Tag: marketing

Beware the Facebook Ads

Like a lot of people, I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends. I also use it to promote myself as an author, although I’ve found it to be pretty ineffective in that respect (as I posted here).

But while it’s fun to catch up with the family and some of the posts are very entertaining, Facebook can be a dangerous place too. Dangerous, that is, in terms of sending you off to websites that might add a little something extra to your computer that you’d just as soon not have.

You’ve probably noticed the “Sponsored” content over on the right hand side of your Facebook page. Lots of ads there, some of them quite enticing. They change frequently. To the right is a screenshot I took of ads that appeared on my page recently.

You might have to click on that image and enlarge it to read the text. It’s perfectly safe to click since it’s just a jpeg image.

But the original ads would not have been safe to click. Although each one has a link displayed as part of the ad (enchantmen.com, lyft.com, weightwatchers.com, zulily.com), the true link for each ad is entirely different. Clicking that ad will send you not to Weight Watchers or Zulily, but to a site with malware.

As a user of Facebook, this is distressing, both with regards to the damage these sites could do to my computer, but also because of the fraud aspect. Facebook is taking money from companies that represent themselves dishonestly.

As an author who has used Facebook to promote, this is unsettling because I don’t want ads for my books to appear alongside scams. How would a reader know whether a click on my book cover would take them to Amazon where they can buy my ebook, or if they’ll end up on a site that downloads some kind of malware onto their computer?

Facebook does have a form I can fill out to report these fraudulent ads. But honestly, I’d be submitting forms all day long because based my observations, few of the ads in the sponsored section are genuine. Maybe my Facebook page is a scam magnet, and no other users out there are having the same experience as me. But it seems to me that Facebook is not performing due diligence in allowing those ads to run in the first place. And I’d say it’s their responsibility to fix the problem and not mine.

Here are some guaranteed genuine links for my latest books. Just click on the cover to buy.

January 27, 2014
Promo Efforts–What Really Works?

Just a quick post today. I’m under deadline on the follow-up book to Clean Burn (buy it here), the second in the Janelle Watkins Private Investigation series from Exhibit A. I really need to be working on Janelle’s latest case (tentatively titled Hangtown Fry) instead of the innumerable other tasks I like to use for procrastination purposes.

But I am a bit preoccupied by the fact that I’ve got an ad running today. This time my new box set, Unsuitably Yours (buy it here), is in BookGorilla’s daily email today, under the category “bestseller.” Just for giggles, I threw in a Facebook “promote post” as well to see if that would improve things even more.

The Facebook ad was probably a waste of money. Because if you define “effective promotion” as an effort which increases sales, then the Facebook boosts and page promotes are decidedly ineffective. They do work as promised. “Page promotes” boost my likes at about the rate Facebook suggests they will at each price level. And boosted posts always “reach” at least the number (usually more) that Facebook says it will for the number of dollars I spend.

However, best as I can tell, sales do not increase one whit with Facebook promotions. Those who “like” my page or are “reached” by my boosted post do not actually click through to buy my books.

Perhaps these efforts are more effective with other products, or with more well-known authors. But for moi, it’s a waste of my shekels.

Awakening (buy it here)

Also ineffective is any scheme where my book is featured on a website somewhere. That presupposes a reader is going to go to that website in the first place, always a dicey proposition. Even if they go to that site via an email they’ve subscribed to, if the link in the email goes to a poorly-designed site where the reader has to click yet another link before getting to the buy page, they are unlikely to click and then later buy.

The cream of the crop for book promotion is BookBub. For those who have never heard of BookBub, it is a daily email that shares with their subscribers bargains on books in the subscribers’ interest areas. It’s fairly exclusive from the author’s perspective–BookBub picks and chooses which books they advertise, and the end result is an email with maybe 4-10 books (dependent on how many categories the subscriber has selected). There are “buy links” for each book that takes the reader directly to the Kindle/Nook/Apple page. One more click and you own the book. I’ve bought plenty of books through BookBub. I and the other two authors whose books comprise the box set Unsuitably Perfect (buy it here), ran a BookBub ad a few months ago that made that book a huge bestseller. So BookBub works.

BookGorilla has a similar model as BookBub (a daily email), although it advertises Kindle books only and is much less exclusive. They feature between 12 and 25 books. Good for authors who have been turned down by BookBub, and BookGorilla’s more affordable price makes it a much better deal. But we’ll have to see just how effective a promotion it is–i.e., does it lead to increased sales?

I’ll update this post later with my results.

