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June 22, 2012

4 Ways to Improve Your Amazon Listing (and Sell Way More Books)

The following is a guest post by Laura Pepper Wu of 30 Day Books. Want more Amazon tips and tricks? Check out her guide “Fire Up Amazon!“

Your Amazon page is your storefront! (Image: MichelleHenry.fr)

Before we get to the juicy stuff, I’m going to have a little lady-rant, and then get right back on track.

You see, sometimes we have to sit back and sniff the roses.

That is, acknowledge that Amazon is really, REALLY good to us indie authors.

Yep, I said it. As much as the indie author community loves to hate them, I for one admire, respect and fully appreciate the opportunities Amazon has carved out for me in order to make a career out of writing.

Writing – a childhood dream for many of us. Without an agent, book deal, or any of that good stuff. And yes, they pay us. Thank you Amazon for funding my coffee and travel addiction.

I don’t worship the ground the Amazon headquarters is planted on, ‘cos sure there are kinks in the system, but I DO fully understand that Amazon has ALLOWED me to put my books on sale in the biggest online bookstore in the world, for FREE.

Wowza.

So, I think it’s up to me, and everyone else publishing on THE BIGGEST ONLINE BOOKSTORE IN THE WORLD (just had to repeat that one), to act as professionally as possible, and to start taking our presence on Amazon seriously. That means spending appropriate time and energy getting our listings, descriptions, and presence as good as they can be. Here are a few ideas of many on how to do just that…Continue Reading

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion, Publishing
June 20, 2012

3 Steps to Pinpoint Your Crazy-Dedicated Readers’ Favorite Hangouts

This series has been expanded into a step-by-step eBook! Find out more about Building Your Fanbase: A From-Scratch Guide for Indie Authors.

To figure out how to reel in those fans once you find them, check out How to Engage Your Crazy-Dedicated Fanbase.

Zelda | Photo: negativeworld.orgWere you a fan of  The Legend of Zelda as a child?

My brother first introduced me to the game (the original version for Nintendo, what what) when I was 7 and I couldn’t get enough of cute little Link and the ever-elusive Princess Zelda.

One of my favorite parts of the game was figuring out where to go next. 

You see, in Zelda, there are two worlds: the regular world and dungeons. In the regular world, you had an ever-present map with a little pointer telling you where to go (handy). In dungeons, however, you had to find the map.

And upon finding that map-holding treasure chest, you knew your life would get a little bit easier.

Don’t you wish you had a Zelda-like map pointing to your readers?

Continue Reading

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion
June 15, 2012

Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Author Website? [Guest Post]

The following is a guest post by Nick Thacker of LiveHacked.

My day job involves working with churches and pastors on setting up their websites to attract visitors to their Sunday services.

It’s certainly a rewarding job, on good days, but one that also comes with its frustrations as well. Namely, I deal with a lot of people who just don’t understand the benefits—the necessity—of having a great looking, fully functioning website.

Their belief seems to be taken straight from the “Field of Dreams” doctrine—“If you build it, they will come.”

No, they won’t.

If you build it, actually, you and your grandpa (if he has Internet on the fishing boat) are the only people who will visit.

The scores of people out there who could actually benefit and learn from what you have to say, and could potentially love what your site has to offer, aren’t going to be “just stopping by” for no reason.

Visitors to your website are won, by strategic and tactical planning, designed to not only put your website’s best foot forward but to also reach them where they already are in your target market.Continue Reading

Filed Under: Author & Book Branding, Guest Posts, Marketing & Promotion
June 13, 2012

Be Narrow-Minded: 11 Questions to Turn a Target Market into a Reader Profile

This series has been expanded into a step-by-step eBook! Find out more about Building Your Fanbase: A From-Scratch Guide for Indie Authors.

Here’s the problem with target markets: They’re too big.

Hold on — keep that straight jacket away from me! I’m totally not crazy, I’m trying to help you, so give me a chance.

I know all of you have taken each of the six steps to finding your target market, thereby narrowing your audience to a demographically specific group of individuals to whom you can market your book.  Right?

I’m going to assume you’re all nodding your heads and if you’re not, you’ll go check out that post and come back to this one later. I’ll wait…

Well, I’m here to tell you that those first six steps were just the start of your journey to becoming an indie pub marketing genius. You drilled down to the target, now we’ve got to get you to the center of the bullseye.

The next part of your trek begins today with 11 questions to defining your reader profile.

What the heck is a reader profile?

Your target market is a good place to start when figuring out who your readers are, but the large sample size tends to be impersonal, consequently making it difficult for you to connect with your readers one-on-one.

That’s where a reader profile comes in.Continue Reading

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion Tagged With:
June 8, 2012

5 Simple Rules To Engage, Engage, Engage! [Guest Post]

The following is a guest post by Matt from Turndog Millionaire.

Hi everyone, before I start I’d like to thank Shannon & Toni for inviting me to post today [AN: our pleasure!]. I want to talk to you about engaging with your readers, something that’s a big part of my life.

If you visit my site you’ll notice I often talk about Author Platforms, but today will focus on a specific aspect of this. So, how can you engage engage engage with you reader?

It’s as simple as you want to make it. If you distance yourself from them, it’s hard, but if you embrace the idea of being part of a community, it’s easy as pie. A lot of you will be thinking of Twitter & Facebook right about now, but I want you to forget about the channels you use to engage. This really doesn’t matter!

What matters is how you approach it. Someone who often aligns with my thoughts is Dan Blank, and this video expresses it rather well. It’s all about Social Media…see how I emphasized Social?

This offers a clue as to what we’ll talk about, so sit back, relax, and read about the 5 rules of engagement:

Know Your Core Values

What do you stand for? What do you hold dear to your heart?Continue Reading

Filed Under: Marketing & Promotion