Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Copyright 2008-2020 Mark Coker, Founder of Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com) Version 2.5 Rev 12.19.19

~~**~~ Smashwords Edition

Cover design by PJ Lyon ~~**~~

Other Books by Mark Coker: Smashwords Style Guide (How to format and publish an ebook) Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (Ebook publishing best practices) 10-Minute PR Checklist – (How to Earn the Publicity You Deserve Boob Tube (Novel about Hollywood celebrity)

~~**~~ Table of Contents

Introduction

About the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide Why I wrote this book What is book marketing? Writing is marketing The rise of ebooks The competitive advantage of indie ebook authors Setting expectations

Chapter 1. The Free Book Marketing Tools at Smashwords

1. Distribution to retailers and libraries 2. The Smashwords Store 3. Smashwords Presales 4. Global Pricing Control 5. Daily Sales reporting 6. Multiple ebook file types 7. Author profile pages 8. Book pages 9. Book sampling 10. Smart shopping cart 11. Book reviews 12. Coupons! 13. Promotional widgets 14. Search engine visibility 15. Exclusive “Special Deals” promotions 16. Smashwords Interviews 17. Embeddable YouTube videos 18. Book tagging 19. Tag cloud 20. Other books by this author or publisher 21. Integration with social media sites 22. Smashwords Affiliate Partners program 23. Exclusive site-wide promotions 24. Promotion on Smashwords Satellites 25. Access to retailer merchandising promotions 26. Free author education resources

Chapter 2. 66 MARKETING TIPS

FOUNDATION -BUILDING

Author Brand-Building Tip #1 – Visualize your author brand Tip #2 – Practice ethical marketing Tip #3 – Act professional Tip #4 – Be a nice person Tip #5 – Give back

Knowledge Building

Tip #6 – Subscribe to the Smart Author Podcast Tip #7 – Join a local writer’s club or critique group Tip #8 – Subscribe to the Smashwords blog Tip #9 – Read The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success Tip #10 – Check out the Smashwords Survey

Platform Building

Tip #11 – Join HARO, Help-a-reporter-online for free press leads Tip #12 – Use Google Alerts to discover where the conversations are taking place Tip #13 – Create a private email list Tip #14 – Update your email signature Tip #15 – Sign up for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, if you haven’t already Tip #16 – Complete a Smashwords Interview Tip #17 – Start a blog Tip #18 – Print business cards Tip #19 – Create an online calling card and bio at About.me Tip #20 – Update your social media profiles and message board signatures

Distribution

Tip #21 – List every new release on preorder Tip #22 – Distribute to all ebook retailers Tip #23 – Distribute ebook to public libraries

Autopilot Marketing

Tip #24 – Build hyperlinks Tip #25 – Don’t publish without editing Tip #26 – If you can’t afford a professional editor, find an alternative Tip #27 – Use beta readers to inspire ideas for your final revision Tip #28 – Three essential sections for your back matter Tip #29 – Create a discussion guide for your back matter Tip #30 – Promote preorder books in the back matter of your other books Tip #31 – Add sample chapters of your other books to your back matter Tip #32 – Do a sample chapter swap with another author Tip #33 – Add enhanced navigation to your ebook Tip #34 – Price at least one book at FREE Tip #35 – If you write series, price the series starter at FREE Tip #36 – Practice metadata magic Tip #37 – Occupy multiple price points to appeal to more readers Tip #38 – Publish more than one book to create a multiplier effect Tip #39 – Refresh your cover image Tip #40 – Tweak and iterate your viral catalysts

BOOK PROMOTION

Prelaunch Marketing

Tip #41 – It’s all about the next book – get it on preorder now Tip #42 – Run a presale with Smashwords Presales Tip #43 – Encourage readers to subscribe to your Smashwords Alerts Tip #44 – Write thoughtful reviews for other ebooks on Smashwords Tip #45 – Participate in specialized communities where your target readers hang out

Blog Marketing

Tip #46 – Join the conversations on other blogs Tip #47 – Write guest posts for other blogs Tip #48 – Conduct Q&A interviews of other authors on your blog Tip #49 – Invite other authors to write guest posts for your blog

Launch Marketing

Tip #50 – Promote hyperlinks to all your retailers Tip #51 – Write a press release and promote it to your local newspaper Tip #52 – Organize a blog tour Tip #53 – Celebrate your ebook launch on your web site, blog and private mailing list Tip #54 – Announce your book on social media Tip #55 – Announce your book to friends, family, co-workers, business associates, and readers Tip #56 – Encourage readers to leave honest reviews at their favorite retailer

Librar y Marketing

Tip #57 – Ask your readers to recommend your ebook to their local public library Tip #58– Orchestrate events at your local library Post Launch Marketing

Tip #59 – Run promotions with Smashwords Coupons Tip #60 – Run a price promotion Tip #61 – Participate in annual Smashwords-exclusive promotions Tip #62 – Leverage YouTube videos to reach more readers Tip #63 – Invite readers to become affiliate marketers for your books Tip #64 – Upload a presentation deck to Slideshare.net Tip #65 – Organize a multi-author box set with your favorite authors Tip #66 – Invite other authors to join you on your indie author journey

Chapter 3 - DEEP DIVES

Social media strategies for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn How to work with beta readers How to earn free press coverage

Also by Mark Coker About the author Connect with Mark Coker Connect with fellow Smashwords authors Connect with Smashwords Dedication and acknowledgements Permissions Introduction - - About the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide

Since its first publication in 2008, the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide has helped thousands of writers, publishers and book marketers reach millions of new readers. The first edition aimed to help Smashwords authors take full advantage of the marketing tools and capabilities of the Smashwords platform.

In the years since, I’ve expanded the scope of the guide with dozens of updates as the industry developed, and as I identified new book marketing opportunities for authors. Today the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide has evolved to become an essential resource for all authors and publishers, even if you’re not yet working with Smashwords.

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide provides practical, proven book- marketing advice. You won’t find gimmicks or shady tricks here. I teach, preach and practice ethical marketing.

Most of the ideas presented here cost nothing to implement other than the investment of your time.

Some of my tips require only a couple of minutes to implement; yet will reap you dividends for years to come. Other tips require a greater ongoing investment of your time and attention. Do the easy things first, and then refer back to the guide as a brainstorming checklist whenever you’re ready to do more.

You’ll find I use the terms “self-published author” and “indie author” interchangeably. They’re the same.

Although this book focuses on ebook marketing, many of the recommendations I’m about to share apply to print book and audiobook marketing as well.

This is the 2020 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, which includes minor updates over the 2018 edition which marked the most significant revision since the first edition was published in 2008. This new edition includes new book marketing opportunities enabled by the December 2019 launch of our patent-pending book launch tool, Smashwords Presales.

The 66 marketing tips that follow are organized in sections under logical categories that map closely to how you’ll plan, launch and sustain your book marketing. This edition includes chapter titled “Deep Dives,” which was first introduced in the 2018 edition. The Deep Dives chapter offers in-depth sections for developing your social media strategy, how to work with beta readers and how to earn free press coverage.

The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide will continue to evolve over time. Many of the marketing strategies and tactics you’re about to learn were pioneered by your fellow indie authors. I welcome your suggestions for new tips to share in future editions. I also welcome your corrections. Write me (Mark Coker) at first initial second initial at smashwords dot com.

Why I wrote this book

Context is important. Who am I and how did I come to write a book about book marketing?

I’ve been practicing marketing my entire career. I received my degree in marketing from UC Berkeley in 1988, but my best learning has come from real world experience.

My first job out of college was as VP of Marketing for my father’s garage startup. He gave me a big title and zero marketing budget for our little two-man company. Out of necessity I learned how to get free press coverage for our software.

My next big job was working at one of the largest PR firms in Silicon Valley. After a couple of years there, I left to start my own firm. For over 15 years I ran an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm where I provided strategic communications counsel to – and was mentored by – some of the brightest CEOs and VPs of Marketing from around the globe. It was an amazing educational experience.

Then around 2000, right before the dot com bubble burst, I met my wife, Lesleyann. She’s a former reporter for Soap Opera Weekly Magazine. She told me head-spinning stories about her experiences reporting on the wild and wacky world of daytime television soap operas. She shared how the soap actors she met were more over-the-top in real life than their fictional soap opera characters. I suggested she write a book about her experiences. She suggested we write that book together.

Ever since I can remember, I dreamed of writing a book. I always assumed I’d write non-fiction about one of my various passions such as gardening, entrepreneurship, stock market investing, or marketing. But a novel about soap operas? I decided why not. I was getting burnt out on the daily grind of running a PR agency and was ready for something different. The rest is history. I took a sabbatical from my PR agency to research and write the novel with Lesleyann. It was an incredible experience. We explored the dark underbelly of Hollywood celebrity. The book is titled Boob Tube.

Despite representation from an awesome agent at a top literary agency in New York City, we couldn’t get a publishing deal. Previous novels targeting soap opera fans had performed poorly, so publishers were reluctant to take a chance on us.

The experience opened my eyes. I realized that despite their good intentions, publishers are unable to say yes to every author.

I imagined the millions of writers who came before us whose dreams of authorship had been crushed by the benign neglect of publishers.

I thought it would be really cool if someone would create a publishing service that could say yes to every writer in the world. This was in 2005, the early days of blogging and YouTube. I thought if anyone could have the freedom to publish a blog post or video online, and have their work judged by their audience as opposed to a gatekeeper, then why not a book?

I decided to solve the problem myself. I wanted to democratize publishing for the benefit of all writers and readers.

In 2008 I founded an ebook publishing company called Smashwords. Smashwords makes it fast, free and easy for any writer, anywhere in the world, to self-publish an ebook. We created powerful publishing and marketing tools, and we put these tools in the hands of writers for no cost.

In 2009 we broke down the distribution barriers by opening up multiple major ebook retailers to self-published ebooks. Once our authors’ ebooks hit retailers’ virtual shelves, they started selling. We also opened up public libraries to self- published ebooks.

In the years since our founding, Smashwords has grown to become the world’s largest distributor of self-published ebooks. Throughout our growth and all the ups and downs of this rough and tumble industry, I never lost sight of the fighting spirit upon which I founded the company. We’re here to democratize publishing for the benefit of authors, publishers and readers. That fight continues.

Today we help over 140,000 authors publish and distribute more than 500,000 ebooks.

It’s been my privilege to work with so many bright and amazing authors.

Unlike large publishers, and unlike my former corporate clients in the tech industry, indie authors have never enjoyed the luxury of multi-million dollar marketing budgets. What indies lack in money, however, they make up one hundred times over with creativity, experimentation and grit. In the fight to reach readers, indie authors pioneered many of the ebook marketing practices I’m about to share with you.

If you’re a writer, author, publisher, book marketer, literary agent, or personal assistant to an author, this guide is for you. I’m here to help you reach more readers.

What is Book Marketing?

Book marketing is more than social media, paid advertising and branded pencils.

Book marketing is everything you do to make your work and your author brand more discoverable, more desirable and more enjoyable for your target reader. This means marketing encompasses everything from book production and pricing to distribution and promotion. Every decision you make will have marketing impact.

Smart marketing starts by understanding your target reader. Who is that reader – more than any other – who will derive the greatest satisfaction from your work?

Your target reader looks to books to satisfy specific emotional and intellectual aspirations. A reader may desire to laugh, cry, learn, escape, contemplate, feel happy, feel scared, feel titillated, or all of the above and more.

Your target reader is a time traveler with split personalities. Your reader has diverse tastes. The same reader might desire a political memoir today, a sweet romance tomorrow, a book on business finance the next day, and a celebrity biography the day after that.

Your reader is a moving target. To reach them, your book needs to be in the right place at the right time with the right message, so the reader is drawn to its gravitational pull the next time their orbit passes by your book.

Smart book marketing works like an ever-present magnet to bridge the gap between a reader’s desire and your book’s ability to satisfy that desire.

Writing is Marketing

Writing is the most important form of marketing because it’s how you produce the product that will satisfy your target reader’s desires. Your number one priority as an author is to write a super-awesome book that takes your readers to an emotionally satisfying extreme. It doesn’t matter if your book is about real estate investing, political philosophy or romance. The goal is the same: make the target reader go WOW!

Great books become bestsellers when they spread from one reader to another through word-of-mouth.

Good books aren’t good enough anymore. There are millions of good books out there, but only a small number of wow books.

We’ve all read wow books. They’re the books that stick with us forever. They’re the books that inspire us, move us or shake us to our core.

Wow books earn five star reviews. They’re the books readers can’t put down. Wow books are the books that cause readers to become fans, and fans to become superfans.

Superfans buy everything you write. Superfans are your evangelists. They drive word of mouth. They’re the readers that will propel your career forward for decades to come.

Of all your marketing tasks, organize your day to protect and maximize your writing time. Think of your book as the cake. The marketing recommendations in this book are the icing on the cake.

Now let’s turn our attention to the market environment in which you participate. Once you have a lay of the land, you can pursue your marketing campaigns with greater success.

The Rise of eBooks

In 2008 when I launched Smashwords, ebooks accounted for less than one percent of the overall trade book market (so-called “trade books,” if you’re not familiar with the term, are the books consumers purchase in both physical and online book stores).

Today ebooks account for around 25% of overall trade book sales. In genre fiction, ebooks command a larger share.

Since ebooks are priced lower than print books, this 25% market share understates the dramatic shift to digital reading that has occurred over the last decade. From a unit market share perspective, the percentage of words read digitally as ebooks vs. print is probably near or above 50%. If you want to reach more readers, make ebooks central to your publishing strategy.

Although 75% of trade book sales are still in print, the print market is dominated by traditional publishers. Traditional publishers still control access to physical brick and mortar bookstores. This means that with rare exception, print distribution to physical stores is not an option for most self-published authors.

With ebooks, however, it’s a different story. With ebooks, the shelf space is virtual. Every major ebook retailer wants to carry every self-published ebook. This means your ebook will appear alongside the ebooks published by major publishers. Your ebook, like all ebooks, can occupy that virtual shelf forever, even if your sales are low.

This means your books have the potential to generate an annuity stream of income for you and your heirs for many years to come.

The Competitive Advantage of Indie Ebook Authors

In the digital realm, indie ebook authors enjoy numerous competitive advantages over traditional publishers. You enjoy faster time to market, complete creative control and total promotional flexibility. You control all of your rights and you have the ability to price lower while earning higher royalty rates.

How much higher are the royalties? Authors who work with large traditional publishers typically earn only 12-17% of the ebook’s list price as their royalty, or 11-15% after their agent earns their cut.

Indie ebook authors, by contrast, earn 60-80% of the list price as their royalty. That’s about five times higher.

To put these royalties in practical terms, it means an indie author can price his or her ebook at $3.99 and earn about $2.50 for each book sold. A traditionally published author would earn only 50 to 70 cents at that price. The traditionally published author would have to have their ebook priced at over $14.00 to earn the same $2.50 earned by the indie author at $3.99.

If a reader has the choice between two books of equal perceived quality, and one is priced at $3.99 and the other is $13.99, the $3.99 indie ebook has the advantage. The lower price makes your book more affordable and more desirable to readers.

Each year I publish an annual research report called the Smashwords Survey that examines the impact of book price on an author’s unit sales and overall earnings. Episode 7 of the Smart Author Podcast examined the 2017 Smashwords Survey. For each of the last several years we’ve found that ebooks of full-length fiction priced at $3.99, earn as much, if not more, than fiction priced over $10 - yet the $3.99 price yields three to five times as many unit sales.

Indie authors are leveraging low prices to build readership faster, and earn more in the process.

Setting Expectations

We all find inspiration from the amazing stories of indie ebook authors who were rejected by traditional publishers, and then went on to become international bestsellers after turning to Smashwords and Amazon to self-publish their ebooks. These rags to riches stories remind us of what’s possible.

Yet the truth of the matter is that most books don’t sell well, whether they’re self- published or traditionally published.

At Smashwords we don’t make promises we can’t keep. I can’t promise your book will sell well, even if you follow all of the tips in the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. I want you to know the truth, so you can approach your publishing career with realistic expectations and eyes wide open. You might labor away in obscurity for years before your book breaks out. Or you may never break out.

A new ebook published today will compete against over five million other ebooks already in ebook stores.

There’s a glut of high-quality low-cost ebooks on the market. Hundreds of thousands of new titles come to market each year from traditional publishers and indie authors alike.

Readers turn to books for entertainment, escapism and knowledge. Yet other media forms are competing for your reader’s attention. Witness the amount of time your target readers also spend enjoying social media, television, movies, sports, video games, and podcasts.

The good news is that your book is unique. Since ebooks never go out of print, your book is immortal. It can forever occupy that valuable shelf space.

This permanence is a mixed blessing.

On the positive side, it means your book is forever discoverable and purchasable. On the negative side, it means your competition will increase every day and every year from this day forward. Smart marketing will help your book rise above the clutter to become more visible, more findable and more desirable to your readers.

The skills you learn in the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide will make you a more successful author. That success won’t come overnight. Instead, it’ll come in small increments over time as you learn to adopt, implement and refine the recommendations I’m about to share.

Marketing is a core competency every author must learn. Even traditionally published authors often complain they don’t get enough marketing support from their publisher. This is because publishers cannot sustain the marketing after a book is released. Unless an author’s book sells well right out of the gate, publishers need to shift their marketing resources and attention to the next new releases by other authors.

Successful authors, whether they’re traditionally published or self-published, must learn to drive their own marketing.

No publisher will ever share the same lifelong passion for your book as you. It’s your baby. You’re the one who dreams about your book every night. You spend your shower time, your drive time and every other waking moment thinking about your book.

Bottom line, you are your book’s best advocate and best marketer.

In Chapter 1, I’ll provide an overview of the marketing tools at Smashwords, and then in Chapter 2, we’ll dive into my checklist of 66 book marketing tips. Chapter 1 - The Free Book Marketing Tools at Smashwords

Smashwords is a free ebook publishing platform available to all writers.

To publish with Smashwords, you sign up for a free account at Smashwords.com and then follow the step-by-step instructions that come in your confirmation email.

Once your book is published at Smashwords, we review it to confirm it meets the distribution requirements of our retailers and library partners. These requirements are mostly mechanical and legal in nature. Assuming you followed our simple publishing instructions, we approve the book for distribution and then we digitally transmit your ebook to the retailers and libraries.

Within minutes of upload to Smashwords, you can start utilizing the marketing tools I’m about to describe one by one:

1. Distribution to Retailers and Libraries Broad distribution is one of the most important components of your marketing plan. If your book isn’t available in bookstores and at libraries, it’s not discoverable by readers. All online retailers and most libraries carry self- published ebooks.

How do you get your book to these sales outlets? The fastest and simplest route is to partner with a distributor like Smashwords. With a single upload to Smashwords, we’ll distribute your ebook to major retailers such as Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Scribd. We’ll also make it purchasable by over 30,000 public libraries around the world via our distribution to library ebook platforms OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis 360, Bibliotheca CloudLibrary, Gardners, and Odilo.

We make it easy for you to manage your book across multiple sales channels. If you want to change your price or update your book description or upload a new cover image, you update your book once at Smashwords. We transmit the update to all the sales channels we serve. It’s not uncommon that you’ll make a price change at Smashwords and see it reflected at Apple Books or Kobo within an hour or two.

There’s no cost to distribute with Smashwords. Smashwords earns its income on commission. If your book sells at one of our retailers, the retailer takes 30% of the list price as their commission, Smashwords earns 10% list, and the author earns 60% list. Most Smashwords authors and publishers derive over 90% of their sales through our global distribution network, with the remainder earned at the Smashwords store.

2. The Smashwords Store, our retail operation Smashwords is unusual among ebook distributors, in that we also operate our own online ebook store.

Within minutes of uploading your book to Smashwords, it goes live and is featured at the bottom of the Smashwords home page where it’s available for immediate purchase and download by a worldwide audience.

Millions of readers pass through our virtual doors each month. We make it easy for readers to discover books and authors of interest.

In November, 2018, the Smashwords home page received its most significant update ever. The new home page interface features a curated selection of recommended titles organized under various themes including Featured New Releases, Trending Now, Bestselling Books, Trending Now, Top Series Starters, Bestselling Box Sets, Featured Special Deals, Free Special Deals, Recent Purchases at Smashwords, Most Downloaded, Highest Rated and Newest Arrivals.

Readers can click the category, price and book length filters to drill down to the best of the best books at Smashwords as judged by actual purchases and downloads from across the Smashwords distribution network.

The new interface introduces multiple opportunities for authors to earn home page merchandising based on the performance of their books. To learn more about the new interface, how the underlying algorithms work, and how to raise the visibility of a book within customer searches, check out our announcement at the Smashwords Blog titled, Smashwords Unveils New Book Discovery Inteface.

The Smashwords store pays royalties up to 80% list, among the highest in the industry. Even $.99 ebooks can earn up to 80% list. The royalty is based on the size of the customer’s shopping cart.

3. Smashwords Presales In December, 2019, Smashwords introduced Smashwords Presales, a new patent-pending book launch tool that allows authors and publishers to run ebook presales in the Smashwords Store. The Smashwords Store is the first ebook retailer to offer a tool for creating, launching and managing presales. Unlike preorders, which require readers to wait until a book’s general release date before they can read the book, presales enable authors to offer select readers the opportunity to purchase and read new book releases early, before the general public. The tool also offers the ability for presale customers to subscribe to the author’s private newsletter. Authors can also configure their presale to offer an optional price discount (a bribe) to customers that agree to subscribe to their newsletter. Captured email addresses can be downloaded from the Presale Dashboard which is located in the main Smashwords Dashboard.

4. Global Pricing Control With the Smashwords Global Pricing Control tool, accessible from your Dashboard, you can control pricing in 246 countries and in 142 different currencies. This is helpful for authors who want to carefully control country- specific pricing and promotions. It’s a popular feature for authors who run BookBub advertisements, since they need to set custom pricing across multiple currencies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and India.

In Europe, you can even price your book at different Euro prices in different countries. This is helpful when you consider that consumers in some Eurozone countries have widely disparate disposable incomes. A price that’s affordable in one country might be too expensive in another, even though the currency is the same. Citizens of Germany, for example, earn twice the per capita income of citizens in Portugal.

5. Daily Sales Reporting When you’re out there promoting your books, it’s helpful to gain immediate feedback as to how your marketing campaign is performing. The Daily Sales tool in the Smashwords Dashboard helps you track, at-a-glance, same-day and next- day sales results across Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, OverDrive and the Smashwords. Store. You can slice and dice the data, such as to analyze a specific title’s performance over time at a specific retailer, or to compare one retailer’s performance to another.

6. Multiple eBook File Types You have two options for delivering your book to Smashwords. You can upload your own professionally designed epub file, or you can do what the vast majority of our authors and publishers do – upload a Microsoft Word document of the manuscript.

When you upload a Word document to Smashwords, we automatically convert it into five different ebook file types, including the most popular formats of .epub, .mobi and PDF. These different file types make your book accessible and readable to users of any e-reading device. Customers can purchase the book at Smashwords once, and enjoy it on any of their personal devices in any format. Some of the many devices supported include the iPad, iPhone, Kindle, Nook, Kobo Reader, personal computers, any smart phone, and future devices not even invented yet. 7. Author Profile Pages When you publish with Smashwords, we create a personal profile page for you with a unique web address. The Smashwords profile page is powerful. Think of it as your personal storefront. It automatically lists all of your published books. You can post your bio and picture, add social media links to Facebook and Twitter, integrate your external blog, embed YouTube videos, which I’ll cover in a moment, provide links to where readers can purchase print versions of your book, and showcase reviews you’ve written of other Smashwords books.

