Social Media

What is author branding? Author branding is presenting yourself in such a way that when readers think of you they associate a feeling, a message, a book with you. A type of book, a style of writing that, like your fingerprint, is you. Even if you write in different genres, the essence of how you write will always be yours.

Today’s popular authors have a style of writing and message unique to them no matter what they write about. Their readers come to know, love, and trust their writing.

Have you ever fallen in love with a book and, immediately upon finishing it, wanted another one just like it? That’s the power of branding.

Developing your author brand is important if you want to sell a lot of books this year, more next year, and a lot more the year after that. Write each book and blog post with the goal of building […]

Almost every author wants to sell more books.

New authors think if they can just get one lucky break the yellow brick road of fame and fortune will magically open and their worries will disappear.

If only that were true.

The truth is even if an author does get a few lucky breaks there will still be periods of time when they will have to grab their bow and arrows and go hunting for readers.

In order to do that successfully you need to find the hunting grounds where your readers are feeding.

Your readers.

Not the reader of another author who writes in a different genre than you do or appeals to an audience that has nothing in common with your style of writing.

Finding the common threads between your book(s) and your book buying audience is the basis of target marketing for authors. There are many different factors in breaking down an audience demographic. Some […]

To sell more books you have to let more people be aware of them. If your audience is small, the number of books you sell will be small. If you have a large audience but no one sees your book, you have to work to make it stand out. This article will show you seven ways to make your book stand out among the 14,000,000 readers on Goodreads.com.

1. Become a member of the Goodreads Author Program

This program is completely free. It is designed to help authors reach their target audience and promote their book(s) to them. Over 44,000 authors, including New York Times bestsellers and other national bestselling have their books listed with an author profile. If you are not on it, don’t waste any more time! Sign up and get started.

2. Advertise your book. Yes, sometimes you have to put […]

How important is building a brand name for an author? Very important!

Most readers don’t remember titles of books as well as they remember an author’s name or the main character of a novel. As an author writes more and more books, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember single book titles. Readers will walk into a bookstore or start searching on Amazon or Barnes & Noble for the latest book by the author’s name.

That’s what they remember. That’s why you as an author must build up your author brand if you want to sell more books.

Fiction writers may create a character that becomes very memorable. Think Harry Potter, Nancy Drew, etc., but even with memorable characters the author’s name will still be very important.

If you write nonfiction, it is even more important that you make your name as widely known as possible.

Once your name is established, any product or topic you […]

More and more authors, libraries, and publishers are finding creative ways to use Pinterest to draw in new readers. Even the big players like Random House and Scholastic have pin boards that are actively pinned and promoted.

This got me thinking about different board topics that authors might use to promote themselves. I decided to create a small list of topics that would give authors newly jumping onto the Pinterest platform a source of ideas.

Once I got started, I found that there were more topics than I ever dreamed of. Dozens and dozens of creative ways that authors were pinning themselves with reckless delight and abandon for book promotion. Most of these authors, libraries, or publishers have 30, 40, or 50 boards each, so I’m only including a few boards that struck me the most. Specifically, those that closely tie into book promotion.

This list then […]

Looking for a fast and quick way to get the word out about your book? Here’s a new tool for book marketing you’ll want to take advantage of . . .

Screenr

• It’s fast
• It’s easy
• It’s fun
• It can spread your message like wildfire.
• AND best of all . . . it’s FREE!

Authors can use screenr to make a quick and fast book trailer. It can then be placed on your website, loaded up onto YouTube or sent in an email. You can post it on a blog, share it on Facebook, tweet it and pin it on Pinterest.

Here’s how it works.

Anything that you can put on your computer screen can be recorded with audio and made into a screenr video. You have five minutes from start to finish to share whatever you want.

To make it the most effective you will want to plan out exactly what you want […]