Please help me to congratulate my friend Christa Wojo on the release of Part Two of her Psychological Suspense Series. SICKER is now available on Amazon Kindle. Review coming soon.
About SICKER:
“How did John Branch get so sick? Part II of the gruesome psychological suspense series continues from the mind of John Branch.
John Branch’s sickness has dominated the lives of all those around him, consuming all it can from well-intentioned doctors, compassionate strangers, and trusting loved ones. His chronic illness also bonds him intimately to his wife Susan, trapping them in relationship of unhealthy psychological attachment.
But John’s disease isn’t the only blight in the Branch family.
Injured and loaded with Demerol, John Branch tells his life story from his filthy sickbed. He confesses the horrific secrets of the past. Most disturbing of all, he reveals the philosophy he’s constructed around his condition and tries to indoctrinate Susan. Will she stay with him now that she finally nows the truth, or will she put and end to the madness.”
Check Out Curiouser Editors Excellent Social Media Tips! I just used one for my IG bio. Emojis does make it look way cooler lol.
Pin posts to Twitter, your Facebook page, and your Facebook group (you do have your own Facebook group, right? Because I’ve only been preaching about this for a million years, give or take). Ensure the pinned post has some type of opt-in for a freebie so they’ll subscribe to your emails. If you’re pinning a post, then it should tell them to do something that somehow benefits you and them.
Add emojis to your Instagram bio to catch attention. I like to use the pointing finger right above my freebie opt-in so that it’s the first thing they’re directed to. Use emojis in your posts too!
Update your LinkedIn title with stronger keywords. Your title shouldn’t say, “Jane Doe, Author.” It should say, “Jane Doe, Romance Author of [Title], Part-Time Nurse, Full-Time Mother, Oil Painter.” For example, mine says, “President of Curiouser Editing, Author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist, Editor, Writer, and Coach.” If you need more help with LinkedIn, I highly recommendThe Ultimate Guide to LinkedIn for Business.
Like as many Instagram photos as you can under relevant hashtags (#bookstagram, #bookish, #indieauthor, #writercommunity, #writerlife, #bibliophile, #amwriting, #amreading) to gain more followers. I like to time myself for ten minutes so that I’m not spending a ton of time on it, but I’m still seeing results.
Buy the Followers + for Instagram app to keep track of your stats as well as discover who’s unfollowing you. This is very helpful if you suddenly lose an influx of followers—why did they unfollow you? Too many posts? Ugly photos? Irrelevant photos? If you’re an author who writes paranormal novels, then posting about politics 24/7 might turn them off.
Add aHello Bar to your website. You can use this for email subscription, to announce your book’s release, or to advertise a course.
Add your blog subscription opt-in to your Facebook page. You’d be surprised how many people forget to do this.
Ask questions on Facebook and Instagram for better engagement. Every time I ask a question, I get a couple dozen comments on Instagram, sometimes a few dozen. Make sure that it pertains to writing or publishing in some way.
Try live streaming on Facebook to interact with your readers.
Add images to your tweets to get more retweets.
Try using Facebook’s carousel option to promote your book.
Repost, repost, repost. Not everyone will see that you posted your book’s 99¢ sale.
Tag people you talk about in your post. Tweeting a Medium article from Positive Writer about free Createspace books? That’s three tags right there:@Medium,@ADDerWorld, @Createspace. Posting an Instagram photo of three books you’re reading? Tag the authors. Posting the link to your blog on your Facebook page where you mention different writerly websites? Tag them.
Add a location to Instagram posts. For example, if you’re at Barnes & Noble in Dallas, add that as a location.
Add a cover photo to your Twitter account that shows off your book specifically. I’m a huge fan ofThe Thatchery’s cover photos, so consider hiring someone to make you one that you can use on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Check them outhere.
Reply to every single person who follows you and thank them for the follow. I’ve found that this works better than sending them a direct message, as it comes off kind of spammy. Also, in your tweet, don’t be afraid to tell them about your book and engage them in conversation.
