Tips for Marketing on Amazon

This week, I enjoyed practicing new marketing techniques that I picked up from Shelley Hitz's new book Marketing Your Book on Amazon. Followers of my blog know I'm a Shelley Hitz fan. As expected, this new book did not disappoint.

The book alerted me to a nifty feature called Book Extras in Shelfari, Amazon's social network for readers. Book Extras allows your book to stand out from the pack by adding descriptive details that may appeal to additional interests of some readers. For example, under the Book Extra "Characters", I wrote short bios, starting with Julian, the anti-hero in my vampire thriller, Bloodroom. Under "Settings", I listed Charleston, which is the setting of the book. But I also listed Drayton Hall, an actual Charleston mansion on which I modeled Julian's home. I listed Bacchantes, Julian's posh European-style coffee house. Maybe I'll hook some new readers who are into coffee and historic architecture!

The book gave me a refresher on adding keywords and tags to my books' Amazon sales pages. This will make my book turn up in the targeted searches of readers most attuned to the stories I write.

I'm excited about pointers I'll be using when I launch The Bad Death, an antebellum vampire slayer novel. For instance, Marketing Your Book on Amazon has a section on how to announce my novel's publication as a Facebook Milestone. And since launches are huge affairs that overwhelm me, I am really looking forward to customizing the pre- and post-launch To Do Lists offered in the book. Oh, and I learned about a free plug-in for WordPress called Pretty Pink Lite that allows you to create custom affiliate links for your books. The Pretty Pink links also track clicks to evaluate the effectiveness of paid advertising. I can't wait to talk to my website guru about that!

Facebook Changes and Seven-League Boots

I had a Facebook-focused week. I created the Welcome on my new fanpage, Books by Naima Haviland, so that visitors get a free short story. I have a hidden motive for this: once you have 25 fans on your page, Facebook lets you assign it a shortened, official name. The official fanpage name is much more memorable than the rambling automated one Facebook initially assigns. That's a great advantage, from a marketing standpoint. So click-thru and Like me, people! And get a free short story ;-)

I noticed after Facebook's last round of changes, that the content I created with 3rd party apps wasn't showing up. In this case, if you reactive the missing app it shows up again (Your Page>Edit Info>Apps>[your disappeared app]>Add or Remove>[then click Remove, then go back in there and click Add]).

I attended a webinar walk-through of the changes Facebook has on schedule for October 1. For instance, after October 1, the iframes app that enables you to give freebies won't display your graphics anymore unless they are hosted on a secure server. The iframes developers are working to setup their own secure server but you can also host your graphics on FreeVPS, which I did with no fuss/no muss. The webinar was produced by Shelley Hitz, the Self-Publishing Coach, whose Get Your Facebook Done webinar series was instrumental in getting me started with my fanpage. In addition to showing us the adjustments we'd need to make to keep our fanpages visible, Shelley shared bonus marketing tips and resources that I am very excited to try out. I have implemented and plan to implement so many of the tips and resources I already gleaned from her newsletter and website, that -- as I said to Gigi, my hairstylist, while she undertook the sisyphean task of keeping me beautiful -- "I'm just glad Shelley Hitz is in the world". This past week, Shelley shared many article links regarding Facebook changes and just really helped keep her clients up to speed. Thanks, Shelley!

Also, thanks to Steven Lewis. I used his tutorials on formatting for Kindle to publish my Demontorium stories and I subscribe to his Taleist blog to stay informed on all that's happening in Amazon's Kindle universe.

And...David Gaughran. His book, Let's Get Digital, has lots of advice on marketing beyond Kindle and includes 33 successful digital authors relating their own experiences (info that is both grounding and inspiring).

And...Sharon Renae, whose Juicy Writing class reminds me that writing itself can and should be as fun for me now as finger-painting was in kindergarten. (I forget that when I'm all up in this marketing stuff). If you're not fortunate enough to live in Pensacola, she offers creativity classes online.

Among others, these folks gave me 7-league boots to take one giant leap forward.

FB Webinars and Abolitionists

I took Shelley Hitz's free webinar on building a Facebook author page Wednesday night. It was like trying to take a drink from a fire hose full blast, so I'm glad she made the recording and an attendant PDF available. I will need those when I design my page. She advised on connecting your FB fan page to other social networking sites and apps, such as http://hootsuite.com// and http://socialbios.com/. She showed how to engage FB friends through use of FB's interactivity features. She's offering a 4-webinar subscription throughout July. I plunked down the cash,  because one thing the price includes is updated info as FB changes, so I figure it will remain a fresh resource for me. The link to her Self Publishing Coach blog is in the right column of this page.

Finished the webinar and thought to do a little writing so I'd have something to read to Sharon in Juicy Writing Thursday. I want to write a little scene between Charlotte and the Greeley sisters  that will show how close they are from body language and a few snippets of conversation. The ostensible purpose of the scene is to set up the Greeleys being at Eugenie's bedside when Malinde makes her final visit. But as abolitionists, the Greeleys are the moral conscience of the story, so even though their facetime is minimal, their impression of what's happening is important. And their presence in the story has big implications for Risa, my heroine's best friend and a fellow slave. The way I write, I have to know the setting -- what the room looks like. And then what the characters look like, their physical features and their clothing. Even though the truly important thing is their interaction (and I could write that first; it would be more productive) my inner comfort zone is that I need to walk past the scene and understand it a glance. Literally (mentally) I need to be an uninvolved spectator who just happens by and sees the people. What would I get from a glance? The tension in the room? Or the ease? Would I be impressed by their wealth? Moved to pity? Repulsed? I need that snapshot before plumbing the depths. Even when conversation comes to mind first, which happens during moments of relaxation, and I grab pen and paper to write it down, I have to write the setting and have appearance in mind before inputting the written conversation. so the upshot of Wednesday night was I went through The Bad Death to reacquaint myself with the Greeley girls' appearance and I looked through my photography books on Charleston's great houses to pick out the perfect setting for the scene. Found one, too. So tonight I'll start writing.

Last night in Juicy Writing, Sharon helped me organize a schedule for my writing/publishing tasks. She has a method of putting this to paper that is really visual and stress-reducing. Now I literally have it on paper, pinned to my bulletin board above my desk, that Saturday I will publish my three short stories to e-readers. Monday, I'll input Linda's edits to Bloodroom and I'll keep doing that till I'm done. I have been pinballing from one task to another, not finishing anything and getting wigged out. So this will help immensely.

Author Facebook Page

I follow Shelley Hitz's blog; she's a self-publishing coach. Tonight at 8EST, she and John Kremer are hosting a webinar about setting up an author Facebook page and best practices for its use. She'll follow up with more webinars on the topic throughout July. Tonight's webinar is free. I haven't set up a Facebook page with a focus on writing. I've been meaning to, so now's my chance. The link to register is: http://facebook.self-publishing-coach.com/free-webinar