Using Your Also-Boughts to Find Natural Marketing Connections for Your Books

One critical element to the ongoing steady sales of your books is the pairings Amazon makes between your title and other books in the online store.

Whether you are just interested in what books are bought alongside with yours, or if you are trying to evaluate whether or not your own books are paired well with your other titles, Yasiv.Com is a nifty tool for reviewing your also-bought chain, if you know how to use it.

The also-boughts are the list of books on your product page on Amazon. For my novel Baby Dust, they look like this:

If your book is new, it may not yet have any also-boughts. If it sells slowly at first, it may have also-VIEWS instead. One of my books for kids alternates between also-boughts and also-views.

Over at Yasiv.Com, you can type your book into their tool and see the initial chain of books that are connected to yours.

 

It shows 53 connections to Baby Dust. The arrows give you an idea of what books point to each other, but you'll notice no arrows are pointing to Baby Dust. It would appear at first glance that nothing sends you to my book.

 

I know this isn't true, because sales are steady, and I know Amazon is keeping that humming via also-boughts. So I typed in another one of the books that I could see on my chart. It took a few tries, but I finally found one that showed my book, and this chart gave me a better picture of the also-boughts leading to and away from my book. Remember that you can click and drag on the chart to move around and see books that have fallen off the page.

 

 

Once you see the also-bought connections, you can explore further to see how those other books are doing in the rankings, and strengthen the connections by cross promoting.

 

One of my favorite ways (cheap, easy, effective and FUN) to promote books is to contact authors whose books are already being connected to mine based on buying patterns and have us promote to each other's readerships.

 

We can't possibly write enough books to satisfy our readers (I'm doing one per year that ties into this readership) and so it makes sense to find authors whose books are a natural fit and sell to each other's audience when we can. Using our mailing lists (try MailChimp for a free way to get started), give aways (share a Rafflecopter), and social media, we can spread the word about each other's books and feel confident that their readers are also our readers.

 

______________________________

 

Deanna Roy is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction on issues of finding love and building a family.

 

Book Launch Infrastructure: Amazon Reviews

A few months back Deanna wrote an excellent post on the timeline for a book launch. I'm going to tackle one small but crucial aspect of a successful indie book launch: getting a critical mass of reviews on Amazon. Laying aside the various issues with Amazon reviews for the moment (mentioned here and here), let me lay on you one method for getting reviews up there when you need them. You may have done some of these steps already.

Step One: Create the email infrastructure

Sign up for an account with Mail Chimp or some other free email service. Put a link to the signup form on your web page. (You do have a web page, don't you?) Put it on your blog, if you have one. Integrate it with your Facebook account and add a tab with the signup form.

Of all the ways to promote a book launch, by far the most effective is a targeted email list. (In a future post I'll relate a very graphic example of how true this is.) Right now I have under 200 people on my email list, but they're solid addresses of folks who love my books. My last email got a 50% open rate, which is double the expected rate in the industry for a targeted list. I'll talk more about how solid this list is in Step Four.

Step Two: Build a tribe

If you don't know your tribe, or the concept of the tribe, stop right now and do some research.

• Watch this Seth Godin video from four years ago. Don't worry about the "change the world" language. Everything he says also applies to us humble folk who have no pretensions to such grandeur but just want to tell compelling stories. (Seth kinda reminds me of the cover of Steely Dan's Countdown to Ecstasy.)
• Read this Kevin Kelly article on 1,000 true fans. 

OK, now that you're back, realize that you can't build a tribe overnight. It takes years of building relationships, online and offline, and, most importantly, gathering email addresses of people who want to know when your next book comes out.

Some people balk at this, feeling like it's shameless self-promotion. That's baloney. If you think that, you didn't watch the video. Don't you have a favorite author or two? Don't you want to know when the next release is available? All you're doing is providing a service to the people who enjoy your work. If they sign up, it's because they want to know. Get over it and put yourself out there.

Note: Your tribe does not consist of other authors. You have to connect with readers who love what you write, not other writers who are desperate to market their latest release.