Your profile page also helps you forge a closer relationship with readers. Readers can “favorite” you, which cause links to your profile page to appear on their profile page. Readers can also subscribe to your Smashwords Alerts, so they receive an automatic email whenever you release a new book.

Your profile page also lists your Smashwords Interview (more on this below).

8. Book Pages For each book you publish with Smashwords, we automatically generate a web page dedicated to that book. You can upload a book cover, upload YouTube book trailers and add a synopsis and descriptive tags to help readers find your book. Prospective readers can access samples of your book in formats readable on any ebook reading device and add your book to their shopping cart with a click.

9. Book Sampling Smashwords offers the most powerful and flexible sampling system you’ll find anywhere. When you upload your book to Smashwords, you tell us what percentage of your book we should make available as a free sample in the Smashwords store. Sampling allows readers to try your book before they buy. As the author, you determine the sampling percentage, from word one forward. If, for example, you select 15% sampling, the first 15% of your book starting at the beginning is available for free download, so prospective readers can try before they buy. At the end of the sample we prompt them to purchase the full book.

10. Smart Shopping Cart We help you sell your book. We offer a simple to use shopping cart for your readers, and we make it easy for them to pay via PayPal or any of the most popular credit cards.

Once a customer places your book in their cart, we’ll present them with additional point-of-sale recommendations before they complete the purchase. This makes it easier for customers to purchase more books from their favorite authors. As mentioned above, 85% of the net sales proceeds from your book go to the person who deserves it most: You, the author or publisher (70.5% for sales generated from affiliate marketers). After all, Smashwords was created by an author to help fellow authors.

11. Book Reviews Book reviews help sell books, so we make it easy for your customers to review your books. Whenever someone buys your book, they’ll receive an automated reminder several days later that prompts them to review your book if they enjoyed it.

12. Coupons! One of the most popular features at Smashwords is our Coupon Manager tool, which you’ll find in your Smashwords Dashboard. No other retailer offers anything similar or so powerful. The Coupon Manager makes it easy to generate custom coupon codes to promote to the fans on your email list, web site, blog, social networks, or on printed business cards.

We continue to add new capabilities to the tool. You can create coupon codes for cents off, dollars off or a percentage off, and you control the expiration date. You can also create what we call “metered” coupons where you control the number of redemptions before the coupon expires. There’s also the option to make your coupons private or public. With a private coupon, you control whom you give the code too. With a public coupon, your special sale price is advertised to customers in the Smashwords store and on your book page. And finally, new in 2019 we introduced Global Coupons that can work across multiple books, or across a full series. I’ll provide ideas on how to leverage our Coupon Manager tool later on in Tip #58.

13. Promotional Widgets Widgets are image-based advertisements for your book. You and your readers can create beautiful customizable widgets for your book. These widgets can be placed on web sites and blogs to advertise your book. You’ll find our widget builder on your Smashwords book page below the shopping cart. Here’s a link to the widget builder for my free ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success: https://www.smashwords.com/books/widgets?bookId=145431

14. Search Engine Visibility Your Smashwords profile page, book pages and online book samples are designed so search engines can easily discover and index them. By publishing your book on Smashwords, you’ll have dozens of inbound links to your pages from the leading search engines. This allows prospective readers to stumble across your book as they’re performing searches. 15. Exclusive “Special Deals” Promotions In 2017 Smashwords introduced an exciting new automated merchandising feature at the Smashwords store that showcases books on sale exclusively at Smashwords. These books are included in a permanent home page promotional feature that makes it easy for readers to search for special deals.

Enrollment in this feature is free and easy. Visit the Coupon Manager in your Dashboard, create a coupon and then mark it as a public coupon instead of a private coupon.

Learn more at http://blog.smashwords.com/2016/09/smashwords-coupons- book-promotion.html

16. Smashwords Interviews How would you like to be interviewed at Smashwords?

Several years ago, we ran a series of author interviews at the Smashwords blog. At first, I conducted the interviews, but I didn’t have enough time to interview all of the authors I wanted to interview. I then hired a former writer for Rolling Stone Magazine to interview our authors. He was awesome, and he did a bunch of great interviews, but we still couldn’t accommodate everyone.

This led us to create a really cool tool called Smashwords Interviews. You’ll find it in your Smashwords Dashboard.

This exclusive author-marketing tool makes it easy to create, publish and promote a self-interview. The interview helps readers and prospective readers learn the story behind the author. It’s a lot of fun. Our system will present you a series of optional questions you can answer, or you can modify our questions or create your own. The resulting interview is promoted on your author profile page at Smashwords.

17. Embeddable YouTube Videos If you publish videos on YouTube, you can embed them in both your profile page and your book pages. This is great for book trailers or you in front of the camera talking about your book. Video offers you a chance to engage the senses of the prospective reader and entice them to sample and purchase your book.

18. Book tagging We realize even our extensive hardwired book categories at Smashwords can’t describe all books, so we allow you as the author or publisher to add supplemental tags or keywords. These tags help describe your book and make it easier to connect with prospective readers. The book tags you enter help people discover you when they do a book search from a search engine like Google, or from the Smashwords home page search box. We also use these keywords for the next tool.

19. Tag Cloud Each time you upload a new book, you can attach up to one dozen supplemental keywords to make your book more discoverable at the Smashwords Store. These keywords then form what’s called a “tag cloud,” which offers readers another way to discover books of interest. The keyword tags for each book appear on that book’s Smashwords book page. On your author or publisher profile page will appear an aggregate list of keywords for all of your books. By clicking on a keyword in the cloud, the reader is presented with all of the books that match that tag.

20. Other books by this Author or Publisher When you publish multiple books on Smashwords, you amplify the opportunity for readers to discover you and your works. If a reader is browsing one book page, they’ll see a link that reads, “Also by this author” or “Also by this publisher.”

21. Integration with Social Media Sites Social media is all about ordinary people having conversations online and sharing information and interests. Social media turbocharges word of mouth marketing.

On each book page at Smashwords, you’ll notice links to popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. By clicking on this link, you or your readers can share your book with friends. Each time someone clicks on one of these links, they’re promoting your book by building a virtual pathway (a hyperlink) that leads back to your book page.

22. Smashwords Affiliate Partners Program The Smashwords Affiliate program provides incentive to third party web sites, blogs and affiliate marketers to link to and promote your books. Your readers can be affiliates too. Affiliates receive a commission in exchange for all book sales they help generate. As a Smashwords author or publisher, your books are automatically enrolled to benefit from this program.

23. Exclusive Site-wide Promotions A few times each year Smashwords offers exclusive promotions at the Smashwords Store. The most well known promotion is Read an Ebook Week, which usually occurs during the second week of March. Another popular promotion is our annual July Summer/Winter Sale (because it’s summer for our Northern hemisphere customers, and winter for those in the Southern hemisphere). In December 2017 we kicked off a new annual promotion called the Smashwords End of Year Sale. With each of the promotions, you can enroll your books at different discount levels, and we promote your books within a special promotional catalog on the home page. These are collaborative promotions because the more authors who participate, the more readers are driven into the sale to discover other great books by participating authors.

24. Promotion on Smashwords Satellites Smashwords Satellites are a collection of about two dozen specialized micro-sites operated by Smashwords. Readers can browse the most recently released Smashwords ebooks by category and topic. For example, some of the satellites are labeled “Ebooks for Kids,” “Biography Ebooks” and “Free Poetry Ebooks.”

The Satellites offer experimental book discovery interfaces that make it easier for customers to discover and sample books of interest. Listing on the satellites is automatic based on book category, length and price. For a complete listing of Satellites, visit http://www.smashwords.com/labs.

25. Access to retailer merchandising promotions If you walk into a physical bookstore, the first books you see are on the front tables or in endcaps where you’ll find featured books. Since these are the first books you see, and they’re recommended by the bookseller, you’re more likely to pick them up and purchase them - as opposed to others buried deeper in the store, sitting spine out on a shelf.

The featured books are selected by the merchandising managers of the stores. Often, publishers pay money to the bookstore, or to the bookstore chain, to have their books featured in these prime locations. In the ebook realm, stores also have merchandising managers that select books for features on their home pages. Visit the home page of Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Amazon and you’ll see featured books. Unlike with physical stores, the author or the publisher doesn’t pay for these features.

How does the online retailer select which books will receive feature promotion? It’s usually a collaborative curation effort. The merchandising team features books they’re confident will please their customers. Since retailers can’t read every book, they use other signals to identify the most promising reader-pleasers. These signals may include the author’s past sales track record in their store, the quality of the ebook’s cover image, the number of accumulated preorders for the ebook, or the recommendation from a publisher or a distributor.

This is where Smashwords comes in. As a distributor, Smashwords has a unique vantage point. We can track your actual sales from across our retail and library distribution network. We can spot breakout books early because we’re looking at aggregated sales of a title or aggregated preorder accumulation, across multiple sales channels. We leverage this data to provide merchandising recommendations to our retail and library partners.

By distributing with Smashwords, you’re eligible to receive this merchandising promotion and the benefits that come from it, if you earn it. To keep things fair and impartial, we base our recommendations on the metrics retailers value most – the author’s historical track record, preorder accumulation and aggregate sales across our distribution network. Every week dozens of Smashwords authors receive this incredible merchandising benefit at no cost. Our retailers and library partners appreciate our recommendations because they know they’re based upon actual audited performance data.

This also means that your strong sales at one retailer – say Apple Books or Kobo – can help you get merchandising love at another retailer.

26. Free Author Education Resources Knowledge is power. Knowledge is what separates self-published professionals from self-published amateurs. I want to help you learn to publish like a professional. The secret to professional publishing is best practices.

At Smashwords, we invest significant resources to develop free educational tools to teach you professional publishing best practices.

This Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is one such free resource. My new SMART AUTHOR podcast is another such resource.

When you’re ready to publish your book, download the free Smashwords Style Guide. With over 600,000 downloads and counting, it’s probably the world’s most popular ebook for how to professionally format and design an ebook.

If you’re new to ebook publishing, check out our glossary of ebook publishing terms in our FAQ at https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq#glossary Chapter 2 - 66 Book Marketing Tips

This 2018 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide offers a checklist of 66 book marketing tips.

The tips are organized under two primary sections, Foundation-Building and Promotion. Each section and its sub-sections are organized to assist writers at all stages of their publishing journey.

As you’ll soon learn, this is no ordinary checklist. I don’t just recommend what you should do; I try to explain why you should do it. These tips form a mosaic of interlocking and interdependent components that work together to take your marketing to the next level.

We’ll tackle Foundation-Building first.

Foundation-Building

All great buildings and all great enterprises are built on strong foundations designed to stand the test of time.

Your marketing program requires a strong foundation as well.

What are these foundational elements? In this section on foundation-building, we’ll look at author brand-building, knowledge-building, platform-building, and distribution.

To illustrate the importance of foundation-building, I’ll share some wisdom I learned from my mom many years ago. My mom is a master gardener. When I was growing up I’d often help her plant her fruit trees. She’d hand me a pick and shovel and tell me where to dig the holes.

I remember one day I was working through some difficult soil. It was almost as hard as concrete. After considerable back-breaking effort, I dug a hole that was big enough to accommodate the roots of her baby tree.

A tree’s root system is its foundation. It’s what nourishes the tree and prevents it from falling over. With a healthy root system, a tree grows stronger and faster as it grows larger. My mom took one look at my little hole and shook her head. She told me to make the hole bigger. She said, “If you plant a $15.00 tree in a $5.00 hole, you get a $5.00 tree.” That lesson has always stuck with me.

In other words, without a proper foundation, you’ll squander your potential. You need to think beyond your current state and visualize how you want to grow in the future.

Most indie authors launch their first book without giving their foundation proper consideration. This undermines their potential to stand tall and rise above the crowd. A tree is stuck with the hole you give it.

Book marketing is more forgiving. Although it’s ideal to get your foundational elements in place before you launch your first book, the good news is that it’s never too late to reinforce your foundation.

Whether you’re preparing to launch your first book or your 50th, these foundation-building tips will put your marketing on a more solid footing.

Author Brand-Building

Tip 1 – Visualize your author brand

The number one driver of book sales is when readers seek out the books of authors they know, trust and admire.

As the author, you are the brand. Before you start marketing your books, you should first visualize what you want your brand to represent.

What is your intention? I’m not talking about your intention to sell a lot of books or reach a lot of readers. We all share that intention.

I’m talking about something bigger. Something more important. Because your book is important. What mark do you want to leave on the world with your books? What is your legacy?

Visualize the experience readers can expect from your books. How do you want readers to think of you?

Think of your favorite restaurant. There was a time when you tried it for the first time, and because it was enjoyable you returned to it again. And then you returned again and again. Each time the restaurant met or exceeded your expectations, it earned greater trust and loyalty from you. You take your friends there and recommend it to everyone you know. Now imagine a restaurant you once loved, but then something changed and you never returned. Maybe you received rude service, or found a hair in the food, or you got food poisoning. That restaurant squandered your trust. You warn your friends to avoid it.

Author brand operates under the same dynamic. You must guard and cultivate your author brand. Your author brand can be found at the intersection of who you are and where you want to want to go.

There are two aspects to author brand-building. The first is awareness, and the second is perception.

Your marketing will drive awareness and initial perception-building. Your reader’s experience with your books will cement their brand perception.

Throughout the course of your marketing, you’ll deliver both implicit and explicit messages to prospective readers. These messages convey information to the reader. Think of these messages as promises.

You will make promises to readers in the form of your book cover, your book title, your book description, your book categorization, and every other aspect of your marketing.

You must deliver on the promises you make when the reader reads the book.

Even if you’re already a New York Times or USA Today bestseller, your awareness building and trust building is never complete. There are still millions of readers out there who haven’t heard of you and haven’t read you. They therefore don’t know you, don’t trust you and will not read you. You must attract their attention and win them over. At the same time, you must continue to meet or exceed the expectations of loyal readers for whom you’ve already built awareness and trust.

As you work your way through the marketing tips that follow, always ask yourself how you can implement the tip to cultivate greater awareness, greater reader satisfaction and greater trust.

Tip 2 – Practice ethical marketing

Ethics and honesty are essential to successful book marketing. If you cut corners, you’ll sully your author brand. Without ethics and honesty, it’s impossible to build reader trust.

We’ve all seen or read authors who promised one thing but delivered another. We remember those authors for the wrong reasons. We’ve all heard stories of authors who cut ethical corners, like paying shills to give them glowing reviews. We’ve all heard of horrible authors who have carpet- bombed other authors’ books with one-star reviews. Don’t be vile.

The publishing industry is rife with unsavory authors, publishers and book marketers who cut ethical corners, make promises they can’t keep, and who harm others for personal gain.

If a reader reads your book and feels your marketing misled them, the reader will seek their revenge in the form of a scathing review and negative word of mouth.

You have the opportunity to be different. Be the author who deserves admiration and trust.

In my 30 years in the business world, my personal motto has always been, “If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember what you told people.” I hold to this credo like religion, and it has served me well.

I’m sure there will be skeptics out there who think this approach to ethics and truth telling is naïve. They might argue that if others are lying and cheating, they should too.

Here’s a promise I can make to you: Karma will always reap its revenge.

Tip 3 – Act professional

As a self-published author, you have the choice to act like an amateur or a professional.

Act professional.

If your book cover looks homemade or if your book description is littered with typos, you will project to readers that you’re an amateur. Such sloppiness sends a message that you’re a clueless newbie, your writing sucks and you don’t respect your reader’s time or money.

This may sound like common sense, or sound like someone else’s problem, yet I see these issues all of the time. We will all make mistakes. It takes a keen sense of self-awareness and open-mindedness to recognize the mistakes.

Publish like a pro. Promote like a pro.

Tip 4 – Be a nice person

If you or your marketing come across as mean, disrespectful or annoying, you will scare prospective readers away. It’s in your selfish best interest to be a nice person.

It takes a village to publish, promote and sell books. Publishing is a people business.

If you’re new to publishing, the industry might feel as if it’s comprised of thousands of faceless participants. I promise you the longer you’re in the business, the more wonderful people you will meet and the smaller the industry will feel.

Your marketing will touch thousands of people who have the power to open doors or close them.

Who are these powerful people of whom I speak? They’re readers. They’re publishers, retailers, distributors, book marketing firms, literary agencies, bloggers, and major media outlets. They’re fellow authors, editors, book designers, formatters, and cover designers. Every single one of these people – even if they aren’t a target reader for your books – has the power to elevate you or harm you.

As you put yourself and your books out there, these people will form impressions about you.

Why then is it so common to see foul-tempered indie authors publicly trashing entire swaths of the publishing industry? You’ve probably seen well-known indies trash publishers, literary agents, fellow authors, retailers, distributors, or the media. Don’t be stupid.

No one likes mean people. No one wants to help mean people. You can still find success as an obnoxious SOB, but you’ll find more success by showing kindness, humility and respect.

Be the person who brings sunshine, rainbows and happiness to the party. I’m not asking you to be fake. Just don’t pee in the pool.

Several years ago at the Smashwords blog, we interviewed New York Times bestseller Jonathan Maberry. We asked him how indie authors could best utilize social media to promote their work and their author brand. He shared this advice, which I hope you’ll take to heart:

“So, what do you put out there? Think about a party. If there’s someone who is bitching and moaning and someone else who’s getting folks to laugh and loosen up, which way do you drift? If a kid in a playground is constantly bitching about the quality of the toys, and another kid has turned a cardboard box into a sideshow funhouse, who’s getting more attention? Who’s going to be remembered in a positive way? And, even if you are a naturally cranky, snarky, sour-tempered pain in the ass, for God’s sake share that with your therapist or priest. When you go online to promote yourself and therefore your products, try not to actually scare people off your lawn.”

Bottom line, if you’re nasty online, people might fear you, but they won’t respect you. Read the full interview here: Smashwords blog.

Tip 5 – Give back

One day, if you work hard and if fate permits, you will become a wildly successful author. Your author brand will be known far and wide, and fellow writers will look to you for inspiration.

As you climb the ladder of success I want you to pause, reach behind you and extend a helping hand to your fellow authors. Your success is their success, and their success is yours. A journey shared is more enriching than a journey alone.

Give back. Help your fellow authors succeed. As you learn the secrets to success, share those secrets with your fellow authors. Your fellow authors aren’t your competitors; they’re your partners on this wonderful journey.

If you find the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide helpful to your journey, please don’t keep it a secret and share it with your fellow writers.

Knowledge Building

Knowledge is power. It’s not enough that you have the tools of professional publishing. You must learn how to wield them to achieve your strategic goals.

Every author needs to learn publishing best practices and stay abreast of trends.

The challenge is time management.

With the rise of self-publishing over the last ten years, we’ve seen an entire new industry sprout up dedicated to serving the knowledge needs of indie authors.

Many of these experts have great information to share, but at a certain point you begin to feel like you’re spending all of your time chasing someone else’s tail. That new shiny object that’s working this month may not work the month after. Some of these experts have a vested interest in making publishing appear more complicated than it needs to be.

I’ve always guided our authors to focus on evergreen best practices. These are the essential best practices that will work great today, and will still work great ten years from now. Authors often give best practices short shrift, as if they’re common sense. Your opportunity isn’t just to implement these best practices, it’s to constantly iterate and improve your implementation of them.

In the five tips that follow, I’ll recommend free knowledge-building resources that will give you the intelligence you need to pursue your book marketing campaigns more effectively. These resources will help you stay focused on the most important best practices and trends, without sucking up all of your time.

Tip 6 – Subscribe to the Smart Author Podcast

In October 2017 I introduced the Smart Author podcast. A podcast is an audio recording you can access over any computer or mobile device.

Think of the Smart Author podcast as a free masterclass in ebook publishing. It guides you step-by-step from the very basics of ebook publishing to more advanced best practices.

The podcast focuses on evergreen best practices. It offers practical, no-nonsense advice on how to make your books more discoverable, more desirable and more enjoyable to readers.

Smart Author is available at Apple Podcasts and everywhere fine podcasts are found. Visit Smashwords.com/podcast where you can listen over the web, access full text transcripts or view a full listing of all the podcast directories that carry it.

Tip 7 – Join a local writer’s club or critique group

Authorship at times can feel like a lonely pursuit. For those of us who are natural introverts, sometimes we need a kick in the butt to get out of the house and meet people who share common passions.

Join a local writer’s club or critique group. It will change your life.

Almost every community around the globe has local writers groups that get together once a month to hear expert guest speakers. You’ll learn about the craft and business of authorship.

There are also many genre-specific national and international writers groups that have local chapters. You’ll find groups for romance, thrillers, mysteries, non- fiction, Christian, horror, sci-fi and fantasy, and more. Whatever your writing interest, you’ll find a writing group that’s right for you.

If you live in California, check out the California Writers Club with multiple chapters around the state. Outside the US in other English-speaking countries, there are many great groups and clubs in the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

If you live too far from the nearest writing group (and even if you don’t), check out the Alliance of Independent Authors, an international group based in the UK that’s dedicated to helping self-published authors publish like professionals. They hold several free online conferences a year where you’ll hear from expert speakers. Check them out at https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/.

Tip 8 – Subscribe to the Smashwords Blog

I started the Smashwords Blog in 2008, the same year we launched Smashwords. You’ll find it at http://blog.smashwords.com. I blog about news, trends and best practices of interest to the indie author community.

The blog has an option to sign up to receive future posts via email, so you never miss another post. I respect your inbox if you subscribe. I NEVER share your email address with anyone or use it for any other purpose.

Tip 9 – Read The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success

Several years ago I published The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, which identifies over 30 best practices of the most successful ebook authors. Like all of my ebooks on the topic of ebook publishing, it’s available for free download at all major retailers. It’s also available directly from Smashwords at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/145431.

Tip 10 – Check out the Smashwords Survey

Each year I publish the Smashwords Survey, a comprehensive research report that provides authors a treasure trove of data.

The 2017 Survey shares insights about the top fiction and non-fiction categories, and the pricing sweet spots to maximize readership and earnings. You’ll also learn data about box sets, series, preorders, and the optimal word counts to maximize sales.

Episode 7 of the Smart Author podcast explores the 2017 Smashwords Survey. You can download the full 2017 survey at the Smashwords Blog – http://blog.smashwords.com/2017/06/smashwords-survey-2017.html. You’ll find the prior five Surveys at Slideshare.net at https://www.slideshare.net/smashwords.

Platform Building You’ve probably heard the term “author platform,” but may not know what it means. A platform is your ability to reach your audience.

If you have 500 friends on Facebook and 1,000 on Twitter, that’s your platform. If you do a lot of public speaking, that’s a platform. If you’re a television personality with daily viewership of hundreds of thousands of people, that’s an incredible platform. If you have the ability to earn yourself free press coverage, that’s a platform too.

Your audience is everywhere.

The next eight tips will help you build your platform, so you can deliver your marketing message directly to those who most want to hear it.

Tip 11 – Join HARO, Help-A-Reporter-Online

Every day thousands of journalists across the globe are looking to interview experts for their stories. Journalists love to interview authors because authors are credible subject-matter experts and good communicators. For the author it’s free publicity for their author brand and their books.

