asset. Again, if you’re established, they’ll find you. However, if you’re not established, you could also pray a lot, or you could forget finding a publishing house for the time being.

Concentrate on your writing and concentrate on your marketing. Just like you’ll have to do even if you have, or go out and find, a great publishing house.

You can get by without an agent, but you can’t get a book published without a publishing house, can you? Once upon a time, through what was then often referred to as a “vanity publisher,” you could publish on your own. All it took was a pile of dough and a place to store all of those unsold books. But you were kind of snickered at, if you did that.

Today, Printers On Demand or Publishers On Demand, usually called “PODs,” will put your book out there for you, at least online, and for a relatively small cost and without any need to store all those books in the garage (where your car should be instead of out on the street). You won’t have to store them because the PODs will print as few or as many as you want, virtually overnight. You can use Amazon.com as your POD (in fact you’ll have to, or find someone to do it for you, if you want your digital book to be on Kindle), but the good news is you can be up and running, from manuscript to available for purchase, in just a couple of hours.

And today the sneers are on the decline for going the self-published route because some of the biggest authors in the business are now starting to self-publish, realizing that publishing houses today are doing less and less to earn their commissions. If you’re going to have to do so much of what the publishing houses used to do for you, you might as well keep their commissions as part of your royalties.

Print Versus Digital. Long story short, better get used to digital, both as a reader and as a writer, because modern day economics is turning print into a dying breed. Have to curl up with a cup of herbal tea (or something a little stronger) and feel the pages turning in your hand, you say? Kindle and iBooks let you turn the pages, so to speak, and the tea tastes just as good. Only the most established authors can get their books in a bricks and mortar bookstore these days, and print royalties, reduced by shipping costs, are less than digital royalties, often far less. Besides, if you’re not established, you can’t get a bricks and mortar book store to carry your book even if you are willing to settle for no royalties.

Digital pays us authors much more than print. And digital accepts us one and all. And it’s really getting easy, and quick. Might as well get used to it anyway. It’s the wave of the future, if not the present. It’s inevitable.

But whether print or digital, or both, concentrate on your writing and concentrate on your marketing.

Marketing—Online or Offline

First, a couple of words about…meaning. Meaning let’s be sure we’re on the same page.

Marketing? What’s that? It’s anything that will attract buyers to buy what you’re selling.

If you write a really good, exciting book, easy and pleasant to read, that’s at least the first step of marketing. Without more, you’re off to a better start—of marketing—than the author who writes…a crummy book. It just is what it is.

Pick a good title, a great title, like “The Tuesday Exotica Club.” Sex sells. So “Exotica” is intriguing, it’s good. Make it a “Club,” perhaps meaning “group sex.” Well, that’s even better. Make it happen every week and you just hit it outta the ball park! Picking a good title is marketing—very important marketing.

How about the cover of your book, is that marketing? You bet it is. In my opinion, Grisham’s first novel, “A Time To Kill,” was his best. It didn’t sell—at first—for a lot of reasons, including the fact that Grisham was not then established. However, his second novel, “The Firm” was a killer bestseller. In spite of the fact that he was still not established. What made the difference?

Many think it was the cover of the book, a man in a three piece pinstripe suit carrying a briefcase, and hanging from puppet strings (the man, not the briefcase). Millions identified with that image of (not so) subtle frustration with their jobs. The rest was history, including the fact that “A Time To Kill” went on to become a bestseller when it was released…the second time around, after “The Firm” went to number one on the charts.

Online? Offline? What’s that all about? Simply put, “online marketing” means using the internet to market, electronically. “Offline marketing” means everything else you do to market.

Well, which is better? The answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know that anyone does. The truth is, they’re both important. If you have an agent, or now we may be talking publicist, who really knows the TV booking agents and can get you on “Good Morning America,” or “Oprah” or “Fox News” or “CNN,” that’s great. But finding a good real world TV “gig” like that is tougher than finding an agent. The truth of the matter is that authors don’t jack up the ratings and so those gigs are fewer and fewer. And the publicists who can deliver those gigs are also fewer and fewer.

The same also is true about talk radio shows, although you have a better chance there. Of course, the exposure is not as great there.