Addendum: My BookGorilla ad ran 10-10-13. My sales did increase that day and overnight, but the increased royalties during the ad period totaled a little less than half of what I paid for the ad. I saw almost no carryover in sales of my other books, and sales of the advertised book seem to have stalled. If I see a significant change over the next couple days, I’ll add another addendum.

October 10, 2013
Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 2

In Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1, I talked about how I created social media identities for all three of the genres in which I am published–romance, young adult science fiction, and mystery. In part 2, I’ll talk about how I juggle these multiple personalities.

I’m not yet entirely satisfied with how well I’m managing the task of promoting myself in these disparate genres. In some cases, I’m learning as I go, discovering what works, and stumbling over the pitfalls of what doesn’t. But it’s been a relief to accept the reality that my work doesn’t fit neatly into one pigeonhole. And while I can’t really say that I have something for every reader amongst my 20+ books, there’s certainly plenty of variety.

So how do I wrangle the three-headed hydra of my author identity? By promoting myself in a united fashion where I can and splitting my personalities where necessary.

This blog is one area where I let all three genres come out and play, sometimes together (in more generic posts) and sometimes separately (such as in this one). I do my best to put up a new post at least once a week. If you look through my previous posts, you’ll find that the majority of them are writing-related, along the lines of tips and tricks of the trade. There’s some personal stuff woven in there as well, such as this remembrance of my dad and this post about a childhood memory. I also will do a hybrid like this post, interweaving the personal and the writing craft together.

Besides this blog, I utilize numerous social media platforms–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Triberr, Google+, and Linked in. Most of my efforts are focused on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, despite its shortcomings, does have one bit of functionality that makes it very easy to manage multiple identities–Pages. By logging into my profile, Karen Sandler, I can access all of the four pages that I administrate. There’s a handy little wheel in the upper right-hand corner that allows me to switch from my profile to my author page, the Tankborn page, the mystery page, and the OnFireFiction page. I don’t have to log out of Facebook to post as those alternate identities.

Twitter, on the other hand, requires a separate login for each identity. It would be pretty crazy-making if I was logging in and logging out of the various Twitter accounts I use. Instead, I’ve installed several browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Opera), and login to a different identity on each browser.

For me, that means I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox (my favorite browser), @karensandler on Chrome, @OnFireFiction on IE, and @tankborn on Opera. I can hop back and forth from one to the other, retweet posts that I think the followers of multiple feeds would find interesting, and keep track of who I’m following and who’s following me.

Why not use a tool like Hootsuite? I do use Hootsuite, but I haven’t figured out a way to tweet as a different identity than the one I’m logged into. In other words, if I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox, even if I select the @karensandler tab, my tweets will be identified as having come from @karensandlerYA. If there’s someone out there who knows differently, please tell me in the comments!

As for the other social media sites, Google+, Pinterest, Triberr, and Linked in, I’ve so far had less of a presence there. Triberr automatically feeds through all my blog posts (a fantastic tool for reaching new followers). I will post the link to my blog posts on Google+ manually. I haven’t discovered an automated way to accomplish that. I feel a little freer to post what might be considered controversial opinions on Google+, while I mostly keep politics out of Twitter and Facebook.

I think Pinterest is extremely cool, but I just don’t get on the site much (browsing the wonderful images there is a real time suck). And I don’t think Linked in is as useful to authors as it might be for more business-related professions.

The question I’m continually asking myself as I post and tweet and blog–what works? My goal is to sell more books. To do that, readers have to discover me. So, do regular blog posts, status updates on Facebook and Google+, tweets on Twitter, and Pinterest pins accomplish that? I confess I haven’t yet got all the answers.

Where are you finding success? What do you think produces results? I’d love to hear about your experience.

May 28, 2013
New Website! A Solution for the Genre-Conflicted

So what do you do to promote yourself when your published work spans three genres (romance, speculative fiction, mystery) and two markets (adult and young adult)? This wasn’t a huge issue when I initially sold my first YA science fiction book, Tankborn, to Lee and Low/Tu Books after publishing adult romances for a dozen years. At that point, I had changed my focus from romance to young adult, and didn’t feel obligated to heavily promo my ten Harlequin books.

But in addition to those Harlequin books, I had the rights back to seven romances and a middle-grade time travel. I finally decided to dip my toe into indie publishing and put the romances and MG book up on Amazon. At that point, I chose to use a pen name for my romances to keep them separate from my children’s books. It was slow going, but I finally had the middle grade book published under Karen Sandler and six of the seven romances up under the pen name Kayla Russo. The seventh book needed some re-write, so it hasn’t yet been published (although it will be soon).

