By Naomi Nakashima Installing a well-planned and thought out chatbot can invite your audience to engage with your page in a whole new way. Naomi Nakashima goes into detail about the changes to Facebook marketing, including how building a chatbot into your Facebook strategy can help you connect with your audience. Below is an excerpt from Naomi's post. Using Facebook to … [Read more...] about Guest Post: The Complete Guide to using Facebook to Market your Writing
readers
For the Readers: A List of Sites, Tools, and Examples of Beautiful Works
More and more platforms are springing up to help both indie authors and readers looking for their next great read. One new platform that does just that is The Books Machine, which allows authors to gift their books to hundreds of thousands of readers, according to the website. Readers have 30 days to read the book and write an honest review. Reader membership is free, and … [Read more...] about For the Readers: A List of Sites, Tools, and Examples of Beautiful Works
Offering Readers Extras
As an indie author, simply writing your book is not enough. You need to have a marketing strategy, and let people know about your work. You also need to find your target audience, and then give them a reason to keep buying your work. One way to do that is to offer extras to your readers. The Write Life calls them "insider treasures." The idea is to make your readers feel … [Read more...] about Offering Readers Extras
Indie Authors: Researching Your Books
When writing books, there are a lot of things you can research. What genre should you write in (if you don't already have a preference)? How can you attract readers? Who are your target or ideal readers? What should your book title be? Below is a list of resources that can help answer those questions: Find My Audience: Learn about your Twitter audience. Hasghtagify: … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Researching Your Books
An Interview with Richard Billings, Founder of Leafless
The publishing industry is full of opportunity. Today, publishing startup Leafless, a digital distribution platform and publisher, is launching (after rebranding). Leafless aims to solve the problem of authors paying for reviews and honest reviews disappearing from sites like Amazon. Through Leafless, authors can give copies of ebooks to readers for reviews, and popular books … [Read more...] about An Interview with Richard Billings, Founder of Leafless
Guest Post: 4 Tips for Developing Compelling Characters
By Marianne Stenger This post was originally published on http://www.acj.edu.au/blog/acj-news/4-tips-developing-compelling-characters. The Australian College of Journalism is part of Open Colleges, and provides writing and media-related training. Characters can make or break your whole story, because if readers don’t care about the characters, they won’t care about anything … [Read more...] about Guest Post: 4 Tips for Developing Compelling Characters
What Rights Do Ebook Owners Have?
Over the last few years, there has been a lot of discussion around the ownership of ebooks. The LA Times reported in 2012 about how ebook owners had few rights when it came to their ebooks. Instead of owning ebooks they purchased, they were merely licensing them: Unlike the owners of a physical tome, they won't have the unlimited right to lend an e-book, give it away, … [Read more...] about What Rights Do Ebook Owners Have?
Social Reading and Writing
Ebooks open up a whole range of possibilities, from how people consume stories to how they talk about books they've read, and even how they find new works to read. Because ebooks are digital, authors and readers have many opportunities to be social with their books. One example is annotating books online. Tools like AnnotateIt and Annotator allow readers to mark up and share … [Read more...] about Social Reading and Writing
Readers and Writers: Library News
Libraries are an important part of the book publishing world, and it's been a while since I mentioned them in a post, so here's a collection of links to library news, services, and more. Library Databases "American Museum of Natural History Unveils New Database With 7,000 Digitized Items (Images, Illustrations, Drawings & More)" by Gary Price (see database here) … [Read more...] about Readers and Writers: Library News
Indie Authors: Finding Your Audience
It's not the most glamorous aspect of indie publishing, and it's definitely hard work, but finding the target audience for your book is an important step when it comes to successfully self-publishing. Knowing your readers and who may be potentially interested in what you have to say can make marketing down the line much, much easier, and interacting with fans and/or people in … [Read more...] about Indie Authors: Finding Your Audience
7 Strategies and 110+ Tools to Help Indie Authors Find Readers and Reviewers
Self-publishing is growing, and with it come new resources. One of the biggest hurdles of being an indie author is finding readers and getting reviews (which helps find more readers). Some people may still consider self-publishing a stigma, and some writers may think that promotion takes away too much time from writing. But many sites, including Outramp, Your Writer Platform, … [Read more...] about 7 Strategies and 110+ Tools to Help Indie Authors Find Readers and Reviewers
How One Successful Indie Author Marketed His Work Up the Bestseller Lists
I've mentioned it before, but I'm a huge fan of Hugh Howey. A while back, I had the pleasure of interviewing him, and I found out some of his amazing, and fairly unique, marketing and indie publishing strategies. You can read it here, on Writer Unboxed. I look forward to reading any and all comments! … [Read more...] about How One Successful Indie Author Marketed His Work Up the Bestseller Lists
What’s Going on With Readers Today?
What's Going On With Readers Today from Goodreads A while back, Goodreads asked publishers what questions they would like to ask readers. The results of the Goodreads survey from December 2012 are now up, and there are some interesting finds. I do wonder, however, how accurate these findings are. Yes, Goodreads has a huge base of readers, but the ones who decided to answer … [Read more...] about What’s Going on With Readers Today?
Finding Your Readers
I recently received an email about the next steps after self-publishing a book. Unfortunately I average about 200 emails a day so I can't remember who sent it, but it contained some interesting tidbits. Self-publishing is great, but it's also important to make sure you reach your readers. … [Read more...] about Finding Your Readers
What About the Readers?
Readers are important, especially now that reader reviews play a big role in driving online sales. As a reader, how do you find your next e-book to read? What tools would you like to see available? Great post by Alex Laybourne. … [Read more...] about What About the Readers?