So, let’s turn to what this “blog” is really supposed to be about, now that I’ve pretty much more than exceeded the ideal length of a blog! (If I was the publisher, I’d break this blog up into two or three installments. But, I’m not the publisher, “just” the writer, so…who knows?)

Online Marketing—Basics 101

The concepts are simple. Online marketing is appealing because it is dramatically cheaper than offline marketing, while offering the chance, at least in theory, to reach many times more than the number of potential purchasers of your book you can ever hope to reach offline.

The key words in the preceding sentence are “in theory.” I’ll talk more about that in just a moment or two. For now, just keep in mind that for every successful author, there are millions of unsuccessful ones lying by the side of the road. (Sorry, that’s not a very optimistic observation.) Similarly, for every successful online marketer, there are millions of unsuccessful ones lying by the side of the road. (Sorry, two wrongs don’t make a right.)

In this day and age, it’s no exaggeration to say that every author needs to be engaged in online marketing. From the earliest of beginners to the most established, they’re all engaging in online marketing today. And they really need to. You really need to.

What are the online marketing options, or “platforms,” as “we” often call them? There are basically three: Social media, such as Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, among others; websites and blogs; and, email. Why did I list them in the order I just did? Because, especially for the author with a small budget, I listed them in sequence of easiest entry, easiest market penetration.

Social Media. It’s free. And it’s easy. And you can reach millions of book readers—once you invest the time to learn how to do it. (“Reaching” and “selling” are of course two different things, but you can’t sell until you first reach.) There are dozens and dozens of books and tapes and DVDs to teach you how to use social media to reach your target market (and to sell them as well!), but, ultimately, unless you’re going to hire someone to “front” the process for you (to pretend to be…you), you’re going to have to invest some real time to learn how (to reach, and then to sell), and then to get it done. But the good news is just about anyone can learn to do it (meaning to at least reach). And to do it pretty efficiently.

How does it work? The concept is easy. Be “social.” “Engage” with others who are doing the same thing. Build “trust.” Ask not what you want the other guy to do for you, but what you can do to help the other guy. Don’t be a spammer. Don’t just jump in asking the other guy to do something for you. It won’t work. People like to help people they…like, the ones who are doing something for them. You remember Sally Fields and her Oscar winning speech: “You…like me, you really like me!” It doesn’t generally take a lot (getting people to like you, not winning an Oscar, but it didn’t hurt Fields that her followers liked her). Mostly…you just need to be nice. Just care about the other guy—and show it. (Gently. You can’t just go out there and start shouting “I really care about you!”) Soon, they’ll start wanting to know what they can do for you.

If not, accept the fact that they’re just duds—and there are plenty of those out there. Just drop those and move on to others who will want to know what they can do to help you. To buy your book (which doesn’t exactly cost and arm and a leg) and to read your book (which does take time)—and to tell others about you, and your book.

A couple of examples will be helpful. I have a Twitter account where I send out “tweets” to my “followers.” To see my Twitter account, sit down at your computer, open up your internet browser and type http://Twitter.com into the URL field at the top of the page. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’ll have to set one up. It’s easy. Just follow the bouncing ball and you’ll have a free account in no time at all. Then enter @RonBarakAuthor in the Search Engine at the top of the page and…Voila, there I am, just sitting there, waiting for you! Talking to you about what I had for breakfast? Not if I want anyone to come back again—ever—to hear anything I have to say. It better be a lot more interesting than what I had for breakfast.

I also have a “fan” page on Facebook. Today, every author ought to have one of these. To see my Facebook page, open up your internet browser again and type http://facebook.com/ronaldsbarak into the URL field at the top of the page. Again, you’ll need to quickly set up a free account if you aren’t one of the 500 million people around the world who already have. Without more, you’ll be at my page. Just scroll around. You can’t hurt anything. Not your computer and not my Facebook page.

Websites and Blogs. What’s a website? If you’ve been following the above examples, you’ve already been to two websites while reading this blog, Twitter’s and Facebook’s. (Facebook is that website that made Zuckerberg a bunch of money.) A website is your place out on the internet. Kind of like your home in the town in which you live. Just like your home, your home page might not be as big as the guy next door, but at least it’s all yours.

