We live in an information age and like it or not—it’s here to stay. That’s why it is imperative that writers learn to navigate through the World Wide Web and use it to market their books—and more importantly themselves. As an avid e-marketer, I’ve been kicking around the web since 1994 and have been using it as a marketing tool since I contracted for my first novel in 1998.

I’m thrilled to be able to bring you a savvy bunch of e-marketers. and I’m grateful to them for their willingness to step up and share what they’ve learned about e-Marketing.

And many thanks to Stephanie Kelsey for formatting our digital handout! :-)

Perilously yours,

Pauline

Pauline Baird Jones is the award-winning author of eight novels of action-adventure, suspense, romantic suspense and comedy-mystery. She's also written two non-fiction books, Adapting Your Novel for Film and Made-up Mayhem. Her seventh novel, Out of Time, an action-adventure romance set in World War II, is an EPPIE 2007 winner in the single title/mainstream category. Her eighth novel, The Key, will release in Fall, 2007 from LL Dreamspell.

Pauline is the President of The Final Twist, the Houston Chapter of Sisters in Crime and Vice President of EPIC, The Electronically Published Internet Connection. Originally from Wyoming, she and her family moved from New Orleans to Texas before Katrina

Marketing in the New E-Age: Author Branding

Jeri Smith-Ready

www.jerismithready.com

Myths About Author Branding

MYTH #1: A brand is a logo.

TRUTH: A brand is a promise to provide quality and a specific experience. Geico’s brand isn’t the charming English gecko; it’s common-sense, low-cost, no-fuss car insurance.

A logo is just one of your brand’s many visual elements, and visual elements are only part of your brand, which also consists of your public persona (online and in the flesh). Of course, the most important part of your brand is the writing itself.

MYTH #2: A brand is a pigeonhole.

TRUTH: A brand is uniquely yours, because it is about you, not about your genre or subgenre or even sub-sub-subgenre. It should follow you (and adapt to you) wherever the muse leads.

MYTH #3: A brand means I have to write the same kind of book over and over again.

TRUTH: Wow, I hope not! That would be boring for authors and readers alike. You can write a wide variety of books, as long as you keep to your core message.

A core message is the common denominator for all your stories. It reflects your life experience, your philosophy, your beliefs. A core message could be: “Love Conquers All,” or “Discover Yourself,” or “You Can’t Fight Destiny.”

And since your core message comes from your heart, no one else can copy it or give readers the same experience. See the next page for my own example.

MYTH #4: A brand is based on an author’s latest book.

TRUTH: Your latest book should reinforce your brand, not the other way around. Your publisher focuses on marketing your individual books or series, but they’re not marketing you as a brand. That’s your job.

MYTH #5: Branding is for “hacks” who think of their creative work as just another product, like detergent or breakfast cereal.

TRUTH: At its heart, a brand is about understanding who you are as a writer. Once you know that, you can build an identity and make creative choices that reinforce it. Ultimately a brand helps you deliver on a promise to your readers and ensure their loyalty no matter what kind of book you choose to write in the future.

Core Message Example:

When I first examined my core message, the common theme to all my novels, I was dismayed to discover I actually had two: Love Redeems All (my characters tend to to have dark pasts) and Be Yourself (as opposed to what others expect you to be).

But when I looked closer, I realized they were inextricably linked and formed one core message: When we’re loved for who we are, we can be anything we want.

Boiled down: Love is Freedom.

It goes to the heart of what I believe about humanity and the power of love. It carries through whether I write epic or urban fantasy, whether my tone is serious or funny or somewhere in between.

Simply put, I can’t help delivering this core message, because it’s a part of me.

What part of you comes to life in your writing?

Jeri Smith-Ready’s fascination with animals and magic infuses her debut romantic fantasy trilogy. The first installment, Eyes of Crow, won the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2006, and has been nominated for two Rita™ Awards.

Spring 2008 will see the debut of her new humorous urban fantasy series, featuring a cadre of vampire disc jockeys and the con artist trying to save their “lives.”