Because you’re an author, you’re probably qualified to serve as an expert on various topics related to your books.

HARO – short for Help-A-Reporter-Online – is a free service that emails you a thrice-daily summary of what reporters are working on now, and the types of experts they seek to interview.

Subscribe to the service at helpareporter.com. I’ve been recommending them for almost ten years. Later in this book in the Deep Dives section, I’ve devoted an entire section to how to earn free press coverage. Study it carefully before you start contacting reporters. To read my original review of the service on the Smashwords blog, go to http://blog.smashwords.com/2008/09/haro-great- publicity-tool-for.html .

Here’s an example of the power of HARO. On December 27, 2017, a reporter for a magazine called FIRST For Women with a circulation of 3.7 million readers, put out a query that they were looking to interview women who make money with books. Another media outlet was looking to learn the New Year’s resolutions of business owners. Self-published authors are business owners. These were just two of 30 queries from one email. Earlier in the same day, HARO sent out a query for experts who could speak about the science of bedtime stories. That would have been a great one for children’s book authors. These opportunities have passed, but there are new opportunities every day.

Authors can also use HARO for research purposes. If you’re writing a non-fiction book, and you need to interview experts, you can post a query to the HARO list. Experts will want to speak with you because if you include them in your book, it’s free publicity for them.

Tip 12– Use Google Alerts to discover where the conversations are taking place

The Internet makes it possible to market your book to specific micro-targeted audiences.

There are numerous opportunities for you to join online conversations and connect with people who can benefit from your passion and subject matter expertise. By participating in these conversations, you can raise the profile of your author brand among your target audience.

Let’s say you wrote a book about how to grow prize-winning pumpkins. There are dozens of gardening web sites and online forums that discuss that very subject. You can join the conversations by commenting on message boards, blogs and news stories related to that subject. Share your knowledge.

Or maybe you wrote a cookbook for gluten-free pastries. There are dozens of online communities frequented by those who suffer from, or who want to help, people with gluten sensitivity. Share your smarts!

How do you track where the conversations are taking place?

Google makes it easy with their free service Google Alerts.

Visit http://www.google.com/alerts to sign up for a free account. Tell Google the keywords or phrases you want to track and Google will email you whenever a new conversation or a new news story or blog post appears on that given subject. For the pumpkin example, you might want to track keywords and phrases such as “pumpkin growing,” “prize-winning pumpkins” and “gardening tips.” For the gluten-free pastries idea, you’d track the phrases, “gluten free,” “gluten intolerance” and “celiac disease.”

The goal is to join the conversation and add value with your wisdom and opinions. Don’t spam.

Tip 13 – Create a private email list

One of the most powerful book marketing tools is an author’s private opt-in mailing list. By “opt-in,” I mean that the reader specifically requested to be subscribed to your mailing list.

As a best practice, never add friends, family and others to your email list without first requesting their permission. The goal is to create a quality list that is 100% opt-in. When you build your mailing list, you’re building a marketing platform you control. A mailing list enables you to reach your readers on your terms, rather than having your relationship with readers mediated by social media platforms and retailers. The risk of having your reader relationships mediated by another party is that that other party can erect tolls and taxes that stand between you and the readers who love you. Two high profile examples of these tolls and taxes include how the leading social media platform (Facebook) requires authors to pay advertising fees to boost the visibility of their posts, or the leading ebook retailer (Amazon) pushes authors to pay advertising fees or make their books exclusive if they want to maintain their book’s visibility.

Once you have subscribers, treat them with respect. Don’t inundate them with emails. Offer them incentives to stay subscribed and to recommend your list to their friends.

One of the most powerful subscription incentives you can offer is the promise of presale access. As mentioned Chapter 1 which discussed tools in the Smashwords Store, Smashwords Presales enables authors to offer presales, a.k.a. “exclusive early releases,” to select groups of readers. Anywhere that you tell readers about your newsletter, promise that subscribers will be the first to learn about your future presales that will allow readers to purchase your future ebook releases before the general public. When you run a presale with Smashwords Presales, you’ll also have the ability to capture customer email addresses, if the reader requests to subscribe to your newsletter. This is a great way to convert your social media followers into subscribers of your private newsletter. To learn more about Smashwords Presales, visit your Presale Dashboard or check out the original launch announcement.

Other compelling incentives might include early notifications of new releases, exclusive sneak peeks at upcoming releases, exclusive Smashwords Coupon offers.

You’ll want to use an email list management tool to build, manage and track subscriber signups, and to create and send professional-looking emails. Two of the most popular mailing list tools used by authors are MailChimp (http://mailchimp.com/) and AWeber (http://www.aweber.com).

MailChimp offers a free version of their service that allows up to 2,000 subscribers, and if your list grows larger, you can upgrade to paid versions that start at $20.00 per month. AWeber offers a free 30-day trial, but then it costs a minimum of $19.00 per month. I’d recommend starting with MailChimp and then once your list grows beyond 2,000 subscribers, investigate the premium features of both services to decide what’s important to you, before you upgrade to a paid offering.

Once you have your list configured with one of the above services, each will provide you a sign up hyperlink you can promote to your readers, as well as signup widgets you can add to your web site or blog. Advertise your newsletter on your web site or blog, on social media, and in the back matter of all of your books. Later in this book in Tip #28 I’ll talk more about back matter.

Tip 14 - Update your email signature

You’ve seen email signatures, but may not have recognized them as such. An email signature is a little snippet of text that is automatically appended at the bottom of every email you compose. For example, at the end of every email I send, I include this signature which tells the recipient who I am and how to connect with me.

-- Mark Coker Founder Smashwords Twitter: http://twitter.com/markcoker Blog: http://blog.smashwords.com Smart Author Podcast: https://smashwords.com/podcast

Your email signature is a powerful marketing tool, yet few authors take full advantage of it. Most of us send emails to dozens of people each week, and each of these people (often friends, family, business associates, readers) represent potential readers for our books, or they can recommend your books to others. By creating an email signature, you’re providing email recipients a low-key, unobtrusive path to discover, purchase or share your book.

Every email program and service allows you to create an email signature file that automatically appends to each email you compose. If you open your email program and don’t see where to create your signature, then Google it. For example, if my email program is Thunderbird, I’d type into Google, “how to create an email signature in Thunderbird.”

Be deliberate about the design and content of your signature. This starts with you understanding who your target audience is, how you want them to engage with you and how you want them to view your author brand.

With my signature above, I want to make it easy for the new people I deal with every day to know my role at Smashwords, and how to connect with me. For your purposes, you may want to make it all about your books, or to provide a hyperlink to the preorder for your work in progress, or include a link to your newsletter signup page along with verbiage that promises that subscribers will be the first to learn about future presales.

If I wanted to create a more book-centric signature, my signature might read as follows: -- Mark Coker Author of the Smashwords Guides Series Download my free publishing guides at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mc

Connect: Twitter: http://twitter.com/markcoker Blog: http://blog.smashwords.com

For your email signature, you can add a direct hyperlink to both your Smashwords author profile page (as I did in my example) and your book pages, so it’s easy for your readers to go straight to your book.

To find the address to your Smashwords author profile page, log into your Smashwords account and click “Profile.” Then look in the address bar of your web browser where you’ll find the direct hyperlink you can share with prospective readers.

To find the direct hyperlink to one of your books, click to your Smashwords Profile and then click on your book title. That will take your browser to your book page, where you can copy and paste the web address directly into your signature.

Note that when you compose an email, your email program or service will automatically compose the email either in plain text or HTML.

If it composes an email in plain text, you can list your hyperlinks in your signature as plain text, such as https://hyperlink.com, and most receiving email programs will make the link clickable. This is what you want, because a link that isn’t clickable is essentially worthless. A clickable link usually appears as blue and underlined.

I configure my email program to send emails in plain text. I think plain text makes the email more accessible across all email programs. But this is really a matter of personal preference. Some people prefer composing HTML emails.

Be careful, though. If your email program composes your emails in HTML, it’s not always enough to just list the hyperlink, because it won’t be clickable by the recipient. To ensure it’s clickable by the recipient of an HTML email, you should make the link clickable in your signature file. If this sounds confusing, study the help files associated with your particular email software or email service. No single software or service handles this issue the same. After you compose your signature, send a test email to yourself to confirm your hyperlinks are clickable.

Tip 15 – Sign up for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, if you haven’t already Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the three leading social media platforms for authors. In the Deep Dives section at the end of this book, I offer detailed guidance for how to get the most out of these three social media platforms.

Over the years I’ve met a lot of authors who fear social media. If you’re one of these authors, check out my Deep Dives on social media. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how these tools can be integrated into your daily routine with minimal intrusion on your writing time.

I use Twitter as my personal news feed and to share publishing industry news with my followers. I use Facebook for having personal conversations about the stuff I’d talk about with my friends. I use LinkedIn for connecting with – and making myself discoverable to – fellow business professionals.

Tip 16 – Complete a Smashwords Interview

I first mentioned the Smashwords Interviews feature in Chapter 1. Smashwords Interviews presents you with a series of questions you can answer to help readers learn the story behind you, the author. You can also modify our questions or create your own questions. Make your interview unique.

Once you create an interview, we promote it across the Smashwords web site by linking it to your author profile page and book pages. We also promote the interviews on the Smashwords home page where readers can browse interviews by Most Recent, Most Popular and other filters.

The interviews contain social sharing links so your readers can promote your interview to their friends. You’ll find the Smashwords Interviews feature underneath the Account tab at Smashwords. Read the original announcement at the Smashwords blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/08/smashwords- interviews-helps-readers.html or start your interview now at https://www.smashwords.com/manageinterview/info.

Tip 17 - Start a Blog

You’re a writer. You have something to say. You should start a blog.

Share news about new releases, sneak peek samples of upcoming works, or news about limited-time promotions you’re running. You’ll attract a following of people who respect how you think and write, and who enjoy discussing the topics you’re writing about.

Every post you do becomes a permanent web page on the Internet. It will be indexed by Google and other search engines, and will forever serve as a conduit guiding potential readers to your books. With consistency and time, you'll build a following of people who are more inclined to read your books or help you spread the message about your books.

Starting a blog is easy. Google’s Blogger (www.blogger.com) is a good free and simple blog - it’s what I use for the Smashwords blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/.

If you want a more sophisticated blogging platform that gives you more control over the look and feel of your blog, take a look at WordPress (www.wordpress.com). Wordpress is the gold standard in blogging platforms. Many authors and businesses use Wordpress to create their web sites too.

Good blogging requires commitment. If you only write a few posts and forget about it, your blog won’t attract readership.

It can take years to develop a sizable following, yet I think the effort is well worth it. You’ll find as your subscriber base grows, the growth can fuel even faster growth as readers start sharing your posts with friends on social media.

Try to start with at least a couple of posts per month.

In Tip #24 below I’ll talk more about the value of publishing online content, such as blog posts that contain hyperlinks that guide readers to your books. In the section on Promotions, I’ll share several ideas for how you can build your blog’s traffic and use the blog to build readership and author brand.

Tip 18 – Print business cards

I realize it may seem ironic for a tree-hugging ebook distributor such as myself to recommend printed business cards, but hear me out. Our lives are unlikely to ever go 100% digital – and thank goodness for that. We humans still meet face to face, in the flesh, with our fellow humans at church, conferences, restaurants, bars, walks in the park, sporting events, and the grocery store.

The conversations usually go like this:

“Hi, what do you do?” “I’m an author.” “Oh really? That’s cool. What kind of books do you write?” “Murder mysteries. Here’s my card.” “Cool, thanks, I’ll check it out!”

Print business cards to advertise your authorship. List the genre or category in which you write, and list all the ebook retailers that carry your book. For most indie ebook authors the list might read something like, “Ebook available at Smashwords, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Amazon, and other fine ebook retailers.” Pin the cards on community bulletin boards and hand them out to everyone you meet whenever someone asks you about your job.

Many Smashwords authors place Smashwords Coupon codes on their cards, so the lucky recipient can go download their first book at a discount or for free.

Tip 19 – Create an online calling card and bio at About.me

For my fellow tree huggers who want a digital business card, check out About.me.

About.me is a free online site that allows you to post an online bio with links to your social media coordinates. I created mine in about 15 minutes. Check it out at http://about.me/markcoker.

If it helps even a single reader discover you, it’s worth the investment of your time.

Tip 20 - Update your social media profiles and message board signatures

You’re an author. That’s your job title. That’s your identity. Shout it from the highest rooftops.

Update all of your social media profiles to mention you’re an author.

If you participate in online forums and message boards, update your profiles and signatures there as well.

Most message board communities allow you to create a signature that appears at the bottom of every post. Just as with email signatures, message board signatures are a subtle, non-intrusive method of telling people more about you. You can often include one or more cover images of your books in your message board signature.

One Smashwords author, by adding a single link that read “Read my writing at [and then she inserted the hyperlink to her profile page at Smashwords],” drove over 1,200 people to her profile page in the span of about five weeks. I should point out that in her message board posts she wasn’t even mentioning her ebooks. She made herself such a valuable member of the community that other community members took the initiative to learn more about her and her writing. She let her signature do the talking.

Distribution Back in the old days of print publishing, a book’s sales were closely tied to the number of stores that carried the book. This is because readers go to bookstores to discover and purchase their books. Much of book discovery is about serendipity. If your book wasn’t in the store, the reader went home with another author’s book.

When retailers pulled slower-selling books from their shelves to make room for newer books, it could trigger a death spiral for the book, leading to lower and lower sales, and ultimately causing the publisher take the book out of print.

With ebooks, distribution remains as critical as ever. These next three tips focus on maximizing your digital shelf presence.

Tip 21 – List every new release on preorder

Ebooks released as preorders sell more copies. If you want to sell more books, you need to make preorders central to your book launch strategy.

An ebook preorder allows your book to be listed at the major retailers up to a year in advance of the book’s release.

Preorders work because they enable more effective advance book marketing.

If you’re on Facebook sharing news about your work in progress, you can share a preorder hyperlink to capture the reader’s order at the moment you have their greatest attention and interest.

You can start promoting your book and locking in orders while you’re still writing it.

You’ll gain valuable retail exposure in advance of the release. Think of it as more selling days.

On the day the book officially goes on sale, the reader’s credit card is charged and the book appears on their e-reading device. Readers love ebook preorders because preorders help them be the first to read new books from their favorite authors.

Preorders work for new and established authors alike. They will give every author an incremental sales advantage.

Apple Books, the world’s second largest seller of ebooks, does more than any other retailer to support preorders. At Apple Books, all of your accumulated preorders credit toward your first day’s sales rank when the book officially releases. Since retailer bestseller lists are determined by unit sales, it causes your book to spike higher in the Apple Books bestseller lists. Since readers use bestseller lists to discover their next read, placement in a genre or storewide bestseller list increases your book’s visibility, desirability and sales.

At Smashwords you can establish your preorder listing up to 12 months before the book goes on sale, even before the book is finished. We’ll then distribute the listing to the major retailers we serve – such as Apple Books, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

If you want to learn how to use preorders to sell more books, listen to Episode 4 of the Smart Author Podcast, which is dedicated to preorder strategy.

Also check out Episode 7, which covers the 2017 Smashwords Survey. In the 2017 Smashwords Survey we shared interesting data on the effectiveness of preorders. We found that although only 12% of indie authors were using preorders, those authors’ books were dominating all of our bestseller lists.

Tip 22 – Distribute to all ebook retailers

With rare exception (i.e. certain taboo erotic literature), every global retailer wants to carry every self-published ebook.

Many authors make the mistake of concentrating their distribution and marketing to one retailer – Amazon – and miss out on the opportunity to reach millions of other readers that prefer to shop at other stores.

Every author should be at Amazon, but they should also distribute everywhere else. With one upload to Smashwords and another upload to Amazon, you’ll have the world’s most important retail sales outlets covered.

The major retailers operate stores in multiple countries. Apple Books operates in 52 countries. Kobo is in over 140 countries. Amazon is in over a dozen.

Each of these unique stores represents their own micro-market. You have an opportunity to build readership in each store. In fact, it’s likely that your book will perform differently in different countries.

For example, we’ve had authors break out big at Apple Books Australia, and then months or years later they broke out at Apple Books USA, or Apple Books Canada or UK.

It’s also possible that your book will break out at different retailers at different times. It takes patience and perseverance to cultivate readership in each market. It doesn’t happen overnight.

If you upload your ebook to Amazon, avoid their “KDP Select” option, which requires exclusivity, and will force you to remove your book from all of the other stores. When you remove one of your books from another store, it’s like pulling a tree up by its roots. It undermines your ability to build readership in that store when your book disappears.

Even if you publish ten books and remove only one to make it exclusive at Amazon, you will undermine your platform-building at these other retailers. This is because if a new reader discovers you at another retailer, and then they discover the next book they want to read from you isn’t available, they’ll move on to other authors and may never read you again.

Exclusivity is not a requirement at Amazon. If you upload to Amazon, use their regular KDP option, so you can distribute everywhere.

Tip 23 – Distribute your ebook to public libraries

Public libraries represent a large potential market for your ebook, not just in terms of ebook sales to libraries, but also as a discovery platform that can help you raise awareness of your author brand and sell more books at retail. Public libraries serve hundreds of millions of readers each year.

A Pew survey from 2012 found that 41% of people who check out library ebooks, purchased their most recently read ebook. This stat, although it’s dated, underscores how library readers are also buyers of books at retail. If a new reader discovers your ebook at their library and loves it, there’s a good chance they’ll go on to purchase some of your other books at retail.

According to a Library Journal survey published in 2015, 93% of US libraries offer ebooks to patrons, up from 72% in 2010. Access the report here (downloads as a PDF file)- https://s3.amazonaws.com/WebVault/ebooks/LJSLJ_EbookUsage_PublicLibra ries_2015.pdf.

To make your ebook purchasable by public libraries, you first need to understand how libraries select, purchase and manage their ebook collections.

Libraries subscribe to ebook checkout platforms to purchase and manage their ebook collections. The major checkout platform providers are OverDrive, Gardners, Baker & Taylor Axis 360, Odilo, and Bibliotheca CloudLibrary (formerly known as 3M Cloud Library). These platforms serve libraries throughout North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, and Asia.

In total these library platforms reach over 30,000 public libraries around the world. Smashwords supplies ebooks to each of these platforms, which means once your book is distributed via Smashwords, most public libraries can purchase your book. To learn more about marketing your ebook to public libraries, check out Episode 6 of the Smart Author podcast.

Autopilot Marketing

Most of your new readership will come from readers who weren’t looking for your book, but somehow stumbled across it.

Maybe they were looking for a book like it. Maybe they weren’t even looking for a book, but found your book on their path to somewhere else.

Now imagine your book as a stationary beacon, hidden in a forest of millions of other books. How can you equip your book to continually transmit its location and attributes so that those who might enjoy it can find it, even if they’re not looking for it?

This is what I mean by autopilot marketing. The next series of tips will teach you how to equip your ebook to act like a magnet to draw readers in 24 hours a day.

Tip 24 – Build hyperlinks everywhere

In the old days, one advantage of getting your book “traditionally” published was that publishers would distribute your book into physical bookstores where book buyers went to discover and purchase books. The broader the book’s distribution, the more discoverable the book and the more it would sell. Poor- selling books lost distribution and were forced out of print.

With ebooks, distribution remains as important as ever.

Now let’s expand your notion of digital distribution. If the roads, sidewalks and front door to your local bookstore are the paths readers follow to discover a print book in a physical store, then the path to ebook discovery is the hyperlink.

If you look in your web browser’s address field, you’ll see something like www.google.com, or https://www.smashwords.com. That’s the web address. Everything on the Internet has a web address, also known as a hyperlink.

Hyperlinks create the signposts, paths, roads, bridges, and high-speed teleports that deliver readers to your book.

Prospective readers may go to Google and do a search on “how to plant tulips.” If that’s the book you’ve written, they’re more likely to find it if you created the paths to your book. Google’s database contains billions of web addresses. Every time you or your readers publish a hyperlink that points to your Smashwords book page or author profile, or to your personal web site, or to one of the many retailers that will carry your ebook, that hyperlink makes your book more findable by the billions of people on the Internet.

Many of the tips that follow in this guide help you leverage the tools of the Internet to build the digital pathways that lead readers to your doorstep.

When you publish hyperlinks on your blog or web site, you can link directly to your book pages at Smashwords, or any other retail platform. Always link directly to your book page’s unique web address, rather than linking to the home page of the store. For example, if I wanted to make it easy for readers to download the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, I’d link them to the book page at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305, rather than the Smashwords home page at www.smashwords.com.

A direct link delivers your reader closer to your book, so they don’t have to search for it and aren’t distracted by someone else’s book.

Some authors who already have personal web pages may wonder why they should work to build paths to their retailers’ pages, when they should be building paths to their own web pages. You should build paths everywhere, because readers will step onto these paths at different locations and with different objectives in mind.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you link to your Smashwords author profile page. Once the reader lands there, they can click hyperlinks to go directly to any of your books. Or they can follow hyperlinks to your Twitter page, your Facebook page or your personal web site or blog.

To the extent you’re successful building paths to your Smashwords pages, you’ll assist your discoverability efforts for your personal standalone web site.

Here’s why: Search engines use hundreds of algorithms to determine which web pages they believe are most relevant to their users for a given search query. Of all the different criteria used by search engines, one of the most important is their technique for measuring relevance.

The more sites that link to a web site, and the more sites that link to the site linking to your site, the more relevant your site becomes in the search engine’s eyes. If you have many sites linking to your Smashwords profile, and your Smashwords profile links to your other destinations, then that link from Smashwords becomes a positive endorsement of your pathways in the eyes of Google and the other search engines.

Tip 25 – Don’t publish without editing Your book is the foundation of all of your marketing. If your book wows the reader, then that one reader becomes a word-of-mouth evangelist for your book and an extension of your marketing team.

Your book is your product. You need to make it the best it can be, and to do this, your book needs editing.

A common mistake of new self-published authors is that they publish their book without editing. All books need editing, preferably by an experienced editor.

If you’re nearing publication and you’ve got money to invest in your book, and you’re wondering if you should invest that money in editing or book marketing, I vote editing!

Great editing will help you realize the full potential of your book, whereas even the best marketing can’t overcome the negative reader impressions that come from a poorly edited book. Negative impressions kill word of mouth.

If you can afford a professional editor, hire one.

I should clarify my definition of “afford.” Never go into debt to hire an editor, and never use money you need to pay your mortgage or put food on your family’s table. If you determine you can’t afford an editor, don’t fret. I’ll share lower- budget alternatives in Tips 26 and 27 that follow.

Editing can be expensive, up to several thousand dollars. This is a significant investment. If you shell out thousands of dollars to an editor, there’s no guarantee your book will sell well. Even if your editor has edited dozens of New York Times bestsellers, there’s no guarantee your book will earn enough to recoup your editing investment.

Let’s review the different types and levels of editing:

Developmental editing looks at the big picture of your book, the flow, the organization, the pacing, the story arc, the character development, and the plot. This is the most expensive form of editing, but it’s also where you’ll gain the greatest improvement in your book.

Copy editing, sometimes referred to as line editing, focuses on improving words, sentences, paragraphs, grammar, and punctuation, so your story becomes more accessible to the reader. When most people think about editing, they think of copy or line editing, even though copy editing is not focused on the big picture like developmental editing.