Unlike Twitter or Facebook, you have to do a bit more work to set up a website than you do to set up a Twitter or Facebook account. But there are plenty of places to go to find out how you can do this. There are free “off the shelf” websites, but they tend to be fairly limited in how you can use them and what you can do with them. You can also hire web designers to help you create a more customized, and a more sophisticated, website. It will be more pricey, but you get what you pay for (hopefully—a little more about that later) and it will generally do a lot more for you than the off the shelf versions.

Again, since a picture is (said to be) worth a thousand words, open up your internet browser (again) and type http://ronaldsbarak.com and you can see my website. This is not an off the shelf website, but you will find some really good off the shelf websites at http://wordpress.com.

I like animated video, often referred to as “flash” animation. Some don’t care for it. They will tell you it’s “empty,” devoid of any substance, not worthy of their time. (Well, pardon me.) I happen to disagree, but that’s what makes horse races. It’s just a matter of marketing philosophy. In my opinion, flash represents a unique opportunity to shine, to distinguish yourself, to show off your personality and your creativity, what makes you…different. More interesting. Better.

However, I have designed my website to have my cake and eat it too. If you wish (sigh!), there’s a button at the top of the http://ronaldsbarak.com flash animation page that you can just “click” to instantly skip the flash presentation and go straight to my word press “home page,” http://ronaldsbarak.com/plus. Or, if you sit through my 16 second “movie trailer,” you can click on the “ride” at the end and still get to my home page. Who knows, you might even win a kewpie doll. Either way, my home page will be right there, just waiting for you. I promise.

By the way, what appeals to me about the approach I took is that it accommodates all potential visitors, first time and repeats, those who want to see the flash animation and those who don’t. Those precious hoped for repeat visitors who don’t want to repeatedly sit through the flash animation can either save http://ronaldsbarak.com in their browser “favorites” (or their human memory banks if they can remember my name), and then just click skip, or they can just save http://ronaldsbarak.com/plus in their favorites (or those memory banks) and not even have to click skip.

You’ll decide what’s best for you. For me: I’m after visitors who will come to my websites regularly to see what’s new. Reruns are of course never as good as the original; the feedback I get when I ask is that my visitors watch, and enjoy, my animated attempt at humor (even though I’m a mystery/thriller writer) once or twice, but then click past it after that. Until I redo my introductory flash module from time to time to provide some new content there too.

By the way, most quality websites today are “mobile ready.” What this means is that they mysteriously have the “intelligence” (as the saying goes, “how do it know?”) to detect where a visitor is coming from, computer, on the one hand, or mobile device, on the other hand. Visit my website from a computer. Then visit it in exactly the same way from a mobile device, an iPhone, a Blackberry, an iPad, whatever. As you’ll see, with one exception, the result will be exactly the same, just smaller (and maybe not much smaller if you’re coming from an iPad or other “tablet” device).

The only difference is that mobile devices generally don’t support flash video. So, when my website detects that you are coming from a mobile device, it will transport you past the flash and directly to my home page. Whether from your computer or your mobile device, however, once you’re at my home page, http://ronaldsbarak.com/plus, you can click on any of the menu items at the top, My About (“a lot like no one else”), My Book (which will take you to another one of my websites, http://aseasonforredemption.com, which is a “stand alone” website I created to allow direct access from your browser to material about my book without having to first wade through my flash animation or other material about…me, aren’t I the considerate one?), My Interviews, My Blog, My Other Stuff and My Contact.

“Blogs?” Did I say blogs? I believe I just did. Did you say “But what’s a blog?” Blogs are just anything you want to say (hopefully) to someone, but it’s much better if you confine yourself to saying something that someone else is actually going to want to “hear.” Otherwise your blog site will become, or will stay, very lonely. If you think of a tweet or a “post” on a Facebook page as a “mini-blog, then you get the idea. A blog is just a longer tweet or post. In fact, they are often called just that, posts.