To keep her head in the real world, Jeri fosters not-so-magical dogs for a local rescue group.

www.jerismithready.com

Quick Steps to a Brand:

1.  Write down at least 10 adjectives to describe the image you want to

portray/associate with your writing.  Ex. Opulent, lush, sensuous,

light, tickling, crisp, cold, steely, funny, heartwarming, speedy, heart

pounding, alien

2.  Attach that to an image.  Cover art can help enormously with this.

3.  If you like, add a motto: ex: Exotic Tales by Jade Lee

4.  Put the image on everything.  Add the motto too if possible.  Ex,

Jade Lee's tigress image

5.  Dress the part in all public appearances.  Jade wears Asian clothes

at conferences and signings.

Ask Emily Post-it

Etiquette for Review Sites, Reader/Writer Loops,

News Groups and Promotion in General

The internet abounds with popular yahoo groups catering to readers looking for the best place to spend their buck and authors looking for fans. These are great places to get your name and work out in front of readers. However there are some definite dos and don’ts about what to do and how to do it! It’s also a good idea to maintain and grow a list of your own, your personal newsgroup where you can reach out to your growing circle of fans.

First some don’ts:

-- Be a drive by promo slut who only appears to tout her latest work. Most of the regular readers on these loops find this very irritating and will be turned off. You need to build a presence there, not an overpowering one but a recognized ‘member’ who comes across as friendly and upbeat, helpful and supportive of the overall community.

-- Conversely, let the chit-chat take over your time until you have none left to write! It is a real danger; you will find you do make some friends and it is easy to waste hours on line talking about everything. That is not getting your next book written. Budget your on-line time and use it wisely.

-- Bombard the lists with daily posts about your wonderful book. Two or three posts on promotion a month are more than enough! You want to get your name out there but not to the point where everyone says, “Oh geez, not her again!!” The fifth or tenth post that week about how wonderful Love Comes to Lucy is will make them skip posts with your name on them.

-- Make any catty or nasty comments about anyone anytime!! This will almost always come back to haunt you in one way or another. Mom or grandma was right when she said. “You can catch more flies with sugar than vinegar.” If you can’t say something nice, sit down and shut up!

And some dos:

-- Post a comment on a book you have read. Maybe exchange comments (kind of a mini-review) with a friend who also has a new book out. Suggest similar books if someone else mentions one she enjoyed. You are helping the readers here and your fellow authors. How can that be bad?

--Post a teaser excerpt of a new release, being sure to mark it as “adult” if it is explicit. Check the rules of each list to see what is allowed and approved of by the owner or moderator. Some lists are family friendly and others cater heavily to erotica, or highly sensual books. Know where you are and what they want.

--Congratulate other authors on good news they post—probably not daily but enough to be a presence beyond your own promo.

-- Post clips from favorable reviews, again not daily but maybe once a week if you have that many. Take just a sentence or two that is especially intriguing or laudatory. Posting whole reviews is not only hogging space, it can violate the reviewer’s or the review site’s ownership copyright of the review!

-- Now and then take the time to post a little bit about a favorite hobby, a trip you have recently taken or some other semi-personal tidbit. Most readers love to feel they are getting to know favorite authors. This helps make you a real person to them and thus builds a stronger connection to your books. Sometimes a bit of background on how or why you wrote a particular piece is also good. Insider information is cherished by many readers, especially in the romance and women’s fiction genres.

Review Sites

Before you request a review, check the list of those sites to which your publisher(s) automatically send their new releases (in your genre or sub-genre). They will usually have such a list published in the author section of their site along with FAQs, contract data, policies and so on. No use to duplicate efforts and it also clogs things up at the review sites, most of which are very busy these days! Then, read some reviews on the site to see how they tend to evaluate books like yours and whether they are snide, gushingly glowing to the point it is meaningless or honest but diplomatic! Some reviewers/sites have earned a sound reputation for recognizing and acknowledging good books and not letting reviewer personal prejudices intrude into how a book is reviewed. Those are the ones to use! Ask fellow authors about their experiences if you are a relative newbie.

I have done some reviewing myself for several sites. It is an enjoyable exercise and can be helpful when you get into a slump or issues in your personal life put a damper on your own muse for awhile. Some sites allow published authors to review, some don’t. Those that do will usually restrict you from reviewing books from your publisher(s) which is only fair. Ethical reviewers will probably excuse themselves from reviewing books by friends or critique partners etc. If possible check into these aspects when picking review sites to patronize.

Follow the site’s procedures to a ‘t’ when you request a review. Some want the book sent with the request; others want to assign it to a reviewer and have you send the book to a coordinator or directly to the reviewer. Do it their way; this will go a long ways toward making them feel favorable about you as a professional and increase the likelihood that you can get future work reviewed there.