Proofreading is the final editing stage prior to publication. This is checking for typographical errors, missing words and punctuation, or missing elements such as chapter headings. Here are four tips that will help you hire the best editor:

1. Experience – Hire an editor with direct experience in your genre or category, and preferably books that went on to sell well.

2. Always contract directly with the editor – Never hire a third party author services firm for editing, because they’ll most likely farm your editing out to someone overseas. Not only will you receive substandard editing, you’ll overpay. You want to interface directly with your editor.

3. Hire them for a trial project first - Pay them to edit your first ten or 20 pages. This is your chance to learn if the two of you have chemistry, and if their abilities match your needs. Chemistry is important. You want to find an editor with whom you can build a relationship built on trust and mutual respect. You’re hiring the editor for critical feedback, not praise. You want your editor to be brutally honest with you. By working with a great editor, you’ll find your writing skills will improve dramatically, not just for the current project, but for future books as well. If an otherwise promising editor doesn’t pan out, your trial project will save you both a lot of heartache.

4. Beware of cheap editing - If someone offers to edit your 100,000-word manuscript for $200, be wary. Good editors can cost ten times that much or more depending on their experience and the type of editing.

Tip 26 – If you can’t afford a professional editor, find an alternative

If you can’t afford a professional editor, you have other options that don’t cost a dime.

Consider swapping editing with fellow writers. You edit their book if they edit yours.

Join a local writing club or critique group (Tip #7 above), so you and your fellow writers can share critiques. This won’t get you a full edit, but it’ll get you feedback.

It’s not necessary you agree with all critiques, (or even with the views of a professional editor for that matter). If you maintain an open mind, you’ll find nuggets of truth in every critique. These nuggets of truth will inspire you to make your next revision even better.

An additional alternative to professional editing is to use volunteer beta readers.

Tip 27 – Use beta readers to inspire ideas for your final revision Beta readers are test readers who read your book prior to publication and give you feedback.

You will use the feedback to inspire your next or final revision. Beta readers don’t replace the myriad benefits of a professional editor, but they will help get you part way there.

The feedback from beta readers WILL make your book better.

A well-orchestrated beta reader round will help you understand how readers will react to your book. You’ll identify points of happiness, disappointment and friction.

A well-managed beta reader round can help you uncover many of the same insights you’d get from a developmental editor.

At the end of this book in my Deep Dives section, you’ll find detailed step-by- step instructions for how to recruit and manage beta readers.

Episode 5 of the Smart Author podcast is also dedicated to working with beta readers.

Tip 28 – Three essential sections for your back matter

Put yourself in your readers’ shoes. The reader just finished one of your books, the first they’ve read from you.

The moment they finish the last sentence of your book, they’re thrilled with the ending, they loved the book, they’re happy they took a chance on the book, they enjoyed spending many hours or days immersed in your world, and they’re feeling a strong affinity for your writing chops. You’ve earned their trust. Many authors make the mistake of ending their book with a period, followed by nothing else. That’s a lost opportunity!

Add these three sections to the end of your book (I’ll give you more bonus ideas for back matter in the tips that follow):

1. About the author – Add a short bio that tells the reader something personal about you. The goal is to humanize the author. Let the reader gain a sense of you as both a writer and a person. For example, here’s how one imaginary bio could read: “Jane Smith is a USA Today bestselling author of romantic suspense novels. Prior to writing her first novel in 2012, Jane served as a District Attorney in San Francisco. Jane now lives with her husband and three children in Fargo, ND, where in her spare time she raises llamas and chickens.”

2. Other books by Jane Smith – List them title-by-title. If you write series, organize them by series in reading order. Title one Title two Etc..

Don’t link to or mention a specific retailer, because you can expect the book will be distributed to multiple retailers. It would be confusing to a customer at Apple Books, for example, to see instructions directing them to another retailer.

3. Connect with the Author – Tell your readers how to connect with you online via your web site, blog, Smashwords author page, and social media coordinates on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and others. Make it easy for your reader to form a relationship with you, even if that relationship is as simple as following you on Twitter. By providing multiple options, you make it easier for the reader to connect with you via their favorite social media tool.

For this section, start it with a personal note to the reader, along the lines of, “I hope you enjoyed reading {insert book title} as much as I enjoyed writing it. I invite you to connect with me at any of the coordinates below. I look forward to hearing from you!”

Of course, personalize that and put it into your own words.

And then after that, list each social media platform you want to promote, along with a direct hyperlink, so that a click on that link delivers the reader directly to the page.

Here’s how I do mine (connect with me if you like):

Connect with Mark Coker

Twitter: http://twitter.com/markcoker Facebook: http://facebook.com/markcoker LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/markcoker Subscribe to the Smashwords Blog: http://blog.smashwords.com Subscribe to my Smashwords Alerts: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mc Subscribe to my newsletter, be the first to learn about my future presales: I’d add a link here if I had one

Tip 29 – Create a discussion guide for your back matter

In addition to the enhanced back matter in the previous tip, you can also add a discussion guide to the end of your book.

You’ve seen these in print books: Publishers append short discussion guides at the end of their books to help guide discussions for reading clubs and book groups. Very few indie ebook authors do this, which means if you do it you’ll have an advantage over those who don’t. If your next reader loves your book, and they see you have a discussion guide at the end, they’re more likely to propose your book as their group’s next read. Presto, one reader just helped you sell five or ten more copies.

Such discussion guides can add considerable value and enjoyment to your book, by helping readers fully consider your intricately crafted characters or subject.

Make it fun and easy for a book group to discuss your book. While we read books in private, we enjoy talking about books with friends, both online and off.

If you create a reading guide, be sure to advertise it in your book description with a simple statement such as, “Includes a discussion guide for reading groups.” You’ll be giving the prospective reader another reason to click the buy button, because the implication of a discussion guide is that there’s depth to your story.

Tip 30 – Promote preorder books in the back matter of your other books

Take a look at your release schedule for the next 12 months and get everything up on preorder now. Then in the back matter of all of your books, add a paragraph such as this:

“[Book Title]+[if a series book then: “, book #XX in the XYZ series”], is coming [Month Day, Year] and is available now for preorder at select retailers. Reserve your copy today.”

If you write series, this is especially important. This mention of the preorder makes it easy for the reader to not miss the next book in your series.

It also signals to the reader that you’re committed to continuing to support the series. If they try the series starter and love it, it tells them they have more to look forward to.

Tip 31 – Add sample chapters of your other books to your back matter

At the end of your ebook insert sample chapters from your other books.

Insert a small thumbnail of your cover image at the start of each sample. Add enough of a sample to hook the reader and leave them wanting more. At the end of each sample invite them to purchase the book at their favorite retailer, or visit your Smashwords author page for a full listing of your titles.

Do you have a book on preorder? If so, provide a sneak peek of your upcoming release. This works great for series books as well. Imagine the reader just finished book one in your series. Book two is on preorder. At the end of your sample, add a paragraph such as, “Book Title, book #X in the XYZ series, is coming Month Day, Year and is available now for preorder at select retailers. Reserve your copy today.”

You can do the same even if your next book isn’t part of a series. If the reader likes your writing, they’ll be interested in the preorder.

Tip 32 - Do a sample chapter swap with another author

Here’s another back matter idea.

Other indie authors are targeting the same readers you’re targeting. Partner with them on a collaborative chapter swap.

For example, if you write Christian Romance, identify your favorite indie author who also writes Christian Romance, and propose a chapter swap. If you write dark fantasy, swap with another dark fantasy writer.

You’ll place their sample chapter in your back matter and they’ll place your sample in their book.

Be selective. They should be an author you personally read and admire, and you need to have a high degree of confidence that your readers will love them too. Otherwise, it will reflect poorly on you to recommend a book your readers won’t enjoy.

Also understand that not all authors will want to participate in a swap. Some authors never do swaps.

Before you approach the other author, be cognizant of the other author’s sales levels compared to your own. While it would be a huge break to have a New York Times bestselling indie promoting your debut work, such a swap could be unbalanced. Such a swap would work to your benefit more than theirs. This is not to say an unbalanced swap can’t work. If the bestselling author truly loves your work and wants to leverage their readership to help launch your book, that’s fine too. But ordinarily, the idea is for two authors to collaborate toward mutual gain.

As a preface to each sample, each author should write a short personal introduction such as, “I’m pleased to share with you a sample chapter of BOOK TITLE by AUTHORNAME, a writer I’ve admired for a long time. If you enjoy her sample, please show your support by purchasing it at your favorite retailer.”

Personalize the endorsement to the situation, and make it honest and heartfelt. If you can’t honestly endorse this author’s work, then don’t swap chapters with them. At the end of the author’s sample, add a short sentence or paragraph that shares a few of their most important social media coordinates, such as “Check out Author Name’s books at all fine ebook retailers. Also check out Author Name’s web site at {hyperlinked web address}, follower her on Twitter @{hyperlinked twitter address} or friend her on Facebook at {hyperlinked address}.

Tip 33 – Add enhanced navigation to your ebook

One of the great benefits of an ebook is the opportunity for enhanced navigation.

Think of a print book. The table of contents provides navigational sign points for readers to turn to the right page of a given chapter or section.

With ebooks, you can turbocharge your table of contents by making every item clickable. In this way, your table of contents becomes a marketing tool by making all the elements of your ebook – including the back matter – more visible and accessible.

For example, in addition to providing direct links to your chapters or sections, you can link other back matter sections we discussed; such as your About the author bio, your list of other books by this author, your social media coordinates, and, if you have them, your reading group guide and sample chapters.

In the print book world, tables of contents are most commonly associated with non-fiction titles, and not so much with fiction, since fiction is read serially from word one forward.

However, ebooks are different. Even if you write fiction, your novel should include this enhanced navigation for the marketing benefit alone.

Your table of contents will be accessible to the reader both inside the book and outside the book. By “inside,” I mean that when the reader opens your ebook file, you want them to see clickable hyperlinks in your Table of Contents.

And then by “outside,” I’m referring to items that are listed if the reader clicks on the table of contents feature in their e-reading device or app. These are two different tables of contents, and you should have them both.

At Smashwords if you upload a Microsoft Word .doc file, formatted per the recommendations listed in the Smashwords Style Guide, the ebook file we create for you will contain both the internal and external navigation.

To learn how to add this enhanced navigation, download the free Smashwords Style Guide at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52, or check out the tutorial video I produced that shows you step-by-step how to do it in Microsoft Word at http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/11/how-to-add-navigation-to- smashwords.html.

Tip 34 – Price at least one book at FREE

Every writer, even a bestselling writer, is obscure and unknown to the vast majority of their potential audience.

If a reader hasn’t read you, they don’t know you, can’t admire you and can’t trust you. You earn a reader’s trust by getting them to read your book.

Free is one of the most powerful tools in your autopilot marketing toolbox.

Free can turbocharge your readership and platform-building. Free eliminates the financial risk a reader takes when they try an author who is unfamiliar to them. Free makes it easier for a reader who’s unfamiliar with your work to take a chance on it.

When they read that first book, you have a chance to earn their admiration and trust. If they love your writing, they’re more likely to seek out and purchase your other books that carry a price.

In the 2017 Smashwords Survey we found that a free ebook yields about 33 times more downloads on average than an ebook at any other price.

So that’s 33 times more readers exposed to your writing, and 33 times more readers you can funnel into your enhanced back matter with its listing of your other books, your social media coordinates, the sign-up link for your private mailing list, or the sneak peek sample chapter of your next book on preorder.

If you’ve published multiple books, consider pricing at least one of them at free, either permanently or as special short-term promotions.

I realize that for many authors, the idea of giving away their intellectual property for free is abhorrent. Some authors might worry it devalues their brand. Deployed properly, I think the opposite is true. Free can increase your brand equity. You build your author brand with readership. Until you get a reader to read you, your brand is essentially worthless to them.

Even if you’ve only written one book, you can still make free work for you.

Try running a temporary free promotion for a few weeks. If you’re a new author, or if your book isn’t selling well, or it doesn’t yet have reviews at all the retailers, this is a great way to build buzz, attract your first readers, earn your first reviews, build your social media following (especially if you added the enhanced “Connect with the author” back matter I mentioned earlier), and point readers to your other books that carry a price. Experiment with it. One of the great things about indie ebook publishing is that you’re in control.

Tip 35 – If you write series, price the series starter at FREE

Series with free series starters, on average, earn significantly more readers and income than series without free series starters.

In the 2017 Smashwords Survey we found that of our top 100 highest earning series, two-thirds (67%) had a free series starter. When we compared the top 100 highest earning series that had free series starters against the top 100 highest earning series without free series starters, the group with the free series starter averaged about 50% higher overall series sales.

A free series starter is powerful because if you can hook them on the first book, they’re much more likely to purchase the book that comes next in the series.

If you’re skeptical of the efficacy of giving your valuable work away for free, try a free series starter for a month and see if it works for you.

I know many successful authors for whom a free series starter is the centerpiece of their autopilot marketing. The free series starter acts like a magnet to draw readers into the series, and then once the reader is invested in the story, the book markets itself.

Tip 36 – Practice metadata magic

Earlier I mentioned how most of your sales will come from readers who stumble across your ebook by accident rather than seeking it out by title.

If your book is a beacon, the metadata is your beacon’s transmission.

Metadata is data about your book. You control this data. When you upload your self-published ebook, you’ll enter your metadata into the upload page.

Examples of metadata include your book’s category, title, price, book description, language, author name, publication date, and keyword tags. Even your cover image is a form of metadata, because it communicates important information that helps the reader decide if your book is what they’re looking for.

Retailers use your metadata to make your book discoverable to readers who are looking for a book just like yours.

As you craft your metadata, visualize your micro-targeted reader. Who is that reader who will enjoy your book more than anyone else? Many authors make the mistake of trying to target the broadest possible audience, but this can dilute your message to readers who will love you the most, and draw in readers who don’t love your type of book. The wrong reader will leave you a less enthusiastic review. For example, if a reader only reads Amish romance, you might not want them reading your erotic romance.

Identify the common intersection between what your micro-targeted reader desires and what your book delivers. From this will flow the metadata of your title, book description and categorization.

When you choose your book’s categories, choose the most specific categories that best match your target reader. Think of category as the virtual shelf upon which readers will search for your book. For example, if you write paranormal romance, don’t classify your book as general romance. Paranormal readers are looking on the paranormal shelf.

Tip 37 – Occupy multiple price points to appeal to more readers

If you publish multiple ebooks, try to price them so you occupy multiple price points. This will make your books more appealing to more readers.

All readers harbor a personal pricing bias, even if they don’t consciously realize it.

Some readers will only try a new author if the book is free, while others will only try the author if the book is priced at $2.99 or less. Other readers will avoid low- cost ebooks entirely for fear the books are poor quality. These readers might only purchase books priced at $5.99 or higher.

If you write fiction, try to have at least one book at free, and then others at $.99, $2.99, $3.99, and $4.99.

If you write non-fiction, experiment with free and then for the rest, price higher on the spectrum, such as between $5.99 and $9.99. Non-fiction readers are less price-sensitive than fiction readers. In fact, their bias usually leans in favor of higher-priced books. A few years ago in the Smashwords Survey we found evidence that as price increased from $.99 toward $9.99, unit sales actually increased. This is because non-fiction readers are usually looking to gain valuable knowledge. Higher-priced books are more likely to be perceived as higher value. For example, if you’re looking for a book to help you cook healthier meals for you family, are you more likely to trust advice that costs .99 or $9.99?

By considering pricing bias as you make you pricing decisions, you’ll make it easier for first-time readers to give your work a chance. Once they read you and learn to appreciate your writing talent, their pricing bias against the price for your other books will diminish.

Tip 38 - Publish more than one book to create a multiplier effect The more books you publish and distribute, the more discoverable your author brand and books become. Thanks to metadata, all of your works at the Smashwords store and at our retailers’ stores are cross linked with one another via your author name. This means if a customer is viewing one of your book pages, they’ll be presented with links to your other books. It’s like casting multiple fishing lines into the sea to create a net, rather than just relying on a single line.

With each book you publish, you have the opportunity to reach new readers to introduce to your other books.

With every hour the reader spends with you, and with every book, their confidence in your author brand grows stronger.

Tip 39 – Refresh your cover image

Your cover image is the first impression you make on a prospective reader. A great cover image makes a promise to the reader. It tells the reader through the symbolism of the image itself, “I’m the book you’re looking for.”

If you think about it, a letter is a symbol for a component of a word, and a word is a symbol for meaning. A string of words is a symbol for a deeper meaning.

Looked at another way, words and images are packages of meaning, and these packages of meaning must be received by the prospective reader, before they can unpack and interpret the meaning.

This perspective has significant implications for your ebook cover. Your cover is an image, but that image itself is made up of words and other imagery, all of which you want your prospective reader to see and process.

It takes the human brain about 200 milliseconds to unpack the meaning of a word. That might seem fast until you consider that your brain unpacks an image in only 13 milliseconds. That means an image is about 15 times more efficient at conveying information and meaning. It means the reader will see and interpret the imagery of your cover image before they see and interpret your book title or author name. It also means the imagery can be much more information-dense, as you work to help the prospective reader self-identify as the ideal reader for this book.

When a reader visits an ebook store, their senses are deluged by a cacophony of competing book cover images. The reader’s brain processes these images quickly. The images that jump off the page and out of the noise are those that contain promises that match the reader’s aspirations. Click over to Barnes & Noble, the Apple Books store or Amazon, and study the bestseller lists for your genre or topic. Does your cover stand toe to toe with these covers? Does your cover look as good or better than the cover images produced by large NY publishers? Does your cover that looked great a few years ago still look as great today?

If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, then it’s time for a new cover image.

Over the years I’ve observed multiple examples where an upgraded cover doubled or tripled book sales. In one of my favorite case studies, Smashwords author, R.L. Mathewson, upgraded her cover image on a book that had been out for several months. It sparked a breakout that catapulted her all the way on to the New York Times bestseller list. Although most cover refreshes don’t have the same impact, it’s a great example of how one cover can discourage readers, but a different cover can invite them in. Read her fascinating story here: http://blog.smashwords.com/2012/07/author-r-l-mathewson-on-some-of- secrets.html in the Smashwords blog.

Unless you’re already a professional cover designer, don’t attempt to design your own cover. If your cover was homemade, most likely it’s scaring your prospective readers away.

Hire a professional. There are hundreds of great cover designers on the web, and most cost under $200. If they can create a cover that looks as good or better than what’s put out by a big NY publisher, the $200 or less that you pay could be the lowest cost, highest-yielding investment you can make in your book.

I maintain a list of low-cost cover designers (most of whom are also fellow Smashwords authors), who provide covers for between $50 and $150. All have online portfolios, so you can review the quality of their work before you hire them. View the list at https://smashwords.com/list. These are all independent freelancers. Smashwords doesn’t receive a commission or referral fee if you hire one of them. They’re on the list because they’ve done great work for other Smashwords authors.

Carefully review a cover designer’s online portfolio before you hire them. Look for designers whose style you absolutely love, and who has direct experience designing covers for your specific genre or category. For example, if you’re looking for a cover designer for your thriller novel, don’t bother contacting a designer who only specializes in non-fiction. If you write erotica, find a professional cover designer who specializes in erotica.

Also make sure that any imagery you use is fully licensed. You can’t download a random image off the Internet and use it for your cover. I know of one indie author who made this mistake and is now the subject of a high-profile lawsuit. I imagine this has already cost him thousands of dollars and it hasn’t even gone to trial yet. Such a mistake could be financially ruinous to you.

As an indie author, when you upload your ebook to Smashwords or Amazon, you must certify that your book and its cover image do not violate the rights of any other party.

Once you receive your new cover, click to your Smashwords Dashboard, click Settings, then click “upload new cover image.” As your distributor, we’ll then regenerate your ebook file and transmit the updated book and its cover back out to our retailers and library partners.

If you want to learn more of my thoughts about cover design, check out Episode 3 of the Smart Author Podcast. The title of the episode is, “16 Best Practice Secrets,” and there’s a section on cover design. That episode will also help you get more of out of my next tip.

Tip 40 – Tweak and iterate your Viral Catalysts

We would all love to identify the single magic bullet that helps propel our book into bestsellerdom. There’s no such thing. The truth of the matter is that to become a bestseller, you must do many things right, while avoiding the mistakes that can undermine your long-term opportunity.

In my free ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, I identify the most common best practices of the most successful authors. I also introduce the concept of the Viral Catalyst.

A Viral Catalyst is anything that makes your book more available, more accessible, more discoverable, more desirable, more enjoyable, and more sharable.

The Viral Catalyst concept creates a framework through which you can identify the many silver bullets necessary to reach readers.

You’ve heard people talk about viral videos, or of things “going viral.” Like the common cold, these things pass from one person to another by word of mouth.

You want your book to go viral. Once you reach your first reader, you want your reader to love the book so much that they buy all of your other books, and then recommend your books to all of their friends. In this way your book starts with one person and spreads to many.

This concept of virality has a simple but powerful math component to it. If, on average, every reader you earn was to convince two more readers to buy it, you’d reach hundreds of thousands of readers in a matter of months. You can test this by pulling out a calculator, typing 2X2, then press the equal sign 19 or 20 times. I’m a big fan of the TV series, “Game of Thrones.” I’ve probably persuaded at least five friends and family members to watch it, who were otherwise reluctant. I watch other shows I enjoy, but for which I’m less passionate, and for those I don’t go out of my way to talk about them.

You want every reader to be transformed by your book, so they become a passionate evangelist. This is how sleeper hits from previously unknown authors come out of nowhere to hit the NY Times bestseller list. It doesn’t happen for most books.

For most good books and even for those that go viral for some period of time, viral decay sets in and the book spreads slower. Maybe they tap out their available market or maybe the enthusiasm wanes.

The Viral Catalyst concept is one of incrementalism.

Consider the chain of what needs to happen before a reader can discover and purchase a book. First they need to become aware of it, then they need reason to desire it, then they need convenient access to it. Once they find it, their desire must stay strong, and they need to be able to afford it, buy it and read it.

At every link in the chain there’s potential friction that could break the chain. A reader could hear great things about the book, search for it, but then see the cover and be turned off by it. Or they see a typo in the book description, or the price is too high, or the book’s not available in their favorite store.

In order for a book to go viral and spread from one reader to another, each reader’s enthusiasm for the book must pass to another reader. They need to infect another reader to the point that this new reader completes the same gauntlet, that starts with awareness and ends by spawning more enthusiastic word of mouth, that then spreads to the next reader, and so on and so on.

If one reader becomes less than one more reader, the book dies. If one reader becomes another reader, your book goes viral.

Think of your book as an object, and attached to this object are dozens of dials you can twist, turn and tweak to make your book more discoverable, accessible, desirable, and enjoyable to readers. These dials and knobs are your Viral Catalysts.

You’re in control of these Viral Catalysts. Every decision you make will impact virality.

Examples of Viral Catalysts could be a better cover image, a better price, better editing, broader distribution, a better book description, better categorization, or (brace yourself), a better book. There are many more. The opposite of a Viral Catalyst is anything that creates friction that breaks the chain of virality.

The previous case study I shared about R.L. Mathewson showcased how this extremely talented 5-star romance author, simply by upgrading her cover image, hit the New York Times bestseller list. Her previous cover image was creating unnecessary friction that prevented readers from reading her book.

If you can identify and minimize all points of friction, you have a better chance to reach more readers.