Today, the prevailing sentiment is that all authors really should—if not must—engage in social media, and must blog. Why? Isn’t it just good enough to be the next Hemingway, and write a good book? Not really, not today. Today, many people do online research to figure out who they want to read—who they trust. If you want to attract readers to your book (dare I say books?), today you must first interest them in…you. The more they come to like and trust you, the more likely they’ll want to read…your books. (Sounds kind of nice, your books.)

Think about it this way. When you go into the ice cream parlor, don’t they offer you free itsy-bitsy teaser spoon size tastes of this flavor or that flavor? Or that flavor? Or that flavor? Why do they do that? Good marketing, that’s why. Not only will you find “that” flavor that’s just what you were craving, but you’ll also appreciate the fact that the vendor didn’t charge you to figure that out. Even if you sample several flavors and then walk out without buying anything, the smart merchant will still smile and tell you to have a nice day. And come back again. Which you will. Because you were treated nicely.

It’s no different with the author who blogs. Like ice cream cones, the price point for books is affordable to most. But it takes a huge investment of time to read a book, and there are so many “flavors” of books out there. A blog is a nice way to let your “customers” gain some confidence that they will likely enjoy your books. C’mon, who wants to buy that new, mysterious flavor, sink their teeth into it and then find themselves saying, “Geez, that’s terrible!” (Same reason market savvy authors and booksellers put free samples of their books on their websites, and why Amazon.com encourages their Kindle customers to download free samples of their Kindle books. It’s just good business. You’re more likely to buy a book—and more books overall—if you’re already think you’re going to like it before you have to spend any money.)

Email. Most everyone today knows what email is. Many of you have at least one email account, sometimes several. Email can be used to market online just as social media and websites and blogs can. More specifically, email newsletters can be used to market online. A newsletter is, in essence, a simplified traveling version of a website. The difference is that your followers have to go to your website (which, all too often, they won’t bother to take the time to do in this frenetic world), but your email newsletter goes to your followers. There’s just one wrinkle: You need to build a “database” list of recipients to whom you send your “group” email attaching or containing your newsletter.

Building the e-newsletter “template” is easy. Just go to your local bookstore or go to Google and you’ll find more “how to” books, and more consultants just waiting to help you get started, than you can imagine!

However, building a database of recipients who truly want to receive your email, and won’t think of it as “spam,” is much more difficult. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. You can write a great email newsletter, but that doesn’t mean people will want to read it. Even many of your so called “friends.” (You might not want to find out, but trying to get people to follow your email newsletter is a great way to find out just who your friends really are—those folks who genuinely want to be supportive and read what you’re writing—and those who are not, and don’t want to be bothered.)

Two Closing Remarks

Getting Help. There are gazillions of “consultants” out there who are ready, willing and (maybe) able to advise authors with their online marketing. Be careful! For every good one, there’s a hundred bad ones. Keep your wallet in your pocket until you know the one you’re talking to is the real deal. Many of them are better at selling themselves to you than they are at selling you to others, to your potential readers. Try to pay for results instead of effort. Efforts to sell books won’t put food on your table, or allow you to give up your day job to follow your passion. Results will. Also, just how confident do you think those “experts” are in their efforts if they won’t structure their fees as a function of the results they (maybe will) achieve for you? Oh, and yes, ask them not just for references, but for hard data to show precisely what they have accomplished for at least several of their other clients.

Build It And They Will Come. Like hell they will! We’re not talking fictional “Field of Dreams” fantasy here. Park that make believe stuff at the door! To make your followers come, you have to patient, you have to be social, you have to be trustworthy, you have to be persistent and your online marketing efforts have to be…good. No. Stop! Wait. Let me try that again. Your marketing efforts have to be…great!

Ah, but “What’s great?” you say. You did say that, right? The answer’s in a word, actually three. Regardless of your marketing platform of choice, or two or three, the answer is: Be very interesting and very creative and very humorous. Hmm, and if possible, also be a…“celebrity.”

Lady Gaga enjoys celebrity; she has…cache. You might or might not care for it, but she has it. As a result, she also has 6 million followers on Twitter. Mind boggling! (Or should I say mind blogging? Sorry, just had to do it. Couldn’t help myself. Even after editing this for the umpteenth time!)