When you are notified that the review is available, check it for any errors in spelling, ISBN, and similar information and politely send any corrections to the moderator, coordinator or whoever is in charge. Emphasis on the politely here! Reviewers are people too and can make accidental mistakes, not because they are stupid or mean or anything else but just because Stuff Happens.

Then be sure to thank the reviewer. Some can be contacted directly and other sites have all comments and thanks forwarded through the coordinator. Even if the review is not a good one, someone did take the time to read and comment so a courtesy thank you is always appropriate.

Don’t spring to your own defense if a critical comment was made; this is just one person’s opinion to which s/he has a complete right!!

Even a basically negative review will probably have a sentence or two that is complimentary which you can extract and use. Selective clipping is allowed and is sometimes wise! Don’t change any words (a ‘sic’ or noted correction can be legal however) but somewhat out of context quotes can be made judiciously. If the reviewer in effect said, “This book sucks in general but the hero was yummy,” you can certainly pull out “…the hero was yummy” and credit the reviewer! (i.e.) Rita Reviewer at Romance Reigns said, “…the hero is yummy.”

If a site continues to give you negative reviews, obviously they are not into you or your work so quit asking them for reviews. If many sites give you bad reviews, but your books are selling like hotcakes, well—maybe stop seeking reviews. If reviews are bad and sales are flat, you had better look at your work and see how to make it better, consider shifting to a publisher who uses good, tough editors to help authors make their work the best it can be, or find a new line of endeavor. I’m not being smart here, just painfully honest and direct.

Publishing at all levels is a cut-throat and dog-eat-dog business. The key concept here is it is a business and if it is not turning a profit, it won’t last. You have to keep this in mind at every stage of the process. The authors who turn in a quality product and then get out and work to get reviews, to promote their books, and cultivate readers by whatever means they can are the ones who will still be around in five or ten years. The one-book wonders who lack in any of these areas can say they are a published author –perhaps that is all they really want to do--but that with fifty cents may by you a cup of coffee. Not at Starbucks though.

I will be compiling an extensive list of review sites and of yahoo groups where promotion is not only allowed by encouraged, grouped by genre or focus in the coming months. Right now I could list my favorites but there are many more and a wide variety of focuses. My choices might not work best for everyone. I suggest you sign up for my newsletter as I will be making more of this kind of information available in coming months. deirdredares@yahoogroups,.com

Bio and Publishing Credits:

Gwynn Morgan is a multi-published small press/electronic author with nine novels to her credit to date. Her publishers include Awe-Struck E-Books, Amber Quill Press, Hard Shell Word Factory and Treble Heart Books. Her first novel, Powerful Medicine was the winner of the 2002 LORIE award for best long romance by a new author. The tenth novel, January Gets her Gunn, will be out in early 2008 from Awe-Struck. Prior to publication she placed or won in a number of contests sponsored by various chapters of RWA to include the Maggie, Silver Heart, Heart of the West, >From the Heart, Heart to Heart, Love in Uniform, and the Outreach Award of Excellence.

Writing as Deirdre O’Dare, she has twelve shorter works available at Amber Quill Press in their Amber Heat line. Her first, Karola’s Hunt was a winner in the first Amber Heat Wave Contest in 2004. One of her latest, Doggone Love, was the #1 best seller for March 2007. Her first print anthology, Daring Dreams, a collection of four fantasy/paranormal erotic romance stories which includes Karola’s Hunt and February’s #7 best seller, Nellie’s Rogue Stallion is newly released. Daring Delights, featuring several of her contemporary cop and cowboy tales will be out later this year. Journal of a Timid Temptress was released in April to be followed by Cowgirl Up in June.

Thinking Strategically... Looking Beyond the Obvious… Thinking Outside of the Box.

By Shannon Aviles

1. MARKETING – BRAND DEVELOPMENT AND PLACEMENT

Create a Plan

Develop a Strategy

Continuity is the “Key”

2. PUBLICITY/PROMOTION

START WITH A BUDGET!

YOU ARE A CELEBRITY!