Connect with authors in your field by using the Advanced Search option on LinkedIn. For example, if author Damien Taylor wanted to find more fantasy authors, all he has to do is type in “fantasy author” in his keyword advanced search to connect with them.
Post at the right times, please. All it takes is a little bit of research. According to Buzzsumo’s article on Facebook engagement, posts published between 10:00 p.m. and midnight get the most engagement. I’ve also noticed that 2:00 p.m. is a great time to post on Facebook and Instagram, while author Damien Taylor has seen some serious engagement at 3:00 a.m. Wow!
Directly embed videos to your Facebook page rather than posting your YouTube link. It gets better engagement. < I have also down this one in the past. She’s right, and it looks better too.
What known historically famous writers, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, have taught me is that writing (far as fiction, / non-fiction, poetry, novelist type writing), is not about making money. Before you throw your stones at the computer screens listen carefully: You can surely make money, but writing is not about making money, if you can understand that. Though I write for a “living” I can honestly say, with my integrity intact, that I have written not one book and not one poem with the intent to make money. I don’t think any writer sits back and says, “Self, lets’ get this best seller on out the way shall we?” Personally, I write because I love doing it and I publish because I love sharing it. But, how did Langston Hughes help me to understand this?
For those of you who are not already familiar, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston are two of the biggest names in literary history. Just mention The Harlem Renaissance and their names are the first to come to mind. When you look into the lives that they lived however, you see two interesting facts: a). Both were very famous b). Both were very broke.
You wouldn’t know it from the looks of it. Not the way their names are plastered into history books. Not their quotes and faces and the people they’ve known. In fact, to the untrained eye one may come to think these people were rich. Yes, just like any “successful” Traditional or Self-Publisher always before the face of the people. The truth is that Langston Hughes had many side jobs throughout his career that made him money. This included many speaking engagements, teaching, traveling the world, and even working as a bus boy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington. Hughes attended Lincoln University but that was because he couldn’t raise the scholarship money to attend Howard. In addition, both Hughes and Zora worked closely under Charlotte Manson, their rich white patron (she was also a big racist but that’s another story) who paid them for the work they published (she also dictated the works they could / could not publish). They also worked closely, most especially Hughes, with Carl Van Vechten (infamous for his book “Nigger Heaven”) who got him lots of work.
I do not say this to discourage anyone from being an author. I say this to say that there is a passion and a drive to writing a book that has nothing to do with royalties and books sales. This is what the promotion and hard work is all about, or at least mine is. Writing and promoting books that people want to read. There were times where Langston Hughes could barely pay his rent and yet he still managed to know pretty much everyone there was to know during the Harlem Renaissance and the era to which he lived in general. This is a man who was surrounded by millionaires and billionaires on a regular, not because he necessarily made the same kind of money but because of the way that his work changed people who were drawn to his message. This is what it’s all about: Changing lives. This is also why the Traditional-Indie argument is so stupid right now. It doesn’t matter how you publish the book and whether or not you’re “making it rain”. What matters is whether or not your book has a voice. If it does, then the people will gather to hear you sing.
You may remember the review I wrote last year on Christa Wojo’s debut psychological suspense horror series SICK. In Book One, we peered into the life of Susan Branch, a woman struggling to take care of a very sick husband with a number of diseases plaguing his body. Well, I am happy to inform you that part two, SICKER is now available for pre-order! So, I am not ill but I did just preorder SICKER. The ending of SICK was so sick I cannot wait to continue reading. Click the book cover below to pre-order SICKER and welcome to the mind of John Branch.
distills some important basic considerations to attend to for those of us trying to learn the book-publishing and marketing process. I get “requests” to submit manuscripts quite often and have usually wondered who it is that’s so desperate to see my work when traditional agents turn down hundreds of submissions each week. This article helps to put the situation in perspective.
The PBS Blog 