When Lady Gaga tweets where her next concert will be, 6 million fans will know it. Sells a lot of books—uh, tickets—what was I thinking of, books? Guess how many people know when I say my next book is coming out? I won’t tell, but it’s less than 6 million. (Actually, you can find out on my Twitter page exactly how many followers I have.)

Wait a minute. (Aren’t you going to say “Wait a minute?) If I had 6 million followers hanging on my every word, I could quit my day job, stop worrying about marketing anything and just…bank all those royalties!” That’s right, you could. So, is this blog…worthless? I hope not. Celebrity is an iterative process. Like the man said, you have to work at it, and be patient and be persistent. If you market online effectively, your celebrity will come, slowly, but surely, one follower at a time. Or 10. Or 50. Or 6 million. Hmm, maybe not 6 million. That’s why you have to keep marketing and why this blog’s not worthless.

Also, what you say in your tweets, on your Facebook posts, on your website and in your blogs and email newsletters, better be…very clever and very interesting. (A good patent is clever, but that doesn’t make it interesting. A paper clip and a “post-it” sticky are certainly clever, but interesting?) You’re a writer; you need to be both. You need to be funny too. Different is also good. And you can’t rest on your laurels. You have to keep holding your followers’ attention, over and over. Sorry, you’re the one who wants to be a writer, a successful one at that. That’s just the way it is. Fame is…fleeting. What have you done for me lately?

So, to summarize, there’s nothing magic here. No silver bullets. Figure out what you can do for your followers, and do it, before you even think of asking them to do something for you. They’re more likely to do for you if they…like you, if they trust you. And, be oh so clever, interesting, humorous and different too. And also try to demonstrate a little cache, if not eventually a little celebrity as well. (I know, I’m repeating myself, but, really, it bears repeating; it’s that important. And one wise marketing consultant once told me “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them.”)

Have you got it now? Okay, let’s have a little fun before we wrap this up (all good things do have to come to an end), before we all get back to whatever else we need to be doing. Let’s try a little (friendly) quiz. Go to My Blog, http://ronaldsbarak.com/plus/blog, and scroll down to and read “What’s In A…Word?” Who was more clever, interesting and humorous, the heroine in the YouTube video, or the writers and producers who made the video? Now, that’s online marketing, in its purest “viral” form. Simple (simple is good), but this simple, uplifting video has been seen by millions of visitors, and is still going strong.

Conclusion

So has this been a clever, interesting, humorous and different blog? Well, I certainly wouldn’t say I couldn’t put it down, and it that it kept me up all night turning the pages. But, I hope it has been, or will be, a little helpful to you, and, if not exactly humorous, at least has been presented with at least a little bit of a twinkle, with a little verve, with a little panache.

Hey, if you’re still reading then I must have done something right because, let’s face it, this subject isn’t exactly laced with sex, murder, blood or vampires. (Frankly, I just don’t get what’s so appealing about all those vampires—maybe it’s that they get the sex, the blood and murder). So if you did put this down before reaching the end, and only came back and finished it out of guilt, or to get your money’s worth (!) or because you’re just my…”friend” (I think I still have a couple left), at least I hope the reason you came back was because you thought there was something here worth reading cover to cover, at least once, if not twice, and not because it put you to sleep, and you woke up and couldn’t think of anything better to do.

At least I have a Twitter Account, a Facebook page, three websites and two blog sites. Probably not everyone you know can say that! And my books are actually…selling. And how cool is that? Oh, and if you really want to be kept up late at night turning the pages, well then put this down right now, don’t read another word of it and just try my book, “a season for redemption.” (That’s right, I used all lower case letters—to be creative, different. Most people think I just didn’t catch the typos in editing this blog. No doubt I missed some others, but not here. Uh uh.) If it doesn’t deliver, well, at least it’s mine, for better or worse. And…if you don’t think it’s worth the price of admission (a lot less than a ticket to a Lady Gaga concert, over in just a couple of hours, except for getting out of the parking lot), I’ll even refund the purchase price, with interest! Just let me know.

As for this blog, hey, this was just intended to help those who haven’t yet made all the mistakes I have.