Step Three: Build an ARC and a sneak peek

The mainstay of the book review promotion is the advance reader copy, known in the industry as the ARC. The ARC gets sent out to reviewers. For a highfalutin traditionally published A-lister, these go to Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, the New York Times, and other notable venues for book reviews. Good work if you can get it.

For us indies, ARCs go to a subgroup of the tribe. More on that in Step Four.

When I first went indie, I planned on ebook-only releases. For the somewhat technically competent, it's easy enough to create an ebook, and inexpensive enough for the technophobes to hire it out. But then I discovered through my precious email list that most of my tribe did not have an ereader. So I also produced a print book via POD and CreateSpace. Now, when I build an ARC, I build it in three formats: print, epub, and mobi.

The sneak peek is a 30-50 page sample of your upcoming release. You can do it in PDF only if you like, but I do it in the same three formats as I do the ARC. It doesn't take that much more time and it shows your tribe that you value them and their reading preferences. Anything I can do to value my tribe, from writing the best dang book I can to giving it to them in the way they like to read it, is important to me.

Step Four: The call to action

A month before your book release, send out an email to the tribe with at least two elements.

1. Info on how to get the sneak peek, which you will post on your website, preferably in a section that is quarantined from spider bots with the robots.txt file. (Here's an example sneak peek page for my latest work, Endless Vacation. If you're serious about tracking and managing your bidness, you'll create Google Analytics tags to see how many downloads you get.)
2. A call to action for what I call the Book Buzz Team (BBT).

The BBT is the inner circle of the tribe, those who are willing to post an Amazon review in exchange for an ARC. When I place my call to action, I don't put any qualifiers on the kind of review to post. I don't ask for five star reviews. I don't ask for only positive reviews. I just ask that whoever requests a free copy commits to writing a review stating what they really think about the book. Since this is my core tribe, if I have written a book that targets the tribe, they will like it. If not, then I deserve what I get. ;-) (I'm still wondering what kind of response I'll get with my release next month. Oh well.)

I tell my tribe I'll send a free book in the format of their choice (even mailing print copies at my expense) to the first ten people who commit to the BBT. In reality, I fudge and send an ARC to people who aren't in the first ten. The wording creates a sense of urgency to respond, but if someone in my tribe is willing to commit to writing an Amazon review, I will embrace them with open arms and a free book.

To illustrate how solid my list is, when I put out the call-to-action  for Muffin Man last year, I got over 20 responses, which was close to 20 percent of my very small list at that time. By my launch date, I had over 20 reviews on Amazon. And that gave me the credibility to get picked up by two of the top sites for publicizing Amazon freebies, which translated to 55,000 downloads and a gratifying amount of follow-through sales. But more on that in a future post.

Step Five: Followup

Keep track of who you sent ARCs to and who has posted. No need to berate the laggards who don't come through, but also no need to send them an ARC for the next release if they ask for one. I include this line in my call to action: "Please don’t reply unless you’re certain you can meet the deadline. If I play Santa Claus, I can also make a list and check it twice."

Conclusions and next steps

All of the above positions you to launch a KDP Select freebie promotion. But the details of how to make that successful will have to wait for a later post.

---

Brad Whittington is the author of the Fred trilogy, What Would Jesus Drink? and Muffin Man.

Texas Book Festival - Second Half

With another day at the festival under my belt, for a total of 13 hours in the booth, I can report that except for what John Candy in the movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" called "barking dogs" in referring to his sore feet, the experience was positive and enjoyable. One unexpected benefit turned out to be multiple opportunities for practicing my spiel when someone asks me what the story is about.

Writers are advised to have ready at a moment's notice what is called a "30-second elevator pitch," a term derived from the following scenario at a writers' conference, and which assumes that the writer's goal is to get an offer of representation from a literary agent:

You didn't get a one-on-one consultation with your dream agent, so you've studied a photograph well enough to recognize him or her no matter how out of date the glamour shot happens to be. Throughout the conference, you've been on the stalk, watching, waiting for an opportunity that never seems to come.

You've seen the agent from afar a few times, surrounded by concentric circles of pushy writers all clamoring for the agent's attention. The conference ends in a few hours, and you've all but given up. One last panel discussion you'd like to attend meets on the fourth floor in five minutes, and you're rushing to get there.