This requires an open mind and a keen sense of self-awareness. You must be capable of recognizing where your book is falling short.

If you pay special attention, your readers and prospective readers, through their actions or inactions, will give you clues as to whether or not your book’s Viral Catalysts are resonating with them.

For example, if you’re averaging five-star reviews but sales are low, it’s a problem with the cover, the book title, the description, or the price.

But if your reviews average 3 ½ stars out of five, that’s a sign that reader satisfaction is a problem. They like the book, but not enough to evangelize it. The likely solution is either a major revision or maybe better categorization.

Several years ago I wrote a blog post that provided tips on how authors could make an honest self-assessment of their book’s situation. It’s titled, Six Tips to Bring Your Book Back from the Doldrums – Reading Reader Tea Leaves.

One wonderful characteristic of indie ebooks is that they are dynamic, living creatures. As you develop your skills as an author and publisher, you have the ability to fine tune your Viral Catalysts over time until you get the formula just right, so that one reader becomes another.

All the tips you’ve learned in this section on autopilot marketing, as well as everything else covered in this book, will help you get that much closer to achieving this end.

BOOK PROMOTION

Your super awesome book is published and distributed to all of the major retailers. You’ve enhanced the innards of your book per my prior tips, and your book is all set to start marketing itself on autopilot. Now all you need are more readers, so you can unleash the virtuous flywheel of virality. In this next section, we cover the final 25 of my 66 book marketing tips.

You’ll learn how to get out there and proactively promote your book.

I’ve grouped the tips in logical order, so they roughly correspond to the different stages of a book’s marketing, from pre-launch to launch to post-launch.

You can implement these tips in any order at any stage of your publishing journey.

Most of these tips will work for book launches as well as for new campaigns to reinvigorate your backlist books already on the market.

Prelaunch Marketing

Tip 41 – It’s all about the next book – get it on preorder now

You might be thinking about your imminent book launch, or how to improve the marketing of books you released previously.

I’m thinking about your next book, and the book after that. You should too.

Many authors make the mistake of viewing book promotion as a flash-in-the-pan flurry of activity that coincides with the launch of a book. Promotion is much more than that.

Keep your eyes on the bigger long-term prize. Long-term you want to build your author brand, build perceptions about your brand and build demand for your brand. You want to set the stage to build readership over time, so the next book is more successful than the current book, and the current book is more successful than the last.

This means when you’re out there promoting your brand and your books, always think about the next book, and the next and the next. Always communicate with readers that the next book is available now for preorder.

For new authors the first readers are the most difficult to reach. A lot of new authors will release their first book, sell only a few copies and then quit in disappointment. Their focus is too short term.

Maybe their next book would have sold 100 copies, and the next 500 and the next 5,000. If you want to be a successful author, it requires a long-term journey through the valley of obscurity. All authors start off as obscure. As I mention in Episode 9 of the Smart Author podcast, titled “The Art of Delusion,” the only way to fail as an author is to quit. Once you start developing your readership, you’ll find that like bunny rabbits, happy readers breed more readers through word of mouth.

Whether you’re a first time author or an established author, the steps for building readership are essentially the same.

You always want to be moving forward, building and building.

Let’s say your immediate focus is the book you plan to launch next week or next month. Get it on ebook preorder now, and get the next book on preorder now as well.

At Smashwords you can establish your preorder up to 12 months in advance, even if you haven’t started writing it. Just keep in mind that when you establish a preorder, you’re making a commitment to readers. Although you can modify your release date at any time, you must be sincerely committed to deliver that book within 12 months, otherwise you should wait until you’re within that 12 month window to establish the preorder.

I encourage active authors to always have at least one book on preorder. This way, you’re always funneling new and existing readers into your next book. This also means that everything you do to promote your current book will promote the next book.

To keep readers on your train you always want to have their next trip booked in advance, and you do that with preorders.

As we walk through the next 25 promotion tips, imagine how each tip can help generate greater awareness and demand for your next book on preorder.

As a reminder, if you want to learn how to make preorders work for you, check out Episode 5 of the Smart Author podcast.

Tip 42 – Run a Smashwords Presale

Readers love early access. Offer a presale in advance of your next new release and watch your most loyal readers go wild with excitement. The patent-pending Smashwords Presales tool allows you to run presales in the Smashwords Store for books that are already on preorder. Unlike preorders, which act as advance purchase reservations and require a reader to wait until the book’s general release date before the reader can pay for and receive the ebook, a presale enables the reader to purchase and read early, before the general public. You can create and launch a presale at any time in advance of your preorder’s release date. You can choose to make your presale public or private. A public presale is visible to all customers of the Smashwords Store. A private presale is accessible only to readers who possess the secret hyperlink the tool provides you. To learn how to create and promote presales, and how you can use your presale to grow your private mailing list, visit your Presale Dashboard, located in the upper right section of your main Smashwords Dashboard.

Tip 43 – Encourage readers to subscribe to your Smashwords Author Alerts

Many of your readers want to buy everything you publish, but they’ve got lives of their own filled with distractions, and won’t necessarily have the time to follow your every publishing move. They’re likely to miss your next book if they haven’t preordered it.

The Smashwords Alerts feature allows your readers to subscribe to automatic email notifications from Smashwords whenever you release a new book. It gives readers a convenient option to learn about the new releases of their favorite authors, and it’s especially useful if the reader has chosen not to subscribe to your private newsletter, or if you don’t operate one. Readers can subscribe to your Smashwords Author Alert from your Smashwords author profile page with a click of the button. They’re also presented the ability to subscribe from within their shopping cart, right before they purchase your book.

Tip 44 – Write thoughtful reviews for other books on Smashwords

Whenever you review a book at Smashwords, your review on that author’s book page contains a hyperlink that points back to your author page. There’s also the option to “favorite” that author, which creates a link on their author page pointing back to your author page.

To the extent you participate in the Smashwords community and support the work of fellow authors, you'll raise your own profile by building paths back to your pages. Like any community, you get out of Smashwords what you put into it.

Tip 45 – Participate in specialized communities where your target readers hang out

Let’s say you wrote a book about gardening. Join a gardening community. Did you write a book about overcoming or coping with some medical condition? There are communities for that too.

It’s easy to find online communities – often message boards and forums – where your readers are hanging out.

Google “topicname community” or “topicname forum” for a long list of prospects. Facebook and LinkedIn also host a broad range of specialized communities where people of common interests and passions hang out. When you join a community, study the community’s rules before posting. You’re there to add value, not to flog your book. Let your forum’s signature or member profile do the talking.

Never crash a forum to spam it with advertisements. Not only would that be disrespectful, it’ll get you banned from the site.

Blog Marketing

In Tip #17 I recommended you start a blog. In the next few tips that follow, I share suggestions for how you can leverage your blog and other blogs to grow your platform and promote your books.

Tip 46 – Join the conversation on blogs

When you comment on another blog, you’re asked for your name and web address. You can enter a hyperlink to you web site or blog, or to your Smashwords Author Profile page.

When you post a comment, your name will be hyperlinked. If a reader clicks on your name, it will take them to your web page.

Participate in relevant discussions. Never spam blog comments with messages to buy your book. That’s rude. Instead, add value. If readers think your posts are intelligent, they’ll be curious to learn more about you and will click on your name to access your link.

Tip 47 - Write Guest Posts for Blogs

Most blogs are run by people who love books and authors. Most bloggers do their blogs entirely as a volunteer effort. It’s a lot of pressure for a blogger to constantly “feed the beast,” which is how many bloggers feel when they struggle to find the time to write new and interesting posts on a frequent basis.

Some of these bloggers allow authors to write guest columns. These guest columns offer you the opportunity to write about a topic of interest and reach a large audience, often thousands of people. At the beginning or end of your post, the owner of the blog will give you a quick bio, where they’ll mention who you are to establish your credentials, and provide a hyperlink back to your web site, blog or book.

To write a guest column, first review the blog to determine if guest bloggers are allowed to contribute. For example, at the Smashwords blog, we don’t accept contributors. Whenever someone comes along and offers to contribute, it tells me they’ve never read the blog. When I first launched the Smashwords Blog, I contributed articles to other sites to get my name out there. I used the hyperlink in my bio of guest posts to attract my first several hundred subscribers. With those initial subscribers, word spread about my blog and it became easier to draw more traffic.

Tip 48 - Conduct Q&A interviews of other authors on your blog

Every smart author appreciates free positive publicity. Your blog has an audience. Whether it’s ten readers or ten thousand, other authors will want to reach your audience.

Do Q&A interviews of your favorite authors in your genre. Contact the authors and offer to interview them for your blog. Send them five or six thoughtful questions via email, and invite them to include both their headshot photo and book cover images.

Design the questions with two primary goals in mind. 1. You want to educate, inform or entertain your blog’s audience. If you provide readers unique and informative content, your readers will return to your blog and promote it to their friends. 2. You want to celebrate the accomplishments of this author you admire. If your interview does a good job of illuminating this author’s wisdom and insights, the author will want to promote the interview to their audience.

Inside your interview or at the end, provide direct hyperlinks to the author’s web site, blog and social media coordinates. Every author wants to build their social media platform.

Once you publish your exclusive interview, email a hyperlink to your post so the author can share it. This helps introduce their readers to your blog, and through your blog, they can learn more about you and your books. And who knows, maybe the other author may reciprocate by offering you a Q&A on their blog.

Tip 49 - Invite other authors to write guest posts for your blog

Just like other authors, you will feel pressure to feed the beast that is your blog. Invite your favorite indie authors to write guest posts for your blog. This is a great way to offer your fans interesting new content that increases the value of your blog.

Since this is your blog and your audience, you should exercise some editorial control by providing the other author clear guidance on the type of article your audience will enjoy.

It also helps fans of the other author learn more about you, because once someone writes a post for you they’ll want to promote the post across their social media platforms. Launch Marketing

The next seven tips offer a checklist of things you can do to announce your new book. Each of these ideas can also be used to promote backlist books.

Tip 50 – Promote hyperlinks to all your retailers

When you distribute your ebook with Smashwords, we’ll get your book listed at multiple ebook retailers. Each of these retailers – large and small – reaches a unique audience of readers. Many of these readers shop only at these stores, which means if your book isn’t available there, you’re less likely to reach all of the readers you deserve.

If, for example, a prospective reader visits your web site, and this reader prefers to read on their iPad and shop at the Apple Books store, yet they only see a link to Amazon, you’re less likely to get the sale.

Apple Books is accessed by customers via an app that’s pre-installed on the home screens of over one billion Apple devices. They’re the world’s second largest seller of ebooks after Amazon. We distribute hundreds of thousands of ebooks to Apple Books.

Other readers prefer to shop at Barnes & Noble, Kobo or Smashwords.com.

If you have a web site, for each of your books provide direct hyperlinks to the book pages of major sales channels that carry your book. You’ll want links to Smashwords, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Amazon at a minimum.

Your web site will also be visited by librarians. Libraries buy a lot of books. Assuming you’re a Smashwords author, your books are also available for purchase by public libraries via our extensive library distribution network. Mention that your books are available for purchase worldwide by libraries that use OverDrive, Baker & Taylor Axis 360, Bibliotheca cloudLibrary, Gardners UK, and Odilo. This mention serves a dual purpose. It’ll prompt librarians to purchase your books, and it will prompt library patrons to request that libraries purchase your books.

Make it easy for readers to get your books from their favorite source.

Tip 51 – Write a press release and promote it to your local newspaper

In my former life prior to Smashwords, I ran an award-winning Silicon Valley PR agency. In this edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, I include a Deep Dives section dedicated to teaching you how to earn free press coverage. I’ll also teach you how and when to write a press release. Tip 52 - Organize a blog tour

Many traditionally published authors go on book tours, signing books at bookstores. For indie ebook authors, such nationwide and worldwide tours are not available.

With the Internet, however, you have something better: the virtual blog tour.

Here are some tips on how to organize a blog tour.

First identify blogs of fellow authors that target your same audience. Invite them to participate in your blog tour.

For each day of your blog tour, you’ll make a virtual visit to one blog.

One day a blog publishes a Q&A interview with you focused on your new book. On another day you publish a guest post at another blog. The next day another blog publishes an excerpt of your new book. On the next day another blog might invite you to do a live video chat over Google Hangouts and YouTube. You get the idea.

If you keep it fresh and interesting, with each appearance you build buzz and attract more reader participation, to the mutual benefit of yourself and the blog that’s hosting you.

In a well-run tour all of the participating blogs cross promote each other (this gives the blog owner additional incentive to participate), and readers are encouraged to follow the author day by day as the tour progresses.

Consider spicing up the tour with contests at each event. Maybe you offer gift certificates to a randomly selected person who participates in the blog comments, or a metered discount coupon from Smashwords where the first 100 readers to redeem it get a free book. I mentioned Smashwords Coupons earlier, and I’ll touch on them again in Tip #59. Or maybe, anyone who tweets or shares hyperlinks to the tour on Facebook can be entered to win an iPhone or Kindle.

Your personal author blog acts as the hub of the tour, like a Grand Central Station. Write a single post at your blog, possibly titled, “Blog tour for the launch of BOOK TITLE,” to announce the tour and the dates of each event. Show a calendar of what’s happening on each day and the topic, with links to all of the blogs that are hosting you on the separate days. As you add new events, update the post, so readers have reason to visit for the latest news.

For each day of the tour encourage all participating blogs to cross promote the tour across their social media channels, with direct links to both your hub page and the day’s destination. Each blog appearance should include the cover image of your book and direct hyperlinks to various retailers that carry your books.

If your book is on preorder, and it should be (!!), schedule the tour to occur in the days leading up to your book launch. In this way, you can drive preorders to the various retailers to lock in the orders, at the moment you’ve got the reader’s greatest attention and interest.

With a preorder, advance planning and creativity, you could schedule events over a multi-week period of buzz-building leading up to the event.

It takes a lot of planning and complex coordination to pull off a successful tour, but the results can be well worth it. You’ll reach more readers, build your social media following and raise the profile of your author brand.

Have fun!

Tip 53 – Celebrate your ebook launch on your web site, blog and private mailing list

If you have a standalone web site or blog, as many authors do, be sure to post a notice that your book is now available at Smashwords and other retailers. Make sure the links are clickable, so the reader can just click and go directly to your book page.

If you have a private mailing list, and you should, you’ll also announce the release to your subscribers. Encourage your subscribers to help you spread word of the new release.

Tip 54 - Announce your book on social media

If you’re a user of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or other online communities, tell your friends and associates that you just published your book at Smashwords, and provide a direct hyperlink to your book page. If you’re not already participating in some of these networks, jump in and start.

In the Deep Dives section later in this book, I provide an overview of how to get the most out of these social media services.

Tip 55 – Announce your book to friends and family

After you publish your book and it’s listed at major retailers, be sure to celebrate your accomplishment with friends and family. Send them a one-time email and invite them to forward your news to anyone they think would enjoy your book. A quick note about email etiquette: your email should only go to close friends and family, not to everyone in your email directory, otherwise you’re sending spam. This email is separate from those who subscribed to your private mailing list.

In the address field, the first person should be you. And then everyone else you add to the email should be bcc’d because your 100 closest friends aren’t necessarily friends with one another, and they don’t want their email address shared with everyone else. The other problem with addressing people in the open on your email is that a single ‘reply all’ to the email will cause instant annoyance and a flood of more ‘reply all’ emails to everyone on the list as people freak out. Be respectful.

Let’s say you spent the last three years writing a memoir titled, “Victorious.”

You’ll want to give a quick one sentence description of your book, just enough to tell them what it’s about and why it’s interesting.

Here’s a rough template you can customize for your own purposes:

Dear friends and family,

As many of you know, for the last three years I’ve been writing my personal memoir. I’m pleased to share that my book is now published as an ebook at Smashwords and major retailers worldwide.

The title is Victorious, and it chronicles my physical and spiritual recovery following a car accident in which I almost lost my life. I hope you’ll take a moment to check it out at Smashwords or any other ebook retailer, where you can sample or purchase the ebook.

I hope you’ll take a moment to forward this email to anyone you know who might find inspiration from my journey to complete recovery.

Here are direct links to my ebook listings at major retailers where the book can be sampled and purchased:

[insert direct links to the book pages at Smashwords, Apple Books, B&N, Kobo, Amazon]

I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for your support and encouragement.

Sincerely,

Your first Name

--- [if you completed your signature, your signature follows next with a hyperlink to your Smashwords author profile page and other social media coordinates.]

Tip 56 – Encourage readers to leave honest reviews at their favorite retailer

Online reviews are digital word of mouth. If your book has no reviews at a retailer, readers will be reluctant to take a chance on it.

Positive customer reviews at a retailer are the gifts that keep on giving.

Encourage your readers to write honest reviews wherever they purchase your books.

In the back matter of your book, you can encourage readers to leave a review with a sentence such as, “Thank you for reading [book title]. If you enjoyed [book title], please do me a favor and leave an honest review where you purchased it.”

Discourage friends or family from writing artificially glowing or embellished reviews. Your book buyers will feel suckered if your book doesn’t live up to the hype. You can bet that if a reader feels duped by the reviews, they’ll react with their own review that is perhaps more negative and mean-spirited than if they didn’t feel misled in the first place.

NEVER pay money to individuals or review services that promise to leave you glowing reviews at the major retailers. This is an unethical practice and represents an extreme disservice to readers. The use of such services can also get your books banned from Smashwords and from major retailers like Amazon.

Library Marketing

The next two tips offer suggestions for incorporating public libraries into your book marketing.

Public libraries represent a great sales opportunity. They also represent a chance for you, as a local author, to engage with your local community of authors and readers.

To learn more about marketing your ebook to public libraries, check out Episode 6 of the Smart Author podcast.

Tip 57 – Ask your readers to recommend your ebook to their local public library

You have dozens, hundreds or maybe thousands of readers around the world who are also library patrons. If your book is distributed by Smashwords, it’s available for purchase by over 30,000 public libraries.

Ask your readers to recommend your ebook to their local library.

Tip 58 – Orchestrate events at your local library

Most libraries hold public events. Contact the events coordinator at your local library and offer to orchestrate an event.

Consider asking the library to host your next book launch. If they’ll allow it, work with the library’s events coordinator to put up posters in the library to advertise the event weeks in advance. Write a press release about the book launch and send it to the events calendar editor for your local newspapers, so they can promote it in their listings. Invite family and friends. You want to fill the room.

Ask the library if you can supply finger foods and non-alcoholic beverages. Food is a draw. It makes hungry people happy and it encourages people to stick around and mingle.

There are other events you can schedule at the library as well. Organize a panel of local indie authors to do a reading. If you get multiple authors involved, you can draw a much larger audience, because each author will promote the event to their local fans, friends and family members.

Or you could offer to give a talk on how to publish an ebook. I created a PowerPoint template on this topic that you’re welcome to download and modify for your own purposes. You’ll find a link to it on the show notes page for Episode 6 of the Smart Author podcast at https://smashwords.com/podcast/6

Post Launch Marketing

Tip 59 – Run promotions with Smashwords Coupons

The Smashwords Coupon Generator feature makes it easy to create a wide range of custom coupon codes to use in promotions. You’ll find the feature in your Smashwords Dashboard at https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/coupons.

These coupons can be redeemed by readers at the Smashwords store at www.smashwords.com.

Whenever you create a coupon at Smashwords, you can give it a campaign name. When readers redeem the coupon, you can track the campaign by name in your sales reports. As discussed in Chapter 1 in the section on marketing tools at Smashwords, you can create coupons for dollars off, cents off, percentage off, Global coupons that work across multiple books, or coupons that allow readers to download the book for free. You can also create what we call metered coupons, which allow you to limit the number of redemptions before the coupon expires.

You choose if your coupon is private or public. With a private coupon, you control when and where it’s shared. With a public coupon, we advertise your discounted book across the Smashwords store as part of our Special Deals promotion.

Here are some ideas for how you can use Smashwords Coupons:

Limited-Time Coupons: When you create a coupon, you set the expiration date. Post a notice on your blog or on Facebook or Twitter, and encourage your readers to share this limited-time coupon with their friends before it expires. Time limits create urgency.

Limited Redemption Coupons: With our metered coupons, you set a limit to the number of redemptions before it expires. For example, you could create a metered coupon that expires after the coupon has been used 20 times, or 100 times, or whatever limit you choose. Metered coupons are fun because they give readers incentive to be the first to redeem them before the offer expires.

Use coupons as an incentive: As an inducement to get people to sign up for your private email list, you could offer a Smashwords coupon so they can download one of your books for free.

If you publish print books, create a virtual bundle: If you self-publish print books, you could offer buyers of your print book the ability to get the ebook version for $.99 or some other discounted price, or for free. You could advertise the Smashwords Coupon in the back matter of your print book.

Offer Smashwords Coupons to book reviewers: This is a popular use of our coupon feature. If someone wants to review your ebook, send them a Smashwords Coupon, so they can download it for free. Since Smashwords ebooks are multi-format, we support all e-reading devices.

Add Coupons to printed material: Some Smashwords authors add Smashwords coupon codes on printed business cards, flyers or to hand out as printed coupons.

Tip 60 – Run a price promotion

Although Smashwords Coupons are great for running a custom promotion, you can also run price promotions for all of the retailers and libraries you distribute to via Smashwords. Let’s say your book is regularly priced at $3.99. If you want to run a $.99 promotion, click to your Smashwords Dashboard, then click Settings, where you’ll have the ability to change the price. Smashwords will transmit the price change to all of our retailers and library platforms.

Next get out there and celebrate your promotion across social media, and to your private mailing list. When you’re ready to change the price back, click back to your Dashboard, then click Settings for the title in question.

Many Smashwords authors advertise their books on BookBub, a paid advertising service, which advertises ebooks to readers in different countries. BookBub often requires a specific price in different currencies for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and India. Smashwords makes it easy to control prices in different countries. If you want to run a sale in one country or multiple countries, click to your Smashwords Dashboard’s Global Pricing Control feature.

This Global Pricing Control feature can also be used to set different prices in countries that use the same currency. You could price your book at 3.99 Euro in Germany and France, and 2.99 Euro in Italy and Spain.

Tip 61 – Participate in annual Smashwords-exclusive promotions

Smashwords runs several major site-wide promotions each year, and from time to time we’ll announce additional promotions.

The two most well known promotions are Read an Ebook Week, which starts the first Sunday in March, and the July Summer/Winter Sale, which runs the entire month of July.

In 2017 we kicked off our first annual Smashwords End of Year Sale. The sale runs each December 25th through January 1st. In 2020 and beyond, we’ll likely add additional themed promotions, all exclusive to the Smashwords store.

During these promotions thousands of Smashwords authors enroll their books for deep discounts, including 25%-off, 50%-off, 75%-off, and free.

Enrollment is usually available about two weeks before each promotion begins from the Smashwords home page at www.smashwords.com

Tip 62 – Leverage YouTube videos to reach readers

Another secret to book marketing is to engage multiple senses of your prospective readership. We humans are sensate creatures - we use sight, smell, touch, and sound to inform us of our environment. When you write a textual book and upload your book on Smashwords, you’re engaging only a sliver of the reader’s senses.

If you create a YouTube video and embed it in your Smashwords book page (we support this), talking about why you wrote a book or reading a section of the book, or talking about your writing process or your muses, you engage the prospective reader on a different sensory level.