But then something somewhat unexpected happened. I had an unsold mystery novel, Clean Burn, tucked away in my figurative drawer. I found out about a new mystery imprint (Exhibit A, a part of Angry Robot Books) and alerted my agents. Long story short, Clean Burn sold to Exhibit A and will be released August 27, 2013. A second Janelle Watkins mystery will greet the world in Summer 2014.

My predicament clarified in October 2012 during a Novelists, Inc. conference. I had my Karen Sandler Harlequin author identity,my Kayla Russo indie-pubbed romance author identity, I had my Karen Sandler YA author identity, and I was about to have my Karen Sandler mystery author identity. Keeping all those identities juggled, trying to appropriately promote all of them, was madness.

My first step toward simplification was to drop my Kayla Russo identity. My original rationale for creating the pen name had been to separate my sexy adult romances from my teen-safe YA books. But that was silly because there were still those ten sexy Harlequin books for sale with Karen Sandler squarely on their covers. So I killed Kayla Russo off (so to speak) like the next murder victim in a Janelle Watkins mystery novel.

With the same name on all my books, I decided that the variety of genres/markets I offered were a feature, not a bug. Instead of keeping the genres separate, I would promote them side-by-side. Instead of seeing my multi-genre approach as a problem, I used it to brand myself. I am now proudly Genre-Conflicted on my blog, two Twitter identities, and Facebook.

In fact Facebook is where I started this process, with a Karen Sandler Author page. The banner for the page prominently displays book covers from each of the three genres, romance, science fiction, and mystery. Book tabs take the reader to pages where they can purchase any and all of my books at the click of a button.

My webmaster (i.e., husband) and I took the same approach with my website. The landing page features the same three choices–explore my YA SF books, my romances, or my mysteries. The same buy links are available on the book pages for each genre.

There are still a few tweaks needed on the website, but I really like the solution. It’s still a challenge to promote to three different audiences, but having that one-stop-shop takes some of the load off. So for both the focused genre reader and the more omnivorous book lovers who enjoy a variety of story types, I like to think my work offers something for nearly every taste.

May 6, 2013
Gol! How I met my goals when I thought I hadn’t set any

This week, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks, where are you on your reading and writing goals? I have blogged before about how I don’t like setting goals and making resolutions. They kind of stress me out and bring up all kinds of fears that I won’t be able to achieve them so why should I set them in the first place? (Imagine me saying that last part really fast and in a high voice).

Yeah, pretty negative. And what’s kind of silly about this is that I actually do make goals all the time (I never would have finished writing a single book if I hadn’t). I just don’t tend to write my goals down on a piece of paper or keep track of them in a file. I probably should. I bet I’d be far more organized and it would be clearer when I’ve met a goal.

So, let me look back and come up with my first quarter goals in a retroactive way. First, I wanted to complete the edits on my first mystery novel, Clean Burn, which is coming out in September 2013 from Exhibit A. I had to wait for my editor’s notes, but he’d assured me they would be fairly simple. After I got his notes, I was able to incorporate those changes over the course of two weekends, so I’ve kicked that imaginary soccer ball into the net and the fans are screaming, Gol!

Second, I wanted to complete by a certain date a rough draft of my current WIP, Revolution, the third and last book of the Tankborn trilogy from Tu Books. I’m being cagey about the specific date, because I like to keep that sort of thing to myself. I’m on target with that. Assuming I meet that goal as I expect to, I’ll have a few days to set the book aside, have some fun without having to think about the story, then get back to Revolution so I can get the rewrite done by the deadline. Haven’t quite reached the goal of finishing the rough draft since the date hasn’t arrived yet, but it’s within reach.

Third, I wanted to get going on my marketing and discoverability for my indie published romance novels. I’m meeting that goal with my new author “support group.” After a writer’s conference last October, a team of us had agreed in principle that we would work together to learn more about social networking. Our ultimate goal is to improve reader awareness of our books and therefore improve our sales. We had a fantabulous get-together last weekend (which I blogged about here). We’re still working out the details, of course, but there will be some exciting ventures coming out of our collaboration (new goals!).

I’ve also wanted to get my website updated, which my hubby has helped me with (okay, he does all the work, but he does ask the occasional question that I have to answer). It’s still got some work to be done (I have to set up sites devoted to my romance and mystery sides), but you can check it out here.

So I’m doing pretty well on the goal front. I have completed or am close to completing most of what I set out to do this quarter. I’ve got a bunch of new things on my list, but that means I’m moving forward and challenging myself. Isn’t that great?

So how about you? Are you meeting your goals? Are you happy with how things are turning out?

March 6, 2013