The elevator door opens, you step inside without making eye contact with the only other occupant, stab the button labeled "4" and glance at the person beside you to offer a casual greeting and holy Toledo! It's your dream agent come true.

Panic seizes your tongue, sweat instantly covers your brow, and all you can do is stare at the elevator door even though you know that this is it, the one and only time you'll probably have to pitch your novel to the agent you are convinced will love it. And without that pitch ready, forget about it.

Standing in the booth at the festival, however, visitors are coming to you and you have an opportunity to give it your best shot at generating in a complete stranger sufficient interest in your book to result in a sale. By the end of the festival, I had it down pretty well and felt comfortable with how it was being received.

Practice means little, however, when dealing with some folks. Here are some comments:

• "So, this is a novel?"
• "Have you read ----- by -----? It has a lot about airplane accident investigation in it."
• "A friend of mine runs a salvage company specializing in aircraft wreckage. He knows all about aviation accident investigation. I'm sure he'd be glad to help you out, and I'll give you his contact information if you'd like to talk with him."
• "I read this book that said there are always five pilot mistakes leading up to any accident."
• "Well, you know, once a pilot gets over about 350 hours of flight time, he usually has enough experience to avoid making mistakes."

Spare me, please. But I didn't say that, of course. I smiled, nodded, played like the little dog in the rear window of a car with my head bobbing in agreement.

Cynthia J. Stone and Lara Reznik of Violet Crown Publishers, Beth Fowler and I talked a lot about the booth layout and came up with a number of ideas for the future. With limited space and four authors hovering about, what the visitors can see to attract their attention and how they approach the booth, enter if they need to, and exit, all have to be carefully considered.

And although we're convinced we can do better, we received evaluations from others noting that the poster display on the free-standing grids at the rear of the booth was extremely effective, and we appeared to have more visitors hanging around and talking than many of the other booths. I have no idea if that's true or not, because as reported in my Texas Book Festival halftime report, I never left the booth to see what other writers/publishers had done. My objective was to promote my books, and I couldn't do that while absent from the scene.

All in all, the festival experience was well worth the time and effort, and we're talking about not waiting for October, 2013 to attend our next one.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (coming soon), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Texas Book Festival - Halftime Report

It's Sunday morning, October 28, 2012, and sitting at my computer with my first cup of coffee, I couldn't resist the temptation to document a few personal observations from my experience in the Violet Crown Publishers booth at the halfway point of the Texas Book Festival weekend.

This being my first time attending in any capacity, I had little advance notion of what to expect. Cynthia Stone, her good friend and fellow author Beth Fowler, and yours truly had spent the previous afternoon and last-minute preparation time that morning hauling all the books, poster display grids, posters, chairs, two tables, and small giveaway promotional materials from my truck into the exhibition tent and trying to make everything fit in a limited space. Lara Reznik, jetlagged and coughing, skillfully avoided the set-up chaos by just having returned from a vacation in Europe with her husband Rudy. I'm joking, of course, and luckily she recovered sufficiently after a night's rest at home to join us before the festival began.

I'm no good at the visualization of how the booth should look, so my role became that of a helper. Which is a good thing, because my compulsion to straighten everything up would have been completely incompatible with the carefully designed look of clutter on the big eight-foot table supplied by the festival. Books, books, and more books. Not like Penguin, USA in the booth close by, of course. They filled about three booths on our side of the tent and one or two across the aisle. But for an itty-bitty indie operation, especially with the poster display designed by Cynthia, we had no reason to hang our heads.

Truth be told, I expected to spend seven hours in the booth twiddling my thumbs while shoppers bought all the other books on the table. My three would be sitting in lonely stacks, forlorn and pitifully indicative of no one's interest. I didn't know where to stand. The booths are small, with narrow spaces on both sides of the display table, and no matter where I decided to park, I didn't want shoppers to feel as if they stepped inside, I'd be on them like a used-car salesman who doesn't understand "Just looking" and becomes a shadow.

At one point early in the first hour, a shopper stops and picks up Lara's The Girl From Long Guyland. Beth makes eye contact with Lara and mouths something like (and I paraphrase with embellishment), Pounce on him and sell your book! Lara and I talked a little about this tactic and agreed that we weren't comfortable doing that.