5 THINGS EVERY AUTHOR MUST DO

6 THINGS EVERY AUTHOR MUST HAVE

YOUR PROMOTIONS AUDIENCES

WORK YOUR AUDIENCE

WHERE TO PROMOTE YOURSELF

3. COLLATERAL DEVELOPMENT

Brand Sensitive

Cost Effective

Target Markets

4. ADVERTISING

The Free and the Paid

5. PUBLIC & MEDIA RELATIONS

Pitches and Hooks

6. SPECIAL EVENTS

Opportunities to Attract New Audiences

7. WEB DESIGN and SEO

Get them there, keep them with you and have them come back for more!

8. VIRAL MARKETING

Attracting New Prospective Readers

9. BOOKTRAILERS, TEASERS and MINI-TEASERS

To do or Not to do….

10. PUBLISHING HOUSES

Make them your Allies not your Adversaries!

11. BOOKSELLERS/VENDORS

The Hidden “Key” to your Success!

12. COMPETITORS

Who are they Really?

Thursday, April 26^th; 11-12.

The Low Down On Internet Promotion: The Home Of Paid And The Land Of Some Free

Speaker: Sheila Clover English, CEO Circle of Seven Productions

Worksheet #1SE

Objective: To identify a starting point in your promotional and marketing endeavors. Establish a goal. Identify resources and needs. Discuss budget and Internet opportunities.

What is your goal? What is your mission statement?

What resources do you have?

What resources do you need?

Who is your target audience? Be specific. Who is most likely to look at the title of your book, or see your book cover and say, “I have GOT to read that!”

What is your budget?

(note that your budget is not the biggest priority here, nor the most important thing. Why not? Because most of us don’t have one. So, we have to work with what we have. Work within your means.)

What can you do within that budget?

Internet – Free stuff

Online press releases

User-generated articles and freelancing

User-generated video

Social sites

Internet – Low cost – Big Bang

Banner ads

Web Site

Contests

For a list of free resources go to – www.sf-english.com/resources

Marketing in the New E-Age

The Website and Beyond

Rob Preece

Publisher, www.BooksForABuck.com

The Internet has become the single-most powerful tool available to the author, small publisher, or aspiring writer in its ability to reach huge numbers of people, communicate messages rich in media, and in its accessibility both to users/readers and, importantly, to creators. In this brief handout, I’d like to discuss just a few of the tools and strategies a writer, whether published or as-yet unpublished, can use to carve out a place on the net, increase visibility, and ultimately generate a significant volume of sales.

It’s incredibly easy to get a website. Many ISPs offer free web hosting for their customers, and there are dozens or hundreds of free hosting sites. Many of these offer scripting, allowing you to create your website without learning HTML, the markup language used on the web. For a few dollars, you can get a domain name (like www.yourname.com). There are also dozens of free blog locations, places for you to post your videos, and free tools to let you create chat rooms, forums, and mail lists. A couple you will want to consider are: Yahoo’s mail lists, Google’s mail lists, Microsoft Office Live hosting, Bravenet web services, and Myspace and Blogspot blogs.

If you’re going to have a website, what should you put on it? You’d be surprised what works. Here are some of my discoveries:

People like connecting with authors. Author Jane Graves, for example, finds huge interest in her Dumb Cat Photos.
People come back when you change your content often. Author Karen Leabo’s ‘picture of the day’ gives regular visitors a reward for making a visit a part of a daily routine. BooksForABuck.com posts book reviews of the latest fiction, even for books we don’t publish, also to encourage readers to swing by often
People will not come back often to read what is, essentially, a brochure.
Blogs are useful ways of connecting to people because they have tools for comments, and because they really encourage the personal connection.

There are a lot of on-line organizations, mailing lists, and groups where you can promote yourself and your book. One thing to consider is, who is on those lists. In many cases, you’ll find that the other members are all fellow authors, all desperately flogging their books to each other. While most writers are also readers, you’ll want to reach beyond the writer community. Don’t spend all of your marketing energy going after the people who probably already get a dozen or more promotional messages a day. One nice thing about websites like MySpace is that they allow you to forge multiple communities—with people who share your interest in hobbies, background in education, professions, or love for particular authors—interests that can be turned to your advantage when it’s time to sell your book. One note that applies to all groups and blogs, though—remember to be a friend first. Nobody likes people who only show up to promote their books and then vanish. If the venues don’t interest you as a reader, don’t bother them as a writer.