With video you’re touching the prospective reader both visually (sight) and audibly (sound). You’re giving them a level of insight into you as a writer that they can’t perceive through written words alone. You’re engaging them, and with engagement comes action, like a decision to sample or purchase your book.

Tip 63 – Invite readers to become affiliate marketers of your books

Who better to promote your books than your fans? With the Smashwords Affiliate Marketing Program, your fans can earn generous commissions by adding links to your books on their web pages and blogs.

All they need to do is sign up for a free Smashwords account, then click to the Account page for instructions on how to enroll in the affiliate program.

Also encourage them to share your book widgets on their blogs and web sites. They’ll find the widgets on your Smashwords book page. I discussed the widget feature in Chapter 1 of this edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide.

Tip 64 – Upload a presentation deck to SlideShare.net

Consider creating a SlideShare deck for your book. I love Slideshare. Slideshare is a free service, owned by LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft. Slideshare allows you to upload and promote online presentations created with PowerPoint, or similar presentation software programs.

I started using Slideshare in 2008 to publicly share the PowerPoints from the workshops I give at writers conferences, and to date I’ve shared about 50 presentations, which have generated over 500,000 views.

SlideShare has a cool feature that allows you to embed your presentation on blogs and web sites. Each year for my annual Smashwords Survey, I load the PowerPoint to Slideshare, then I embed it at the Smashwords Blog. Here’s what the embedded presentation looks like for the 2017 Smashwords Survey: http://blog.smashwords.com/2017/06/smashwords-survey-2017.html .

The embed feature also makes it easy for your readers to embed your presentation on their sites, much in the same way people can embed YouTube videos. You can access the complete library of my Smashwords presentations on the Smashwords SlideShare page at http://slideshare.net/smashwords.

How authors can use Slideshare:

Consider creating a PowerPoint book trailer for your book, upload it to Slideshare, then embed it in your blog or web site, promote it across your social networks, and encourage your fans to embed it in their blogs and web sites too.

You can even embed YouTube Videos within your Slideshare presentations.

If you give a presentation at your local library about you and your books, then upload that presentation to Slideshare.

Slideshare can work well for non-fiction authors. Let’s say you wrote a book about raising chickens. You could create a Slideshare presentation titled, “Ten Tips for Raising Chickens,” drawing from the material in your book. At the beginning and end of the presentation, reference that this information is sourced from your book. If viewers are impressed with the quality of your information, they may want to purchase the book.

At the end of each of my presentations, I add hyperlinks to where viewers can learn more about Smashwords, or connect with me via the various social networks or email me direct. Obviously, I'm out there promoting Smashwords and ebook publishing best practices. You can promote yourself, your expertise and your books.

Share what you've learned about e-publishing with your fellow writers. Create a presentation on ebook formatting tips, the elements of great cover design or your own ebook marketing tips. The point is to get yourself out there in as many places and mediums as possible.

Ebook buyers (or whomever you want to reach or help) consume all forms of media. These SlideShare presentations are just another form of media. Once you get your presentation up and out there, it acts like a perpetual calling card - always there to be stumbled upon by someone looking to consume the information you presented. Over time, you may get dozens, hundreds or even thousands of views.

Slideshare offers neat charts and graphs so you can track the performance of your presentations over time.

Tip 65 – Organize a multi-author box set with your favorite indie authors

A multi-author box set is a single ebook file that features multiple ebooks from different authors. The magical power of a box set comes in the collaborative marketing. If ten different authors contribute a book to a box set, then that’s ten authors promoting the other nine authors, each time they promote the box set to their readers. A multi-author box set amplifies your marketing reach.

Join with authors whose writing targets the same readers you target. If you write political thrillers, partner with other political thriller writers. Only partner with writers whose writing you love and respect, and whose writing you think you can honestly recommend to your readers. These other writers should feel the same way about you and your writing, because you want them to recommend your writing to their fans.

Once you identify the authors you want to partner with, you will all need to agree on pricing. Since the goal of a multi-author box set is to help each author’s readers discover the works of all of the other authors, the most effective box set price is free. By pricing the box set at free, you also eliminate the hassle of divvying up the earnings and the tax liability.

If you write a series, and your series offers a free series starter, then how about partnering with fellow authors to create and promote a free multi-author box set of series starters? New readers who love your series starter will want to purchase your follow-up titles. Remember to include preorder links for the next book in the series.

Another option for pricing is to set a higher price, and then have all of the authors agree the proceeds go toward a charity. A charity box set gives readers an additional reason to purchase the box set, because they know the proceeds are going to a good cause.

To learn more about organizing a box set, check out the blog post I wrote in 2014 at http://blog.smashwords.com/2014/08/how-to-do-box-sets-at-smashwords- for.html.

Tip 66 – Invite other authors to join you on your indie author journey

A journey shared is more enriching than a journey alone. Invite your writer friends to become indie authors as well. There’s strength in numbers. With every author who joins the indie community, your personal opportunities for marketing and collaboration increase.

Looking back at these 66 tips, you’ll find that many involve indies collaborating with fellow indies toward common causes. Examples include the opportunities for knowledge sharing (Tip #7), editing swaps (Tip #26), blog collaboration (Tips #46, #47, #48, #49, and #52), chapter swaps (Tip #32), collaborative speaking opportunities (Tip #58), collaborative retail promotions (Tip #61), and the prior tip, box sets (Tip #65). Chapter 3

DEEP DIVES In the next three Deep Dives sections, you’ll learn how to get more out of social media, how to work with beta readers and how to earn free press coverage. First up, social media.

Social Media Strategies for Authors Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn

Social media is a foundational element to your book marketing strategy. Three of the most popular social media platforms for authors are Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Facebook is great for reaching a general consumer audience, whereas LinkedIn is more of a business audience. Twitter’s audience is a mix of both, with a consumer bent. Your audience likely uses these services for different purposes.

In prior editions of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, I listed these three separately within my checklist of marketing tips. For this new 2018 edition I’ve consolidated my discussion of these three platforms into this one expanded, standalone section on social media.

Good social media practices, like good marketing, are catalysts for book marketing success.

In the 2017 Smashwords Survey, which I covered in Episode 7 of the Smart Author Podcast (https://www.smashwords.com/podcast/7), we found that our bestselling authors have a significantly higher social media participation rate than our poorest selling authors.

Many books have been written about each of the three social media platforms I’m discussing. I’ll give you an introductory overview of each, within the context of book marketing.

Social media intimidates a lot of authors. Once you learn how it works, you’ll find it’s not scary.

Many writers (and I include myself here) are natural introverts. For us introverts, social media is easier and comes more naturally than meeting strangers at a party. It’s not necessary to engage in social media to become a bestseller. As I mentioned earlier, the reader word-of-mouth generated by your books will carry most of your marketing weight. But to the extent you do participate in social media, you’ll find it makes all of your marketing activities that much more impactful. And it’s fun too!

If you’re new to social media, ease into it slowly. If you’re not careful, it can become such a distraction that you lose valuable writing time.

Here are some social media tips to get your started:

1. Make it easy for readers to connect with you how and where they want to connect. Promote your social media addresses (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) in your book and on your blog or web site, so fans can follow you. If you only start with two social media sites, start with Facebook and Twitter. These social media platforms allow readers to start forming a passive relationship with you. They’re connecting with you because they’re interested in your books and want to hear your news.

2. Use social media as an information broadcast tool. Social media makes it easier for you to broadcast your news to your audience of friends and followers.

3. Use social media as a tool for conversational engagement with readers. Social media provides an efficient means of receiving direct feedback from readers.

4. Use social media to further your professional development. Social media is a great tool for research and knowledge-building. You can receive direct feedback and ideas from your readers. You can track industry news and trends. This is my favorite use of social media. More on this below in my discussion about Twitter.

5. Use social media to amplify your message. If you share compelling news or promotion information with your followers, your followers will amplify your message when they share your posts with their friends.

6. Do it yourself. Don’t hire others to write your social media posts. It’s difficult for someone else to be you. You’ll miss out on the above benefits.

7. Be authentic, to a point. If your authentic self is, in the words of Jonathan Maberry, “a naturally cranky, snarky, sour-tempered pain in the ass,” then I suggest you follow Jonathan’s advice and keep that off of social media. Unless, of course, that’s the brand you want to project. 8. Only share what you’re comfortable sharing. Some authors share everything, some share nothing. You do what’s right for you.

9. Unfriend those who drag you down. Readers and fellow authors can be kind, loving, agreeable, disagreeable, angry, abusive, or delusional. Protect yourself, because your mental health and personal safety come first. All three of the social media platforms mentioned here make it easy to block communications with anyone you find offensive or abusive.

My Three Favorite Social Media Platforms Now let’s look at my three favorite social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I love these three for different reasons. Let’s look at each individually.

Twitter

If you’re not already a member of Twitter, drop everything and go join right now. Twitter is a micro-blogging site. It’s like blogging, but you’re restricted to posts of only 280 characters. Originally, the limit was 140 characters. Many people when they first hear about Twitter think it’s the stupidest, most egomaniacal thing anyone could do with their time (this is what I thought too, before I saw the light).

The critics are wrong. Give Twitter a chance and you’ll discover it’s a great tool.

After you open a free account (twitter.com), Twitter asks you the question, “What’s happening?” Answer the question and you just tweeted. To send messages to other Twitter users, you post, “@username, message....,” like “@markcoker, I’m telling all of my friends they should publish at Smashwords.”

Your friends, family, fans, and complete strangers can follow all of your posts, which are called “tweets” in Twitter parlance.

You can also follow other Twitter users by visiting their profile and clicking “Follow.”

Follow me at http://twitter.com/markcoker, where I tweet about developments at Smashwords and trends in the publishing industry. Tell me what you think of this 2018 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide or tell me what you think about the Smart Author podcast.

Twitter lets you create a short profile. It’s important you do this, so your followers know who you are, and where to go to learn more about you. You can include a clickable hyperlink in your profile that points to a web page. Either enter the address for your personal web site or blog, or enter a link to your Smashwords author profile page. Once you join Twitter, you can add your Twitter address on your Smashwords author profile page, so readers can follow you. You do this at Smashwords by clicking to Account, then Edit Profile. Here’s a direct hyperlink: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/edit.

After you add your Twitter address to your profile page, you’ll receive additional promotion on Smashwords, by gaining an automatic listing in our directory of Smashwords authors on Twitter. You’ll find the directory here: https://www.smashwords.com/socialbuzz/smashwords_authors/latest/twitter .

Like all social media, you’ll get more out of it if you participate. Make friends. Share ideas. Add value. Follow smart people and learn from them. If you’re only there to promote your book, people will tune you out.

There are four types of Twitter users:

1. Sharers: Sharers find useful information and share it with their followers, usually in the form of hyperlinks to interesting articles. Often they will “retweet” other interesting tweets from people they follow. You click the “retweet” link in Twitter to share someone else’s tweet with your followers. Twitter users re-tweet tweets from others on Twitter they think would be of interest to their fellow Twitter followers. If you share useful information that gets shared by your followers, then your Twitter address will be promoted to their followers. If your tweet is retweeted by someone with 10,000 followers, that’s great exposure for your brand. This is one of the ways you gain followers and build your platform at Twitter.

2. Conversationalists: These are people who spend most of their time in conversation with their followers and friends via @”username” messages. If you tweet, for example, “@markcoker I think indie authors will inherit the publishing universe,” then I’ll see it because I check Twitter regularly to see what people are tweeting at me. When you add a person’s screenname to your tweet, preceded by @, you’re saying, “this tweet is for you,” or “at you” “or look at this.” It’s the Twitter equivalent of your email’s “to” and “cc:” address functions.

3. Marketers: People who are trying to promote themselves or their product.

4. Followers: People who use Twitter to follow others on Twitter. This is one of the most popular uses of Twitter. By selecting the right people to follow, you’ll create a curated newsfeed of people sharing information on the topics that interest you.

Most Twitter users are a blend of varying degrees of all four of the above. For example, I’m a Sharer, Marketer and Follower. I rarely have conversations on Twitter, but that’s just personal preference. More on that in a moment. Use Twitter however it best suits your needs and personality. When you log into Twitter, you’ll see a tweet stream of what the people you follow have tweeted recently.

I minimize the number of people I follow, because if I follow too many people, it creates so much noise in my tweet stream it diminishes the value of Twitter to me.

Twitter as a newsfeed is my favorite use of Twitter. I follow people whose tweets keep me abreast of topics I care about. I follow several political reporters to keep up with the political news of the day, I follow publishing industry people to keep up on publishing news, and I follow several people who tweet beautiful images from medieval manuscripts.

Even if I never tweeted another tweet ever again, I’d still use Twitter daily to follow some of these smart and fun people.

Before you follow anyone, review their recent tweets and ask yourself if those are the types of tweets you want filling your twitter feed each day.

Some people automatically follow, or “autofollow,” anyone who follows them. I don’t recommend autofollowing. Be selective about who you follow, because if you follow too many people, you’ll soon find yourself drowning in noise. I follow around 200 people, and for me that’s about right. Others follow thousands of people.

I rarely engage in conversation on Twitter, because the folks who follow me are interested in Smashwords and ebook publishing-specific tweets, not my private conversations about a friend’s weekend barbeque, or a conversation with another Smashwords author.

I also don’t answer support inquiries publicly over Twitter, because it’s difficult to diagnose and solve complex questions over Twitter. At Smashwords we have an entire team of professionals who are standing by to provide quality online support (and most questions are answered already at the Smashwords web site in our FAQ).

I want to be considerate of my followers and their tweet streams. Without context, conversations are difficult for your followers to follow. In the rare instances when I do participate in a Twitter conversation, I try to make sure my tweets offer context, so my followers can gain some benefit.

Twitter has a private messaging feature. If someone tweets a question at me and they follow me, I’ll usually send them a private reply. If they don’t follow me, Twitter won’t let me send them a private message. My Twitter strategy can be summed up as follows: I respect my followers’ time and try to provide them value in every tweet. If someone follows me, I feel like they’ve invited me into their Twitter feed. Just as if they’ve invited me into their home, I want to be respectful of their feed.

As you gain followers, you build your platform. As you build your platform, your opportunities for marketing, connecting and learning increase.

There are various strategies for gaining followers, and many social marketing consultants do nothing but write articles or sell books about how to increase your following.

Read the articles, but maintain a healthy dose of skepticism. Many strategies are underhanded and will turn off people. For example, one strategy is what I call the “bait and switch.” These folks start following thousands of people, in the hope that some percentage of them will autofollow them back. If the people they’re following don’t follow them back within a few days, they “unfollow” them and move on to follow different people. Or, even if the person does follow them back, the bait and switcher unfollows them anyway.

Don’t play the bait and switch game, and don’t feel offended if the people you follow don’t follow you back. When I see someone following me who’s also following 20,000 other people, I view their follow as worthless. How would such a person ever notice my tweets?

A better strategy for gaining followers is to earn your follower one tweet or retweet at a time.

Before you start tweeting, ask yourself the audience you seek to attract. Do you want to attract readers or industry friends or do you not care who follows you? The answer to this question will help you decide what you want to tweet and retweet on Twitter.

Let’s say you write gardening books, and you want to attract a following of people who read gardening books, and people who can help you connect with readers of gardening books. Your target audience for readers is the same as your audience for followers. You’re probably spending your time studying news and trends in horticulture. As you stumble across interesting articles, tweet about them and share a hyperlink.

If you follow someone who tweets something you think will interest your followers, retweet it by clicking the retweet button. Your followers will appreciate receiving this useful, interesting information. Your followers might retweet your tweet, which then puts your twitter name in front of all of their followers. If people think your tweet or retweet was useful to them, they might review your tweet stream and follow you. Most Twitter users track who’s retweeting their tweets. They might be grateful enough to tweet you back, or they might check out your full tweet stream and follow you, if what you’re tweeting looks interesting to them.

Follow your favorite authors who write and tweet about the same topic. When you retweet something, you’re helping to promote that person’s tweet to your audience of followers.

Twitter Etiquette Tips: Here are eight tips Twitter etiquette tips:

1. Never Beg: NEVER tweet at people and ask them to follow you. Never email someone and ask them why they’re not following you. You should earn your follows, not beg for them. Earn your follows by serving the followers you have. If you tweet and retweet worthwhile and insightful tweets, your followers will retweet your tweets and word will get out about you.

2. Spamming: Don’t spam your twitter stream with tweets only about your book. No one wants to be sold to all the time.

3. Quality, not quantity: Every time I tweet, I ask myself, “Will this tweet inform or entertain my followers, and am I respecting their tweet stream?” It doesn’t matter if you have two followers or 2,000, you should respect the time and twitter streams of your followers.

4. Avoid stream of consciousness tweeting: Some people tweet every few minutes. I avoid these Twitterers like the plague, because they’ll clog my Twitter stream. I don’t care what someone ate for breakfast. I don’t want to hear what someone’s cooking for dinner. I don’t want to know what your dog ate disagrees with his digestive system.

5. Practice positivity: Your tweets will reflect on your author brand. People like positive people who inform or entertain. Negativity will turn off your followers. People might fear you, but they won’t like you.

6. Avoid snark: It’s easily misunderstood, and can come across as negative.

7. Don’t power trip: This is a corollary to Practice Positivity. If you’ve got hundreds or thousands of followers, don’t let it go to your head. There are few things more unattractive than someone who uses their social media platform to bully, intimidate or complain. Are you upset your airline just delayed your flight, or the cable company kept you on hold for an hour? Keep it to yourself. Stay humble.

I could go on and on about Twitter. If it all sounds confusing, don’t worry. Just jump in, join the conversation and you’ll get the hang of it in no time. Many authors drive dozens or hundreds of visitors to their web sites and book pages each month via Twitter, so it’s a powerful marketing tool you shouldn’t ignore. But like all tools covered in this guide, you have to invest time over the long-term to reap the biggest rewards.

How to Get the Most from Facebook

You’re likely already one of the approximately two billion people worldwide who use Facebook. If you’re not yet on Facebook, sign up now.

Although Twitter is a great author marketing tool, Facebook is even better.

Facebook is the world’s largest and most popular social network. Facebook allows you to create a profile either as an individual or as a brand. Facebook makes it easy to “friend” other people and for others to request a friend connection with you.

Similar to Twitter, if your friends like what you’re posting, they’ll click the “like” button or the “share” button. When your posts are liked or shared, it makes your current and future posts visible to more people.

Facebook makes it much easier to have in-depth conversations than Twitter.

Social media relationships begin shallow, and I don’t mean that in a negative sense. By shallow, I mean it’s a low-key, low-obligation relationship. It’s a chance for readers to get a sense of who you are. If they like what they see, then they can begin to follow you and interact with you more closely as the relationship develops.

Over time deeper relationships and even true friendships can form. I’ve got friends on Facebook I’ve never met face to face, but if I do ever meet them, I’ll want to give them a big hug.

The biggest criticism I hear about Facebook from authors is that Facebook controls who sees your posts in their Facebook feeds. This is a real problem. Just because 1,000 people are following your Facebook feed doesn’t mean your posts will appear in their feed. Your posts will be invisible to most of them.

Facebook’s business model is advertising. If you want to reach more of your followers, they offer you the opportunity to pay to “boost” your individual posts. This increases the visibility of your posts to your followers.

If this smacks of some form of extortion, that’s because it is. Facebook holds your friends hostage. It’s another reminder why it’s important to build a platform that you control. If 4,000 of your readers subscribe to your private mailing list, you can reach them on your own terms, without Facebook filtering your message.

Facebook allows you to do “promoted” posts, in which you pay to have your posts appear in the news streams of people who aren’t necessarily your friends. You can target these posts by demographics, geography or interests.

Some authors have had good success advertising their books on Facebook. Others, not so much. Most authors seem to have lackluster results.

If you do try advertising on Facebook, don’t spend hundreds or thousands of dollars right out of the gate. Instead start with $20 - $100 experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

If you find an ad and a message where a dollar invested yields a greater value in results, then throw more dollars at it until it stops working for you.

Define and measure your metrics of success. Do you measure your success by dollar sales, downloads of free books, likes and shares, or brand exposure? You determine what matters most to you. There’s a ton of great information out there on Facebook advertising. Since the main focus of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is on FREE marketing ideas, I’ll leave it to you to explore the paid options on your own.

Authenticity or Alienation?

Your readers will want to be your friends on Facebook.

Should you avoid sharing interests that some might find offensive or off-putting? Do you sacrifice your authenticity if you avoid such topics?

What if your favorite discussion topics among true friends are politics and religion? Or what if you have strong opinions on other divisive topics where views are polarized?

I struggle with this question on a daily basis. As my wife and closest friends and family can attest, I enjoy deep discussions without limits. It’s difficult for me to be superficial or stay silent on issues I’m passionate about. Most of us live in democracies where our individual votes count for something. In my view, at a certain point silence becomes complicity. Sometimes there are important issues that deserve your support, discussion, debate, or resistance.

To deal with this question, some authors create a fan page where the only topic discussed is their books. They maintain their own personal page to share and discuss their broader interests. Other authors never tread into sensitive subjects for fear that by expressing an opinion on a divisive subject they could alienate half of their readership. Do what feels right for you.

How to Get the Most from LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a free social network for business professionals. As a self-published author, you’re running a business.

Unless you write business books or non-fiction, you’re unlikely to find many readers here. The primary reasons to join LinkedIn are for professional development, business networking and job hunting.

LinkedIn offers numerous online forums where you can network with, and learn from, fellow authors who are learning to improve their publishing business just like you.

Once you create your free account, LinkedIn allows you to create a comprehensive, online-accessible, search-engine-optimized personal profile page. Think of it as a resume on steroids. On that page you can list all of your books. At the top of the page, add your headshot and a short bio.

If you’re curious to seem my LinkedIn profile, check it out at http://www.linkedin.com/in/markcoker .

Many people use LinkedIn for business networking. You can add your work history online so your connections can learn more about your experience.

I monitor Twitter and Facebook multiple times per day. By contrast, I’m only on LinkedIn once every week or two, and sometimes months will pass. Yet I still yield great value from it. For me a big part of being there is making myself accessible to people who need to reach me. Often when someone wants to invite me to speak somewhere and can’t find my email, they’ll track me down on LinkedIn.

If I’m about to have a business call with someone I’ve never spoken to, I’ll pop over to LinkedIn to read their resume. And I want others to be able to do the same to me.

You and your connections can add a summary of your skills, and your connections can add written endorsements of those skills.

Under the Accomplishments section, advertise all of your books.

At the bottom of my LinkedIn profile, underneath Interests, you’ll find links to the LinkedIn groups I’ve joined. Some of these groups are public and some are private. You might want to join a few of the writing and publishing-related groups yourself. Several of the groups offer weekly digest emails, so you can still follow the conversations if you don’t have time to participate each day.

LinkedIn also offers other common social media features, like news feeds, and integration with your Twitter feed (so your tweets automatically appear at LinkedIn), and the ability to publish online articles and blog posts.

Jump in, create a profile and start learning.

Tips on How to Engage with People on LinkedIn:

1. Adding Connections: When you friend someone (they call it “Adding a Connection”) type a note about who you are. If you don’t, the recipient will receive a generic message, and is less likely to accept your connection. If you want to connect with me, add a personal note to your connection request such as, “Hi Mark, I’m a Smashwords author” or “I listen to the Smart Author Podcast” or “I read your book.” I almost always accept connection requests from authors and publishers.

2. Never Spam: Once you create an account and start connecting with people, LinkedIn allows you to send emails which they call “InMails” to any of your friends. Never send mass emails through LinkedIn. Don’t spam your connections with solicitations to purchase your book, and never use LinkedIn to build your personal mailing lists. Such practices are unethical and unprofessional. Whenever I receive such solicitations, I block the person immediately. LinkedIn makes it easy to remove connections through their “Remove Connections” feature.

3. Ask Questions and Learn: As a business person, you’ll often run into questions you can’t easily answer. Maybe you have a tax accounting question, or an employment law question or a copyright question. There’s likely a group or forum for that at LinkedIn where you can post questions, and get them answered by professionals who are passionate about helping people on that subject. Back in my PR agency days, I’d sometimes hang out at LinkedIn answering questions people had about public relations and strategic marketing. It was fun, and every once in a while I’d get business leads or speaking opportunities from it.

4. Add Value: By now you’re recognizing this is a consistent theme for me. With its myriad forums, turbocharged online resume features and the ability to connect people on a professional level, LinkedIn is a useful tool. How to Work with Beta Readers

Episode 5 of the Smart Author podcast is dedicated to working with beta readers.

Beta readers can help you write a better book.

A beta reader is a test reader who volunteers to read your book and provide feedback prior to publication. A beta reader round is when you simultaneously receive feedback from multiple beta readers.

The goal of a beta reader round is to solicit honest and critical feedback. You want your beta readers to scrutinize your writing style, pacing, plot, character development, dialogue, and story arc. If these sound familiar to the same elements you’d hire a developmental editor to look at, you’re correct.

Beta readers go beyond developmental editing by giving you feedback from your target audience’s point of view. For example, do they love your ending or hate it?

Although it feels great to receive gushing praise from beta readers, such praise is useless unless the beta reader articulates how, why and where the book deserves such praise.

Beta readers provide valuable insight into how a reader would react to the current version of your manuscript. These insights can make the difference between a three star review and a five star review. These are the differences that separate a future best seller from a poor seller.

Recruiting Beta Readers

Decide how many beta readers you want in your first round. I’d suggest between 12 and 20. You want readers who represent your target reading base and readers who read a lot of books. Avid readers bring better insight into what works and what doesn’t.

When we did beta rounds for Boob Tube, the novel my wife and I wrote, we found the best feedback came from complete strangers who weren’t afraid to offend us. It’s difficult to obtain honest, critical feedback from friends and family members. They’re proud of you, they think your every word is golden and they’re reluctant to hurt your feelings.

Where do you find beta readers? The answer is everywhere. You’ll find them from current readers, fellow authors and their fans, your social media followers, online forums, and of course, friends and family. To expand your participation pool, invite potential readers to invite their friends to join your beta round. A beta reader round serves as a marketing tool to help you engage with new readers.

Collecting Beta Reader Signups

It’ll save you a lot of time if you collect beta reader signups using an online form. I recommend Google Forms because it’s free, easy and flexible to set up. Once you set up the form, you provide prospective beta readers a hyperlink to your form where you can capture all of their relevant data in a spreadsheet. A big benefit of the hyperlink is that the hyperlink is easily sharable, which will facilitate online recruitment.

Access Google Forms at www.google.com/forms, and then click “+” to create a new form. At the top of the form, provide full details about the round.

Here’s how your form’s introduction might read:

Thank you for your interest in serving as a beta reader for my debut novel, Robot’s Revenge. Robot’s Revenge is speculative fiction set in the year 2040, and explores the consequences of humanity’s ever-increasing dependence upon robots. What happens to humanity when robots are networked together and begin to develop a collective consciousness?

I’m looking for honest, critical feedback, which I’ll use to guide my final revision prior to publication. All selected beta readers will receive a free digital or printed copy of the draft manuscript by the first of next month, along with an accompanying questionnaire. Completed questionnaires will be due 30 days later. All readers who complete the questionnaire by the deadline will be credited by name in the acknowledgements section (if they wish) of the final published book. Thank you for your interest and support.

Here are some notes on my wording above:

• I mentioned the book’s category. If a beta reader hates speculative fiction, this context will weed them out of your beta pool. • I gave them enough information about the story to pique their interest, without telling them the full story. • I set their expectations that I’m looking for critical feedback. This is very important. You’ll want to remind readers of this over and over again with each interaction you have with them. • I told them the formats available to them. You can decide this for yourself. I think paper is a good format because it makes it easier for readers to add notes directly on the paper as they’re experiencing their reaction. • I told them the deadline. If they choose to participate, this is what I expect of them. • I gave them an incentive to participate. I’m offering to credit them by name in the acknowledgements section of my book as my thanks for their valuable feedback. • I thanked them for their participation, and by mentioning “support” I’m letting them know that their support is important to me and this project.

Here’s a screenshot of what a form might look like in Google Forms:

The enrollment form should collect pertinent information to help you communicate with participants. Fields might include: The beta reader’s name, email address, favorite authors, and preferred method of receiving your manuscript (print or ebook?).

I created a live form for my imaginary book above, which you can access and play with below.

The hyperlinks for Google Forms are crazy long. To find the hyperlink to your form, open up the form and click “Preview,” and then the address that appears in your web browser is the address to your form. For the test form I created for you, the hyperlink is an absolute monstrosity: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUYuMHAre8eB1fuZpfSY1iyhF3I 0UsqDXtqoZ0w9JzUGz17g/viewform.

Yikes! That’s tough to share. So I used Bit.ly, a free URL shortening service, to create something more reasonable. Bit.ly transforms a long web address into a shorter one. You can even create custom bit.ly hyperlinks with more rational names. In this case, I entered the monster web address above into Bit.ly and created a custom hyperlink of http://bit.ly/RRbetasignup Now it’s more sharable. Click it to see how it brings up the form.

Sending out the Manuscript

Once you have your signups, you’ll send out the manuscript to your beta readers. Should you send it as paper or as a digital file?

Digital is faster and cheaper, but it’s not necessarily the best option.

When my wife and I conducted our beta reader rounds, we printed the manuscript at the local copy shop and then mailed it to participants along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. We sent out print copies for two reasons: 1. We encouraged readers to add notes and flag typos directly in the manuscript. 2. We created multiple short questionnaires, which we inserted into the manuscript in key locations.

Collecting Feedback

The key to unlocking the full value of a beta reader round is to create a smart questionnaire. With the right questions, you can get at the heart of a beta reader’s love or dissatisfaction.

First decide how you want to collect feedback. Your method of collecting feedback can be either paper or an online form. Of course, you could ask readers to email you their thoughts, but without the structure of pointed questions, the feedback will be less useful.

When my wife and I did our first beta reader round before Google Forms was invented, we provided readers with printed questionnaires within the printed manuscript. We placed questions at key turning points of the story, as well as at the end.

After the first chapter, for example, we asked: “How is the pacing (too fast, too slow?)?” “Do you care what happens next to Gina (our protagonist)?” “If you were browsing this book in a bookstore, would the first chapter make you want to read on, and if so why, and if not, why not?” This approach of placing short questionnaires inside the book can yield more context sensitive feedback while the reader’s feelings are freshest. We included a self-addressed stamped envelope, so they could mail everything back to us.

Today in the age of ebooks, you can accomplish the same feat digitally by inserting hyperlinks within key points of your ebook that point to separate Google Forms. To create those forms, just follow the process above again by visiting http://google.com/forms, then click “+” to create a new form.

If you do create multiple survey questionnaires, be sure to give each form a logical name such as “Book Title – Chapter One,” “Book Title – Midpoint” and “Book Title – End.” These logical names will help both you and the reader.

If you don’t want the complexity of managing multiple short questionnaires, another option is to provide a single final questionnaire at the end. But if you do this, the reader may not remember that at the end of your first chapter or fifth chapter, they wanted to stop reading.

Your approach really depends on the type of feedback you seek.

Reviewing and Incorporating Feedback

You’re the author. This is your book. You’re not obligated to agree with every piece of feedback you receive. Instead, use the feedback for insight and inspiration.

My wife and I did two separate beta reader rounds, each followed by a major revision. In each round we had over 15 participants. After reviewing the responses from each round, we found it easy to determine which suggestions we wanted to implement, and which to discard.

If a reader was upset by something that happened to a character, maybe we wanted them to be upset at that point. But if multiple readers complained about the same thing, we gave the feedback extra consideration. In our first beta round, we discovered that we dragged our protagonist through so much mud, hardship and bad life choices, that the readers found her unbelievable and unlikeable (even though our fictional account was based on true stories)! After that great feedback, we were able to make our protagonist stronger and more relatable.

Some of the best insights we received were one-off comments from a single reader that helped expose blind spots we and the other readers missed. This is the value of getting multiple readers and multiple points of view.

If you’ve never done a beta reader round, give it a try. I’ll bet the results will blow your mind in a good way.

Give Thanks Once the beta reader round is completed, thank each beta reader by name in a personal email. Their feedback just helped make your book better. How to Earn Free Press Coverage

As I mentioned in Chapter One, prior to starting Smashwords in 2008, I ran an award-winning Silicon Valley PR firm for about 15 years.

I’ve always had enormous respect for the power of PR, and its potential to be used as a force for good or evil.

A quick check of the day’s headlines in this era of fake news will give you a depressing sense of how people use the political derivative of PR – propaganda – for evil.

In this final section of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, I want to share how you can harness the power of PR for good – and this good is to help you draw greater attention to your author brand and your books.

I’ll teach you how to work in the spirit of partnership with professional journalists, to earn mainstream media coverage that can elevate your brand and your books, to thousands of potential readers.

As an indie author, you’re running a business. Your marketing objective is to raise awareness of your author brand, and build positive brand perceptions that motivate readers to take actions beneficial to your business.

The most important of these actions is for your target reader to gain the necessary awareness and desire to give your writing a try. Once they try your book, it’s up to your writing to earn the reader’s ongoing trust, loyalty and word- of-mouth.

As I explained in the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, there are two primary components to brand-building. The first is awareness-building, and the second is perception-building. Awareness is a necessary precursor to perception, because without awareness there can be no perception.

One of the most powerful methods of building brand awareness and perception is to be the subject of traditional media coverage.

In this section I’ll teach you skills and techniques that can help you earn free press coverage. You’ll learn how to leverage your expertise and credibility as an author to gain inclusion in mainstream media stories.

The mainstream media is story-driven. Reporters are looking to develop and cover stories that educate, inform and entertain their readers. Throughout this section, when I refer to your story in the context of publicity, I’m not referring to your book in the narrow sense. Instead, I’m referring in a broader sense to the newsworthy aspects of your authorship.

We’ll explore the news you’re making that deserves press coverage, and we’ll explore your opportunity to contribute useful insights, perspectives and expertise that can get you quoted in these media stories. You’ll also learn how to help reporters develop original stories that would not have existed were it not for your vision and contribution.

Media is a Vehicle to Deliver Your Message

Media coverage comes in many forms. It could be a feature story about you in a local or national newspaper, a story in a print magazine, an interview on a national television or radio show, or a guest interview on a podcast. It could be a quote from you in a broader story about some trend or issue.

Most stories in the media are formulaic. They must pull together different components that work together to form the whole, much in the same way your heart, lungs and nervous system contribute to the story that is your life.

For example, a reporter will cover the news – such as a hurricane making landfall. To round out their story, they’ll want to speak to people affected by the news, people that are making the news and independent experts for their perspective on the news.

Depending on the story, as an author, you’ll have opportunities to contribute to these stories from one or more perspectives. You’ll also have the opportunity to suggest stories to which you can contribute. The stories you suggest are bigger than you. These stories are the vehicles that will carry your story to a greater audience.

Whether the story is about you or it includes a short quote from you in support of a larger story, the story that’s published will help elevate your author brand and your books to thousands of people.

The value of media coverage is that it’s more credible, more desirable and more visible than paid advertising.

Consumers go out of their way to ignore paid advertising. This is why it’s so difficult for authors to achieve a return investment for most paid advertising.

Consumers view a paid advertisement as less trustworthy and less credible. Often paid advertising clutters up the physical or virtual page, and gets in the way of the reader reading the journalist-produced articles and stories they want to consume from trusted media outlets. If the New York Times or your local newspaper chooses to interview you for a feature story, that story is perceived by readers as an endorsement. It’s an affirmation of your awesomeness. This is because traditional media coverage is curated by professional journalists, and therefore it’s viewed as more credible.

If you’re fortunate enough to earn such coverage, your brand and your books could be celebrated to an audience of hundreds of thousands of potential readers.

There’s a purpose to press coverage. It’s not about ego gratification. As an author who needs to reach readers, you have a personal responsibility to get your message out. The press is the medium to get your message to the largest possible audience.

When I ran my former PR agency, I’d often work with media-shy CEOs who didn’t want to be in the spotlight. They’d tell me, “I want to elevate the stature of our products and company, not myself.” Their modesty was virtuous, but misplaced. My response was always the same: As the CEO of this company, you have a responsibility to elevate your personal stature in the industry, because your stature will give you the platform to elevate your products and company.

As a self-published author, you are the CEO of your business. You might be a shy introvert, but if you want to take your marketing to the next level, you have a responsibility to elevate yourself, so you can elevate your business.

A reader can’t consider your book if they don’t know it exists. Even if they stumble across your book by accident, they’re less likely to consider it if your pen name – your brand – is unfamiliar to them. If they haven’t heard of you, they won’t have any perceptions about you. You’re unknown. In marketing, being unknown is tantamount to being an untrusted outcast, whereas familiarity fosters greater trust and confidence.

This is where the art of public relations come in. Public relations, also referred to in this context as publicity or media relations, is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing toolbox. Most authors have no idea how to unlock its potential.

The primary goal of public relations is to generate free publicity in the form of media coverage. Few marketing activities can elevate your author brand and your books as effectively as media coverage.

Press coverage will make you more known, and will help you build positive perceptions about your brand and your work.

The term “media” is a broad term. Media is basically anything upon which your message can travel.

In the early 1990s the most coveted media coverage was print and broadcast. In those days I’d work to get our clients coverage in major national newspapers like the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, or in national magazines, or in local newspapers. We’d also try to land them stories on television and radio.

By the late 90s, online media coverage came on the scene as Internet usage grew, and magazines moved online. Blogging came to prominence as an important media outlet around this time. At first, online media coverage was seen as less important than physical print coverage. But today attitudes have changed.

The online story often gets significantly more readership than the print version, because the online version is sharable across social media.

Over the last two decades we’ve seen the rise of new and increasingly influential media forms. In addition to traditional media moving online in exciting ways, media itself has become democratized with the advent of social media, blogs, YouTube video, and podcasting. We’re all media now.

Traditional media has fractured. It’s become atomized and infinitely specialized, and in the process, thousands of exciting new outlets for media coverage have joined traditional outlets, to carry your marketing message directly to your target audience.

The Thinking Behind Strategic Media Relations

Now the big, burning question.

What can an author do to become the subject of positive media coverage?

It starts with a process of reverse engineering.

First identify the audience you need to reach. Who’s the reader who will enjoy your book more than any other?

Once you identify your audience, identify the media outlets your audience consumes, because these are the outlets you’ll want to target when you begin your media outreach.

Study each media outlet. Browse their stories to gain a sense of how they seek to serve their audience. What do they write about?

The only way you can convince a journalist to include you or your books in a story, is if they believe your information or expertise can help them build a story that will serve their target audience.

No two media outlets are the same. Some might write only book reviews, and others might publish a mix of news stories, book reviews or opinion pieces. The next step is message development. Visualize what your target readers need to know. What are the perceptions that will drive them to seek out and purchase your books? Then you can identify the messages to help build and reinforce those perceptions.

For example, if you write non-fiction, you want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert on the topics covered in your books. You can establish your expertise by sharing your knowledge in a way that will get picked up by the media, so that the audience of that media is exposed to your author brand and your expertise. Prospective readers who appreciate your expertise will seek out more by purchasing your books.

If you write fiction, you want to establish your author brand as an author of high- quality books in your specific genre or category. You might even want to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in topics that are adjacent to the category of your books. Your inclusion in mainstream media coverage will serve as an endorsement of your author brand, and send the message that you’re an author worth reading.

In both the non-fiction and fiction instances, the goal is to build awareness, familiarity and demand for author brand.

To bring this reverse engineering exercise full circle, identify the common intersection between the types of stories the specific media outlet’s audience wants to hear, and your ability to package your messages in a way that you can become part of those stories. In this way, the stories become the vehicles to carry your messages to prospective readers.

Your opportunities are multi-dimensional. For example, if you wrote a cookbook, there are an unlimited number of ways that you can slice and dice your expertise to serve the informational needs of different media audiences.

Maybe a magazine that focuses on parenting has a regular monthly feature on how families can stretch their budgets. In this case, you could offer the magazine tips on how readers can stretch their meal budget. Or maybe a different magazine or media outlet is focused on heathy living for seniors, or for athletes, or women, or men. You could offer to be interviewed for a story on how to prepare healthier meals. Or maybe it’s a cooking magazine, and your expertise could help them develop an interesting story on how various spices interact with one another to create exciting new flavors.

There might also be geographical, cultural or historical angles to explore as well, and new audiences you can reach that would be interested in these different angles. If you’re an expert on a regional cuisine, for example, there are airlines that fly to that region and publish high-circulation in-flight magazines, with articles celebrating cultural aspects of that region. The stories you seek to inspire, or gain inclusion in, will leverage your expertise to draw both direct and indirect attention to your author brand and book.

Media Outreach – How to Work with Reporters

The most effective method of earning press coverage is for you to get out there and proactively pitch reporters on your story ideas and expertise. You want to learn to think like a reporter. If you can help journalists serve their readers or audience, you can gain inclusion in these stories.

In the last section, you learned how to identify the messages the media can deliver, that will establish the awareness and perceptions that cause readers to gravitate toward your books.

With that thinking under your belt, you’re ready to start contacting reporters. Below I list 24 tips to help you plan and execute your media outreach. Before you start contacting reporters, you first need to identify which media outlets and reporters should be contacted.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNTIES FOR PRESS COVERAGE

1. Visualize the types of stories for which you want to gain inclusion – Like most authors, you’ve probably read stories in the media for which you have strong opinions and for which you’re thinking, “They should have interviewed me for that!”

Every time you’re interviewed for a reporter’s story, that story becomes the vehicle that carries your author brand name (your pen name) to a greater audience, and it also carries with it your unique perspectives and expertise.

Visualize the types and subject matter of stories for which you seek to gain inclusion. What are the keywords and phrases associated with those stories? Next create Google Alerts (the subject of Tip #6 in my 66 book marketing tips) for each of these keywords or phrases, so you’re alerted whenever a reporter writes a story on this subject. This will help you identify media outlets that reach your audience, and will also help you identify the journalists who are interested in covering these topics.

A journalist that writes a story about romance ebooks today - or steampunk fiction, or whatever your category – is likely to write similar stories in the future.

If the story has a comments section, add your expert perspective and opinion. Keep the tone positive.

Write an email to the reporter and let them know you enjoyed the story, and then introduce yourself and offer to serve as a resource if the reporter plans to cover similar subjects in the future. And finally, add the reporter to your target media list for future contact if you have a story that interests them.

2. Build your target media list. Identify media outlets that help you reach your target audience and add them to a spreadsheet, so you can contact them in the future. These outlets may range from specialized genre-specific magazines to national mainstream media, for which your target audience represents a subset of their audience.

Let’s say you live in the US and published a book titled, “How to Protect Your Garden from Squirrels without Killing the Cute Little Critters.” There are hundreds of gardening reporters at local and national newspapers across the country who could benefit from your wisdom.

Where do you find them and their contact information?

There are great media directory services such as Cision and Bulldog Reporter, that will tell you which reporters cover what and how to contact them. But these services are too expensive for most authors, so I don’t recommend you buy them.

Instead contact your local library and ask them if they subscribe to these or other media directories. A good media directory will list the media outlet, the circulation or reach of the media outlet, which reporters cover which topics, and how best to contact the reporter.

If you don’t have access to a media directory, you can build your own target list by visiting the web sites of your target media. Click to the stories in your subject category to learn which reporters cover your category. Often stories are accompanied by the reporter’s email address. Or check for a masthead of the names of their editors, reporters and beats.

In addition to traditional media, don’t skimp on bloggers. A company called Blogmetrics operates a great free service called BlogRank. You’ll find it at http:// blogmetrics.org. BlogRank allows you to search on a topic, and then it produces a ranked list of the largest and most influential blogs for that topic. Back to my gardening idea, to view BlogRank’s list of the top gardening bloggers – go to http://www.blogmetrics.org/gardening.

Visit and read the blogs to identify which ones do the best job of reaching your target audience. Study what they write about, who their target audience is and visualize how you can shape your expertise to benefit their audience while promoting your book. Once you know those answers, you’re ready to contact the blog owner with a targeted pitch. Later in this list of 24 media outreach tips, I’ll share advice on how to pitch reporters and bloggers. 3. Ask your readers what media they consume – Post a query on Facebook to your readers and ask them their favorite media outlets that they use to stay informed about the news, or to discover new books in their favorite categories. You’ll likely gain several ideas for additional media targets that will help you reach more readers like them.

4. Build an editorial calendar. Many national magazines and newspapers maintain editorial calendars of major feature stories they plan for the year ahead. As you develop your list of target media, check the web sites for editorial calendars. Magazines and newspapers publish these calendars to help advertisers identify opportunities where the target readers for these stories match their target audience.

PR professionals and authors can use these editorial calendars to identify upcoming features for which the author’s expertise or book could provide useful assistance in the development of the story. You’ll often find the calendars in the advertising section of the web site, and often within the “media kit.”

The editorial departments of monthly magazines are usually working four to five months in advance of the cover date of the magazine, so contact them early. This means, for example, that if a major monthly magazine is planning an appropriate feature story for their December issue, you’ll want to start reaching out to their editorial department in early August.

5. Subscribe to HARO – I mentioned HARO – Help-A-Reporter-Online – earlier in Chapter 2’s Tip #7, within my list of 66 book marketing tips. With a free subscription to this thrice-daily service, you’ll be fed a steady stream of potential media opportunities. Respond to the queries as appropriate.

COMPOSING THE PITCH

6. Celebrate your identity – you’re an author – You want to help develop stories where you’re either the feature of the story or you’re one of the experts quoted. When a reporter quotes you and identifies you, you’ll want to be identified by first and last name, and as the author of {book title}, or as a writer of books on {book subject}. In this way, a simple one line quote with attribution serves as a publicity vehicle by which you can raise the stature of your brand.

This means that per the advice in my 66 book marketing tips, all of your social media profiles should identify you as an author, and your email signature should also identify you as author. If your name is Jane Smith, and you’re an author, and a reporter interviews you and identifies you only as Jane Smith, a resident of San Jose, California, you gain no marketing benefit from the quote.

7. Honesty. Always be 100% honest. Honesty is the secret to successful PR. You want to develop a life-long relationship with that reporter, and relationships are built on trust and credibility. 8. Email is best for first contact. Even if you have the blogger’s or reporter’s phone number, email is always the best form of first contact because you’ll never risk interrupting them while they’re on deadline (if you want to hear a monster roar, cold call a reporter while they’re on deadline – NEVER do that because it’s not considerate). The best time to send a newspaper reporter an email is in the morning, because daily newspapers go on deadline starting in the afternoon.

9. No file attachments. Never send a press release as a file attachment, and never send multiple files in the zip format. Reporters won’t want to open it for fear it contains a virus. It also requires multiple clicks to unzip zipped files. Instead, always compose your email in plain text (not HTML), and copy the press release into the body of the email as plain text. If you want to provide other digital files, provide hyperlinks to where the reporter can download them from a trusted site such as your web site, blog or Dropbox.

10. Provide a digital press kit with links

Twenty years ago it was common practice for PR people to snail mail physical press kits to reporters. A press kit is a folder containing the press release, artwork (such as high resolution head shot cover image), printed or digital media (CD, thumb drive), and brochures or data sheets if appropriate.

Although PR people still send out physical kits, a better option for most authors is to create digital kits, which can be as simple as your text email, along with the text of the press release (if you have one), and hyperlinks to where reporters can download your photo, book cover image and other supplementary materials.

Stories with images get better readership, and it should go without saying that if your picture or book cover is included in the story, it will significantly increase your brand stature.

11. Pitch around themes for which you’re a subject matter expert. You’re a subject matter expert in something or many things. Even if your book has already been on the market for some time, you can still package your pitch around themes that help the reporter write something new.

Back to my gardening theme, let’s say you wrote an ebook about organic gardening. You could pitch gardening reporters a story like, “Five Tips for Pesticide-FREE Gardening,” and these tips would draw upon information in your book. Reporters love to run checklists. Checklists also articulate your expertise, which may motivate the reporter to decide to interview you.

For non-fiction authors it’s easy to identify the areas in which you’re a subject matter expert. Just look at your books. Fiction authors are subject matter experts too. Most fiction authors do extensive research on their subject. If you write Steampunk fiction, for example, you’re probably an expert on Victorian-era technology and clothing. If you write historical fiction set during World War II, you’re probably an expert on aspects of that war. If you’ve sold a lot of ebooks, you could be interviewed for an article on self-publishing.

I remember a few years ago I was watching a CNN special, and the topic was illegal drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States. Their on-air subject matter expert was an American author who had researched Mexican drug cartels for his novels about the drug trade. What amazing press coverage for him and his novels!

12. Great pitches are about substance. Avoid hyperbole and hype. That’s a turn-off to reporters. Stick to the verifiable facts.

13. The pitch should be relevant to their audience. The reporter is there to serve their audience, not to serve you. Put yourself in their audience’s shoes, because that’s what the reporter does every minute of the day. If you write romance novels, the pitch to a journalist at a romance magazine will be much different than if you’re composing a pitch to the publishing reporter at the Wall Street Journal. A romance magazine serves readers who are enthusiastic about romance novels, whereas a publishing reporter at the Wall Street Journal cares about the business of publishing and how it impacts publicly traded booksellers and publishers.

14. Personalize your pitch based on the journalist’s prior stories. Each reporter or blogger should receive a personalized pitch written just for them. Research the reporter before you contact them. Confirm they write about topics similar to your realm of expertise or interest.

Don’t pitch your story to reporters who won’t care. For example, a gardening reporter would never want to talk to an author of a political memoir, unless that author was also an accomplished gardener. A gardening reporter will care about seeds, plants, soil, bugs and critters, weather, gardening tools, gardening techniques, and gardeners.

Go the extra mile and read some of a journalist’s prior stories before you pitch them. If you read their stories, you’ll know what interests them. If you can tell them you read one or more of their stories, and cite one by name and give them the hyperlink to it, you’re ten times more likely to receive a positive response, because they’ll know you took the time to understand their beat and their interests before you contacted them. And if they no longer cover that beat, if they see you went the extra mile, they’re more likely to introduce you to the reporter that covers that beat now. 15. The pitch should be short. Journalists are pressed for time. They won’t have the time or attention to read a rambling 1,000 word explanation of why you’re contacting them. Your pitch should be no longer than a few short paragraphs, followed by your press release pasted below the pitch, if you have one, and if it’s appropriate for the pitch (a little bit later I’ll teach you how to write a press release). If you can’t hook the reporter with your email subject line, they won’t open your email, and if you can’t hook them in the first two or three sentences of the email, you’re wasting their time.

16. The tone of your email. The tone of your email should be professional and to the point, but not stiff and stilted. Think business casual. Avoid attempts at humor, especially on first contact, because humor or snark are easily misinterpreted. Reporters care about facts.

17. Address them by name. Although you’re welcome to address them formally as, “Dear Ms. Smith,” I’ve always found that first name is best. No need for unnecessary formality. No need to elevate them to a pedestal when you can show them the respect they deserve in other more meaningful ways.

Always address them by name, and never by, “Hi,” without the name. Put yourself in their shoes. They receive hundreds of emails each day, and they’re looking for reasons to click delete as they clear out their inbox. When I receive an email addressed to, “Hi,” without my name, I usually delete it without reading further because it’s either spam or it’s not for me. Do they not know my first name?

Also, for the same reasons, never address the email to “Dear reporter,” or “To Whom it May Concern.” Nothing is more personal to a person than their first name. Use it.

18. Don’t expect a reply to every pitch. Every reporter is hounded by people who want free press coverage. Even if they’re interested in your story, they may not have time to reply. Or maybe they’ll just file your query and contact information aside for future reference. That’s good too.

If they ignore your pitch, don’t worry. Most pitches won’t receive a reply. PR is a numbers game. If you write 20 well-researched and personalized pitches, and you get one story out of it, that single story will make all of the effort worthwhile. If your pitch is personalized, appropriate and targeted, you’ll earn a higher response rate.

19. Don’t hound the reporter with follow-up. Don’t be annoying. One tactic unsavory sales people use is to send you an email and when you don’t respond, they re-send you the same email over and over again by clicking to their outbox and doing a reply-all, and then they ask you if you missed their email. That’s annoying. If someone does that to me, and they’re trying to pitch me something, I’ll block them. You should too. Never do this to a reporter. You serve at their pleasure, not the other way around.

20. Always respect a reporter or blogger’s time. If you contact the wrong blogger or reporter, or if you pester them, they’ll remember you for the wrong reasons. Remember, they’re under no obligation to cover your story, no matter how wonderful your story is.

21. Always be polite. Authors are passionate people. If a reporter or blogger rejects your pitch, thank them for their consideration and move on. Don’t argue with them. Don’t call them names. In other words, don’t be an idiot. Believe it or not, I’ve heard many stories of authors abusing book bloggers who declined to review their books.

22. Tips for contacting bloggers. Unlike reporters, who are paid by their media outlet, many bloggers are doing it for the passion alone. Ask yourself how you can help them serve their audience, and how you might make their job easier by providing them content for a great post. In addition to pitching them stories, check to see if they feature guest bloggers. If they do, offer yourself as a guest blogger.

23. Leave an open door. At the end of the pitch, try to leave the door open, so if they can’t do a story now, they’ll consider you as an expert resource in the future.

24. Write a great press release. In the section that follows I’ll teach you how, and under what circumstances, to write a press release. A press release is a time-honored form of packaging newsworthy information that can then be provided to a journalist. Professional journalists use press releases to write stories, or use them to inspire ideas for different stories.

In my tech PR days where we’d often promote new technology products, we wanted the press release to answer, “What it is, what it does and why it’s special” in the first sentence. This context is important. If you can’t answer the question of why anyone should care, then you shouldn’t issue a press release.

Sample pitch with Commentary

Here’s how a good email pitch might read, incorporating some of the guidance I provided above.

Hi Sam,

I just read your gardening story from last year at http://linkhere.com [insert a direct hyperlink to their story – it reminds them of what they wrote, and it confirms to them you read it] about weed control using herbicidal sprays. I’m a master gardener, and I thought your story was excellent.

Yesterday I published an ebook at Smashwords titled, 50 TIPS FOR CHEMICAL-FREE GARDENING ([Insert direct hyperlink to it at Smashwords]), and I dedicated an entire chapter to organic weed control.

Would you believe bantam chickens are great weed eaters? I also address important topics such as soil conditioning, water conservation and pesticide- free bug control [Note how I’m dropping in additional topic areas likely to interest a gardening reporter. I want the reporter to save my contact information for the next time they write a story on one of these topics].

If you’d like a free review copy, you can use this coupon code at Smashwords to download it as an ebook at http://smashwords.com/linkhere: {Provide coupon code}. I’d also be happy to speak on the phone if you’d like to learn more about my organic gardening tips.

I pasted my press release below.

Please let me know if you’re working on anything now or in the future where I can be of assistance (This leaves door open to future collaboration).

Thanks for your consideration,

Jane

Jane Gardener 313.333.1212 [Insert the rest of your email signature here]

[Paste your press release here, below your email signature]

The example above gives you an idea of the tone and content of a targeted pitch that’s likely to be met with a smile on the other end. Note how I presented the reporter multiple options to work with me, and reasons to keep my information on file for the future. They could pull from the press release, email me back or set up a phone call. No pressure.

How and When to Write a Press Release

One of the most effective methods of packaging your media-worthy story is to write a press release.

Press releases have been around for decades as one of the primary vehicles by which companies package and disseminate news to the press. If you learn how to write a good press release, it’ll give you an advantage in the battle to secure high-profile press coverage.

As I suggested in marketing Tip #50 earlier in this book, you could write a press release to celebrate your next book release, and send the press release to your local newspaper.

The act of writing a press release is a valuable exercise. It forces you to confront, define and refine various aspects of the newsworthiness of your expertise, knowledge or story. A press release helps you answer why the world should care.

You’ll find the skills you learn writing a press release will carry over into all of your other marketing. For example, once you know how to write a great headline, you’ll find that all of your social media posts become more compelling too. The first couple sentences of your press release will help you hone your elevator pitch.

Below, I’ll teach you how to write a press release, and then I’ll share ideas on how to promote your story.

First, let’s review three benefits of press releases:

1. The press release is a proven form of communication. Recipients of well written press releases, such as reporters and bloggers, know that it will contain all of the information they need to evaluate the suitability of your story for their audience, as well as all of the information they need to cover it. A good press release tells the recipient what you’re announcing or offering, why they should care and where they can learn more information if interested.

2. Press releases aren’t just for the traditional press any more. Since a press release is a packaged story, consumers read press releases too. Some news organizations even have channels where they run news feeds of press releases.

3. Press releases help you build paths (hyperlinks) back to your author profile page, your book pages or to your web site or blog. Your press release will be forever archived and discoverable on search engines like Google. This means you’re building paths to help Internet users discover you and your book. The more paths you build to your online presence, the more likely you are to rank high in the search engines, which means your prospective readers are more likely to find you.

What’s a good press release topic?

A good press release should have news value for its target media outlets. The company or author issuing the press release provides the press release to the press, in the hope that it will generate a story or interview request. Each media outlet will have a different definition of what’s newsworthy, based on the outlet’s editorial mission. Their interest in your story can also be influenced by the time of year, geography or current events.

Your home town’s local newspaper, for example, covers news of interest to local residents. They might be interested to learn that a local resident has just published a new novel inspired by the local area. Or they might be interested to receive a press release announcing that you’re holding a book launch event at the local library, or that you’re announcing that several indie authors are holding a public reading at the local library.

A press release might have local or national relevance.

How might your book be of national interest?

For example, let’s say you wrote a gardening book. You could publish a press release that shares the top five tips for ridding your garden of pesky squirrels. You could promote it to the home and garden writers at major newspapers, magazines and blogs. A good time to pitch the story might be in early spring when readers are starting to plan and plant their summer gardens.

You might also have the opportunity to offer yourself as an expert source tied to a topical news story. In this way, even an old book can serve as the catalyst for fresh press coverage.

Imagine you wrote a book many years ago titled, “Flood Repair for Homeowners.” When the next hurricane hits Florida and causes major flooding, you could issue a press release to share important flood remediation tips drawn from your book, and then send it to reporters at all the newspapers in the region. In the aftermath of any disaster, local journalists will be hungry to write stories that can help local residents recover from the disaster.

How to Write a Press Release

Press releases have a strict format you should follow. If you don’t follow the format, the receiving journalist is less likely to consider you as a credible source for their story.

A good length for a press release is the equivalent of one or two printed pages. Shorter is usually better.

Let’s look at the elements of a press release, piece by piece.

The elements of a good press release: 1. For Immediate Release: These three words usually appear flush left at the top of a press release, on their own line. It signals to the reporter that this is a press release and it contains news for their immediate consideration and coverage.

2. Press contact: If you’re sending the press release to a reporter, add a section titled “Press contact:” where you include contact information such as your first and last name, your email address and phone number. If you’re placing the press release online or to a wire service, drop the phone number and obfuscate your email address, so automated scrapers don’t add you to spam email lists. My email address, obfuscated for example, is first initial second initial at Smashwords dot com. In a print formatted press release, the press contact section usually appears at the top of the press release, near or across from “For Immediate Release.”. Alternatively, you can place it at the end of the press release under the boilerplate.

3. The Headline: The headline’s words are either ALL CAPS or Initial Caps. Initial Caps is best. A good headline summarizes the high level message of what you’re announcing or offering. If your headline isn’t compelling, no one will read beyond the headline. In my flood remediation example above, the headline could be something like, “Flood Repair Expert Shares Ten Tips for Home Flood Recovery.” If you’re disseminating the press release on paper, the headline should be centered and should occupy no more than two lines of text in 12 or 14pt type. When you email the text of a press release, centering isn’t necessary.

4. Subhead: Subheads are always Initial Caps and centered, and are separated from the headline by a blank line. A subhead provides additional context about your announcement, and helps convey why the story is important. In my flood recovery example above, the subhead might read, “Homeowners Learn to Mitigate Flood Damage and Access Federal Disaster Recovery Assistance.”

5. Dateline: The first paragraph of your press release begins with the dateline, in the format of City, State -- Date. This tells the reporter where your news is originating. The dateline is either your home town or the city in which the news is being made.

6. First paragraph: The first paragraph of your press release should begin with a punchy sentence. It should start with common phraseology, such as “Jane Smith, author of XYZ, today announced {or today shared}....” So in my flood remediation example, the first sentence might read, “Jane Smith, author of Flood Repair for Homeowners, today shared ten flood remediation tips to help homeowners cope in the aftermath of Hurricane Jeffrey.” A good first sentence and first paragraph is packed with context. It should tell the reader what the announcement is about, who it’s for, why it’s important, and why the audience would care. If you don’t grab the journalist’s interest by the end of the first or second sentence, they won’t read the rest of your press release. 7. Second paragraph: The second paragraph is a good place for a quote by the author. A strong quote adds useful context or information, and should be written in such a way that the reporter would want to lift the quote and place it directly into their story. A good quote should contain only two or three sentences and it should follow a strict format of: “First sentence,” followed by a comma and end quote, followed by an attribution and a book title, followed by a second and possibly third sentence of the quote. The first quote should make a notable statement, and the second and third sentences should add context. In my fictitious example here, Jane’s quote might read as follows: “The greatest property damage from hurricanes is usually caused by flooding,” said Jane Smith, author of the book, Flood Repair for Homeowners. “The most immediate priority after a flood is to dry out the premises before mold sets in. Left untreated, mold can destroy a home and render it unsafe for habitation.”

8. Third paragraph onward: This is where you’ll place additional meaty and newsworthy information. In the flood example, Jane’s ten tips could be bulleted here. In these following paragraphs, brevity is important. You want to provide the reporter enough information to form the basis of a short story, or you want it to spark enough interest for them to request a full-fledged interview with you.

If you write non-fiction, this is a good place to summarize or share valuable knowledge. Or give the reader a high level overview on what they’ll learn from your book and how this information will benefit them. If you’re writing fiction, this is a good place to provide some juicy details about your story, the research you conducted or what inspired you to write the story.

9. The Boilerplate: This is the last paragraph of the press release, and will usually be titled, “About the author.” In this single paragraph you’ll place the author bio and summarize where readers can purchase the book or learn more about the author. The boilerplate can include hyperlinks to your Smashwords Author Profile Page, your book pages, your personal web site, your blog, and your social media coordinates, as well as mention which retailers carry your ebook.

On the next page I’ll show you how your press release might look following the design recommendations above. Sample Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Contact Jane Smith Author, Flood Repair for Homeowners (XXX) XXX-XXXX [email protected]

Flood Repair Expert Shares Ten Tips for Home Flood Recovery

Homeowners Learn to Mitigate Flood Damage and Access Federal Disaster Recovery Assistance

Miami, Florida - August 21, 2018 -- Jane Smith, author of Flood Repair for Homeowners, today shared ten flood remediation tips to help homeowners cope in the aftermath of Hurricane Jeffrey. These ten tips will help homeowners mitigate damage, speed cleanup and save money on repairs.

"The greatest property damage from hurricanes is usually caused by flooding," said Jane Smith, author of the new book, Flood Repair for Homeowners. "The most immediate priority after a flood is to try out the premises before mold sets in. Left untreated, mold can destroy a home and render it unsafe for habitation."

Ten Tips for Home Flood Recovery:

1. Tip one - tip described 2. Tip two - tip described 3. Etc...

About Jane Smith Jane Smith, a writer based in San Jose, California, is the author of ten books that teach homeowners how to prepare for, and recover from, common natural disasters. Her latest book, Flood Repair for Homeowners, published in January 2018, won the coveted Ducky Award from the Society of Flood Engineers. Flood Repair for Homeowners is available as an ebook priced at $9.99 at all major retailers, including Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, and Amazon. Follow Jane on social media at Twitter @janesmithflood or visit her Smashwords Author page for more information at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/janesmithxxxxx

### Where to Run Your Press Release:

In addition to including your press release within your email pitches to the media, you can also run your press release on one of the press release wire services.

There are several free press release wire services you can use to get good exposure for your press release. One I’ve experimented with is PRlog.org. For an industrial strength wire service, you might consider PRNewswire at http://www.prnewswire.com/, but it’s not free.

Try a free service first. The primary benefit of publishing your press release on one of the PR wire services is that your press release will become archived and discoverable by the major search engines.

It can be difficult to sell enough books to justify the high expense of something like PR Newswire, which will cost $300 or more. If you decide to experiment with one of the paid services, run your press release only on the cheapest circuit, such as your “local” circuit.

Many of the paid services offer so-called “national” or “international” or “premium” circuits to give your press release broader distribution. My experience over the years has shown that these broader circuits are usually a waste of money.

Many people believe that by running a press release on a wire service, they’ll get press coverage. This is not usually the case. Your best press coverage will come from proactive promotion when you personally reach out to reporters and bloggers and pitch your story to them.

Learn More about the Practice of Public Relations

Several years ago I wrote a short ebook titled, The 10-Minute PR Checklist - Earn the Publicity You Deserve, available at Smashwords and all major ebook retailers. I wrote it for marketing professionals, entrepreneurs and business executives, to help them understand how they can leverage strategic public relations to achieve any business objective.

Although it’s not specifically written for authors, some authors who are serious about doing their own PR have found it helpful. Unlike my free ebooks on ebook publishing, this short ebook carries a price of $7.99. Readers of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide can enter coupon code YM44S at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/58285 to get it for $2.99. Thanks for reading

Thank you for reading the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. I trust the ideas you learned here will help you reach more readers.

Do you have suggestions for additional marketing tips I should include in future revisions? I welcome your feedback. Contact me at mc at smashwords dot com. If you found this ebook useful, won’t you please share it with a friend?

Happy marketing,

Mark Coker Founder Smashwords, Inc. http://www.smashwords.com/

Other Books by Mark Coker

The Smashwords Style Guide (How to format and publish an ebook for free)

The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (28 best practices of the most commercially successful Smashwords authors)

The 10-Minute PR Checklist – How to Earn the Publicity You Deserve

Boob Tube (a novel about soap operas)

About the Author

Mark Coker is the founder of Smashwords, the world’s leading distributor of self- published ebooks. He’s also the host of the SMART AUTHOR podcast, which guides writers step-by-step from the very basics of ebook publishing to more advanced topics.

Smashwords has helped over 100,000 authors and publishers around the world release and distribute over 500,000 ebooks. Prior to founding Smashwords, Mark served as founder and president of Dovetail Public Relations, an award- winning PR firm, where he provided strategic communications counsel to dozens of Silicon Valley technology firms ranging from hot garage startups to some of the largest technology companies in the world. In his spare time, Mark enjoys spending time with his wife, gardening, hiking, traveling, and writing.

Connect with Mark Coker

For updates on Smashwords developments, follow me on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/markcoker

Smashwords blog (offers RSS and email subscriptions): http://blog.smashwords.com

Smashwords Site Updates (Written by yours truly, I share Smashwords news, bug reports, marketing tips): https://www.smashwords.com/about/beta

Friend or follow me on Facebook: http://facebook.com/markcoker

Connect with me on LinkedIn (mention you’re a Smashwords author and I’ll accept your connection): http://www.linkedin.com/in/markcoker

My Smashwords author profile: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mc

My Smashwords Interview (remember to make your own): https://www.smashwords.com/interview/mc

My prior Huffington Post columns: http://huffingtonpost.com/mark-coker

Subscribe to the Smart Author podcast – https://smashwords.com/podcast

Connect with Fellow Smashwords Authors As a Smashwords author, you’re part of a global community of over 100,000 Smashwords authors and publishers. Connect with your community.

Official Smashwords Facebook page: http://facebook.com/Smashwords Official Smart Author podcast Facebook page: https://facebook.com/smartauthorpodcast

Smashwords authors on Facebook: https://www.smashwords.com/socialbuzz/smashwords_authors/latest/facebook

Smashwords authors on Twitter: https://www.smashwords.com/socialbuzz/smashwords_authors/latest/twitter

Connect with Smashwords

How to publish and distribute with Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords

Follow Smashwords on Twitter – https://twitter.com/Smashwords

Smashwords FAQ - https://www.smashwords.com/about/supportfaq

Speaking requests - Interested to have a Smashwords representative speak before your writer’s group or conference? Contact Jim Azevedo at jim at smashwords dot com. Jim conducts private webinar workshops for writers groups, and he also manages in-person speaking engagements at major conferences featuring himself or Mark Coker.

Dedication and Acknowledgements

This book is dedicated to the over 100,000 authors at Smashwords. Your talent, creativity and passion inspire me every day. It’s through my observation of your example that I’m able to share all these marketing ideas with your fellow authors.

A special thanks to Gene Grossman of Magic Lamp Press. For many years Gene has served as a volunteer copy editor of my books, and I greatly appreciate his contribution to the 2018 edition of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide which preceded this 2020 edition. You can learn more about Gene and his books and audiobooks and services at http://www.magiclampaudiobooks.com/

I also wish to thank my wife, Lesleyann Coker. Not only did she put up with me during the nearly two years it took me to pull together this radically updated version of the Smashwords Book Marketing Guide, she also assisted with final editing and proofreading. Surely, if you find any copy errors, I introduced the errors after her last edit.

Permissions I encourage you to share this ebook with anyone.

You may excerpt any portion of this book online or in any publication, provided the excerpt is unaltered, credited to The Smashwords Book Marketing Guide by Mark Coker, and provides a hyperlink to the book at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305.

You have my permission to digitally reproduce the full version of this ebook and share it with others, provided the book is unaltered, is sourced from the latest version at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/305, and the recipient is not charged for the book, required to provide personal information, or required to register for anything.

You may not use this book to endorse or imply endorsement of products or services not already endorsed within the book. If in doubt, or if you require specific permissions not covered above, please email me at first initial second initial at smashwords dot com.

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