A little while later someone stops and picks up Pilot Error. My heart climbs into my throat as I get ready for the first of what I expect to be many rejections during the day. But this time, Beth uses a different tactic. Rather than wasting her efforts on me, she steps up to the guy and says, "If you'd like to meet the author, he's standing right here."

That's my cue! I shake hands, we talk a bit, and in a drop-my-jaw move, he asks me how much.

"I have a special for you today, sir. You can purchase the novel and receive my two small non-fiction books on flying and writing in a bundle for only ten bucks. Now that's a deal, don't you think?"

Lo and behold, wonder of wonders, he agrees.

Enter the tag-team approach to greeting visitors to the booth. Here's how it worked:

Someone stops and picks up one of the four novels at the head of the table from a stack of a few lying flat with a copy front cover out on an easel, bookmarks casually lying between each book.

Secret eye-signals pass between the authors. An author who didn't write the book engages the visitor in casual conversation, always with the message that the author who did is close by.

Nine times out of ten, the visitor made eye contact, accepted a handshake, and engaged with us.

I've got one day of the book festival behind me and have no business making any observations of import, but a little knowledge has never stopped me before.

I'm an unknown author with unheard of books, and although visitors can be attracted to a cover, flip the book over and read the back-cover description, open the book and read a little of the first chapter, they still have to get past the natural reticence of never having heard of Tosh McIntosh.

Seven hours of standing in that booth has convinced me that personal contact, beginning with a question or two directed at the visitor rather than an immediate sales spiel, opens the door. I often asked the visitor if he or she might be a pilot and/or a writer, and in every case, the conversation shifted easily to what the book was about. And in retrospect, I believe that the author's passion for the book is the key to generating enough interest for the visitor to take a chance with their money.

My bundling tactic has to be considered as well. I sold three books together for an amount that barely covers my cost to pay for the copies and the shipping. But it's not about the money, and never will be for the vast majority of indie or legacy authors.

A book festival is about promotion. Most if not all of my writer friends might read this and think (or more likely say), "Are you just now figuring this out, Tosh?"

Well, yeah. I'm a slow learner, I guess. But in the final analysis, whether or not any of the buyers recommend my books to their friends and assist with promoting it, this has been (and will be today) an amazing experience.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Lake Travis Fiction Writers

Please note that the new contact person for the Lake Travis Fiction Writers is:  Gulick@flash.net. 

I enjoy participating in writers' groups because any opportunity to explore the craft and share with other writers the details of an individual writer's journey is worth whatever time it takes. I joined my first group over ten years ago and now belong to Novel-In-Progress (NIP) and two NIP spinoffs called Little Group (El Gee), and, of course, Austin Indie Writers.

I don't know how many writers' groups there are in the Austin area, and one reason is that they tend to lead a quiet existence. Kind of like many writers, strangely enough, wrapped in creative cocoons, toiling away in the isolation of the fictive dream.

It is therefore my pleasure to help announce the impending birth of a new group in town. Well . . . not in town, exactly, unless you live in Bee Cave, but close enough.

Here is the official announcement that appeared in the Lake Travis View, Impact News, Bee Cave Messenger, Steiner Ranch, River Place, and Lakeway Voice, City of Lakeway, two area e-blasts, and on the Facebook page for the Writers' League of Texas.

LAKE TRAVIS FICTION WRITERS TO MEET OCT. 16

If you are writing a novel, want to write a novel, or if you are a published novelist and want the support and camaraderie of other Lake Travis-area fiction writers, come to an organizational meeting of the Lake Travis Fiction Writers, Tuesday, Oct. 16, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at The Old Bee Cave School House in Bee Cave.

Pat Evans of Lakeway is organizing the group, which is sponsored by the Bee Cave Public Library.

"There are a number of writers' groups in Austin and many are outgrowths of the huge Writers League of Texas. But I wanted a group in my neighborhood to help fiction writers share ideas, gain support and receive input from other writers. I was thrilled when Bee Cave Public Library Director Barbara Hathaway enthusiastically offered to sponsor this group," Evans said.