Dropping from the high-level to the bottom-line specifics, I’ve got a list of do’s and don’ts:

Do create a signature line for your e-mail. It’s acceptable to add a line or two about you, your book, or your website
Do create a website
Add new content frequently. Think of your own browsing—you probably return to certain websites almost daily, and every one of those websites is one with new content daily
If you wouldn’t want to read it/see it from another author, don’t think anyone will want to see it from you
Video trailers are the hot thing among authors—be careful getting too hooked on sizzle, though. Unless your video is really exceptional, you won’t attract the tens of thousands of viewers a few YouTube videos manage
Do think about search engines. Most of your new traffic is likely to come from them. If you write vampire erotica, include multiple words for vampire and erotica on your home page (e.g., vampire, undead, living dead, nosferatu) to help searchers find you. Make sure the words are in text and (where appropriate) in ‘alt tags’ for images. Don’t just use word images. Definitely don’t game the search engines, though. Using invisible words (white on white), repeated words, or super-small print can result in your pages being banned by the engines.
If you blog, do so regularly. Once a week is better than five times in one week then nothing for a month. Once a day (or more) is best
Don’t expect editors to find your website, but do expect editors to Google you if you submit to them. If they like what they see, that’s a positive. If not, not so much.
It’s not about how much you spend. Show creativity
Respect copyright. This isn’t just the law, it’s common sense. Publishers are in the copyright business. If you violate copyright by posting others’ work, stealing art, or if you have posted long excerpts from your work, you are going to make yourself a less attractive business partner for the publisher
Be careful with ad spending. Buying search words or phrases, banner ads, and text ads has some appeal, but most viewers are blind to ads—it takes an exceptional ad, or a super-low price to make your ads worth the investment
If you’re published, talk to your publisher’s marketing department about ways you can work with them—and they can work with you. Coordinated marketing works better than getting in each other’s way.

Even fifteen years ago, a new author could do little more than hope her book would catch on. The web offers a powerful opportunity for unknown authors to break out, be discovered, and to create a real personal connection to the reader that goes beyond the book. It’s easy to get too excited and spend too much money, but there is a lot the new or experienced author can do to increase her visibility, add value to herself with publishers, and to grab the new wave and ride it to success.

What Should I Put On My Website?

By: Cathy Clamp

One of the most important decisions an aspiring or published author has to make is deciding what information to put on their website. Of course, the whole reason for a website is so the public . . . the reading public . . . can find the author. Hopefully, the result of that “finding” is the sale of a book or a future fan if the book isn’t yet published.

But what do people want to see to keep them interested enough to come back? How about if they find the site by accident? What will make them stay? Yes, there are a million opinions on design of a website and, what one person considers “easy” to use, another person will find difficult. But what are the elements that EVERY author site should contain, that can make or break a happy visit from a fan? How about things to avoid to avoid chasing visitors away?

For the past few months, I’ve been polling a wide variety of readers on this very subject, using the power of the internet itself to reach the most people possible. From bulletin boards to forums, Yahoo loops, MySpace and library reading groups—I put out the question to more than forty thousand prospective readers: “What do you want?” Of the over twenty forums and loops I’ve contacted, more than one hundred thirty people responded, both publicly and in private. Respondents included Romance readers, plus those who prefer SF, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror, Literary, Non-fiction, Biographies/Memoirs and even Western afficionados.

Here, then, are the findings to the very specific questions I asked. Hopefully, all of you can make use of these preferences when designing your own site. Not all of the percentages I’ve used here will add up to exactly 100% because often people would state more than one preference in various parts of the questionnaire. One thing I found very interesting was the shared interests of readers, regardless of their preferred reading topic.

Which of these elements do you REQUIRE on an author’s site in order to visit a second time?

ì In-depth information about the author? (and how in-depth do you like it? The author's hobbies and interests or National Enquirer-style dirt?)

83% of respondents want basic information about the author. They like to see: how the author started writing, the process of creating the characters, hobbies, the kind of music the author enjoys and how the author gets ideas for books.

40% of respondents do NOT want to hear dirt about the author, including: nasty divorce cases, drinking/drug problems, child custody battles, pets dying, or DUI/assault arrests.

17% of respondents want to know if the author owns cats. Don’t ask me why...

14% of respondents want homey, informative bits about the author that make the reader feel like they “know” the author.

6% of respondents want to know if the author has any specific background that will create a more realistic book (like, for example, if the author used to be a nurse who now writes medical mysteries or a former FBI agent who writes romantic suspense.)

í The books. What do you want to see about them: