By Judith Briles

Considering the year that you’ve come through, my how to, practical, and have a little fun side is colliding and wanting to come out all at once. In a recent survey of my author community, heading the “wants” list was marketing and social media tips. I decided that I could do a combo of all and share some of the tools on an ongoing basis.

And, nope, I not putting Zoom on my list. Truth be told, I’m Zoomed out. Using Zoom and Skype for years, I’m in streaming overwhelm in so many ways. Routinely working with clients on the platforms, I crave being able to play and present “in person” … and sometimes just curl up and catch up with a friend on the phone—and be grubby if that’s what my mood is or just sit on the back step of my deck and absorb the rays from the sun with a glass of ice tea and phone to my ear.

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Marketing can seem like a big bad monster when you’re first starting out in the world of indie publishing. But really, it’s just another tool in your box, another method for building an audience and raising awareness of your brand and your books. There are a thousand different ways you can market your book, but one that stands the test of time is influencer marketing. But what is it? And how do you even make contact with influencers? This week, the Alliance of Independent Authors AskALLi team dives deep into the world of influencer marketing for authors.

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By Ivelisse Rodriguez

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an ever-important part of an author marketing strategy.

The issue?

Having a strong social media presence is emphasized over having an SEO strategy. Not only are social media platforms easy and familiar to use, they can expose a large audience to your work in a relatively short period of time.

There’s no doubt that having a strong social media platform is valuable. But having an SEO strategy is just as important as having a social strategy.

Why?

The higher you rank on Google, the more traffic your website receives. This may drive email sign-ups, make your work much more attractive to a potential publisher, and increase e-book sales if you’re distributing your work through your website.

The takeaway:

SEO can help you land more book sales and make you more attractive to a potential literary agent or editor. 

And in just a minute, I will show you how.

But first, let’s get some housekeeping out of the way.

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When you start out in any business, there’s a period of time where you make do. You find quick fixes, do things cheaply and patch jobs the best you can because everything is frantic and chaotic and there’s a million things that need doing. But eventually the patch jobs fray, the quick fixes don’t match your branding and the cheap solutions create more problems than benefits. This week, the Alliance of Independent Authors AskALLi team dives deep into business integration, and how to deepen, polish and strengthen your author business foundations.

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By Hayley Zelda

In today’s article, Hayley Zelda discusses book promotion for self-published authors. Have a read. You might find a unique idea or two!

 
Writing a book is really tough. Great stories are hard to come up with. Writing takes a long time. Editing takes longer than we think. And after this long process that can take years, we finally have a book ready–only to realize how hard it is to actually publish and promote the book.

Having worked with a number of authors with digital promotion and built large followings on a number of social sites to promote books, I’m excited to share a few strategies that have worked for me when it comes to online book promotion.

Book promotion strategies are especially helpful for self-published authors, but can also be extremely useful for traditionally published writers as well to put their books in the hands of more readers and increase the chances of ending up with a bestseller. There are many efficient and cost-effective marketing strategies out there to spread the word out about the book.

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Google just gave us another reason to set up an author/publisher account in their bookstore: Promo Codes.

The ad network giant sent out an email via the Google Play Books Partner Center yesterday which touted a new (?) promo code feature.

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I wasn’t going to touch this story because I thought at first that the claim was an exaggeration or misinterpretation, but I was wrong.

If you’ve been listening to the author grapevine over the past few weeks, you may have heard authors griping about Audible’s return policy. While you can usually find someone griping about something, no matter the topic, this time authors have a valid complaint.

Amazon’s audiobook subsidiary is actively promoting exchanges to potential subscribers.

What do I mean by “actively”?

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About three years back Amazon started beta-testing a new author portal called Amazon Author (not to be confused with Author Central). That new portal officially launched this past week with a somewhat confusing name and a new address.

Amazon’s author portal used to be at authorcentral.amazon.com, but it has now been replaced by a new portal at author.amazon.com. Along with the new address, the portal has a new look and new features.

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