Beth Revis is awesome. She has taken the time to collect answers and advice to all of the questions writers have asked her over the years about writing, publishing, and marketing, and made them into books! I’m honored to be on the blog tour for her marketing book today. Beth and I were both given two questions regarding marketing advice for authors.
1. Do you have a general guideline or mentality you use to approach your own marketing efforts? Wendy’s Answer: My general guideline is to try and connect with readers and be as approachable, and accessible as possible. This means answering all emails, reading all tweets directed at me and comments made on my Facebook and Instagram pages, and commenting back as often as possible. It can be very time consuming, but it is worth it to me and I enjoy the interaction. Beth’s Answer: If I’m not having fun, I don’t do it. I hear from people all the time, “Do I HAVE to do Twitter?” or “I hate Facebook, I wish I could get away without using it!” And the thing is…you can. Do the marketing that you enjoy. You’ll be much more effective doing one thing really well then spreading yourself over all sorts of social media. And besides, typically you’ll only sell to about 1% of your social media followers, so don’t break your back doing social media that you hate. It’s not worth it. It’s supposed to be fun. Beyond social media, when it comes to targeted campaigns, paid advertisements, giveaways, etc., my mentality is: “Would I buy a book based on this?” I would–and have–bought books because of BookBub, for example. That’s a system that works on me, so it’s reasonable for me to think it’ll work for my books. I emulate giveaways that were tempting for me to enter. If there’s a program that’s offered to me that I’ve never heard of or that doesn’t really entice me to buy any books from their previous campaigns, I don’t bother. I am my own test market. 2. Can you think of a recent YA book whose marketing campaign stood out to you? Why? Wendy’s Answer: I’m always amazed by Jennifer L. Armentrout’s marketing. She does many amazing giveaways including the “Write Your Way to RT Contest” each year. Currently she is working with HarlequinTeen to promote The Problem With Forever, and one of the things they’re doing is a “Guess The Nails” contest in which author friends (including me) are doing our nails in watercolors that match the cover, and readers have to guess which authors the hands belong to (we’re all sending in pictures). I love things like this that get the whole community involved, writers and readers. Beth’s Answer: Leigh Bardugo is a freaking genius. I love the stuff she and her publisher do, and she’s incredibly brilliant when it comes to marketing. But it should be noted: she’s marketing a book that is also freaking genius. Her work is good, and her marketing highlights just how good her work is. She’s innovative and does things that makes people notice her and her books. I also learned a lot from the way Julie Murphy marketing Dumplin. The beautiful pins, the ARC boxes, the viral pose–so smart to integrate the cover in that way! If you’ve been following her tour, here is Tip #2: Analyze your own buying habits. Additional details: What makes you buy a book? What makes you notice an author? Emulate that. There are a million and one different ways to sell books, but do what works on you, and adapt it. When I was marketing Across the Universe, I’d seen dozens of giveaways, but none of them were quite what I felt like a giveaway should be. So I used my experience in entering giveaways to develop my own, and it worked really well. Later on, people started telling me about the importance of newsletters. So I signed up for dozens of authors newsletters and really paid attention to which ones made me want to open the newsletter, read the content, and buy the book. That helped me to develop my own newsletter—and taught me lots of new tricks that I’m still using today. ALL ABOUT THE BOOK! Bird by Bird meets Save the Cat in this new writing advice book by NY Times bestselling author Beth Revis. With more than 100,000 reads on Wattpad, this newly expanded and rewritten edition features 350 pages of content, including charts and a detailed appendix. ~~~ Fight the blank page. When it comes to writing, there’s no wrong way to get words on paper. But it’s not always easy to make the ink flow. Paper Hearts: Some Writing Advice won’t make writing any simpler, but it may help spark your imagination and get your hands back on the keyboard. Practical Advice Meets Real Experience With information that takes you from common mistakes in grammar to detailed charts on story structure, Paper Hearts describes: -How to Develop Character, Plot, & World -What Common Advice You Should Ignore -What Advice Actually Helps -How to Develop a Novel -The Basics of Grammar, Style, & Tone -Four Practical Methods of Charting Story Structure -How to Get Critiques and Revise Your Novel -How to Deal with Failure …And much more! BONUS! More than 25 “What to do if…” scenarios to help writers navigate problems in writing from a NY Times Bestselling author who’s written more than 2 million words of fiction. Learn more at Bethrevis.com Paper Hearts, Volume 1: Some Writing Advice on Goodreads BUYING LINKS: Amazon/Kindle ~ Barnes&Noble/Nook ~ Kobo ~ Book Depository Follow along with the rest of the tour at the Paper Hearts Tour Headquarters, or follow Beth Revis on Twitter! GIVEAWAY TIME! a Rafflecopter giveaway
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