Plans are for the group to meet monthly on the third Tuesday, but there is an option to meet at the library Saturday afternoons.

"The Lake Travis Fiction Writers sounded like a wonderful group for our library's interests. I initially offered our beautiful Bee Cave Library as a venue, but we have limited evening hours. Should the group decide to meet Saturday afternoons, perhaps alternating with Tuesday evenings, the library will provide a venue as a courtesy," Hathaway said.

Hathaway will be the group's first speaker and will review the library's varied services, including computers and research technology.

"We'll also do a roundtable discussion with attendees and find out about their experiences and novels. My role is to organize, publicize and lead the sessions, but this group will be about fiction writers, whether 'wannabes' like myself or published novelists," Evans said.

At some meetings, members will submit works in advance for critique or bring works for short 'read and critique' sessions. At other meetings authors or service providers such as freelance editors or micro-publishers will speak. For the November meeting a panel of independent authors will present, 'How to Publish Your Own Novel.'"

Self-publishing is a hot topic, Evans says. She just returned from a writers conference in California where many workshops focused on self-publishing.

"The message from this conference, as well as the Writers League of Texas conference this past summer, is that fiction writers need editors, both developmental and line editors. Otherwise, their self-published fiction will not stand a chance in the highly competitive market. There is a lot of junk being put online, and buyers are becoming wary. If writers puts novels 'out there' that are not well-crafted and edited, they run the risk of ruining their brands at launch."

The Old Bee Cave School House is an updated facility with lighted parking, located in the southeast corner of the Shops at the Galleria (near Specs), between the Bee Cave police and fire stations at 13333 Texas 71.

Contact Pat Evans at AustinWriterGirl@yahoo.com if you plan to attend this meeting.

Tosh is the author of the aviation mystery/thriller Pilot Error, the second-in-series Red Line (Fall 2012), and two non-fiction series: Book One of Wings On My Words, tales from the writer's desk, and Book One of Words On My Wings, tales from the cockpit. Visit him online at toshmcintosh.com.

Social Media is not a Bullhorn

You see it all the time. A writer hunkers in a bunker for months or years cranking out a novel, publishes it, sees the dismal sales numbers, and panics.

She hears that she needs a platform, that she needs to market the book and herself. Desperate to boost sales, she signs up for Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Blogger, Pinterest, Instagram, and who knows what else, and then begins spamming those outlets with a blatant, pushy, hard-sell. She gets on mailing lists for writers and spams them. She comments on blogs, pushing her novel.

In short, she assaults other people using methods that she herself never responds to when she’s on the receiving end. That's not marketing. That's just annoying.

I recently heard one such writer say, "If it's NOT okay to do this much, why do we call social networking an essential promotion tool?"

Which I liken to the question, "If it's not okay to use pliers on brass, why do we call it an essential handyman's tool?"

Knowing how, when, and where to use a tool is as important as having the tool.

Think for a second: How many acts of blatant self promotion do you see in a day? How many of them do you personally act on? How many times a day do you buy something based on a blatant act of self promotion? How many of such posts from complete strangers do you pass on to your friends?

As I’ve said before, writing may be art, but publishing is a business. When you decide to publish, you have to think like a publisher, and that includes taking on marketing, which is not the same as spamming people.

Marketing is not easy. It's about discovering the true felt needs of the customer and then satisfying those felt needs. Few people have a felt need to be assaulted by a stranger with nonstop requests to buy something, now! Or even felt the need to get that treatment from a friend.

Social networking is about being social, not about turning into a non-stop infomercial. It's about building a tribe, not a stack of sales. Think of what being social means in a physical environment:

• Listen more than you talk
• Ask questions about others instead of talking about yourself
• Be genuinely interested in the other person
• Build relationships
• Add value to draw people back to your blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, etc.

These same things are the reason social networking emerged, not as a soapbox for a person with a bullhorn hawking goods.

Anyone who is going to market on the internet needs to learn what marketing really is and the techniques that are effective with the various tools at hand. There are dozens of books and websites on the subject. It's not hard to learn the basics.

Here's a good starting point: How to use Twitter for Marketing and PR.