Marketing is a really broad topic. If any of you have ever done a Google search on tips and tricks regarding this topic, then you know the results seem to be endless. Everyone has a different opinion. My goal here, as it usual, is not to give you my opinion, primarily, but to offer you the options and give both the upsides and the downsides of both.
But because the topic of marketing is so vast, I’m going to break it down, and we’ll have a few posts on the issue. Today’s is going to center around the issue of building your email list and fan base. We’ll have some discussions about social media in a later post, and you can also see what I have to say about Pinterest now if you’re interested in starting in on that right away.
An Indisputable Fact About marketing
Here’s the one thing that will always be true about marketing. It will go hand-in-hand with publishing no matter what you choose to do. I don’t care if you’re indie-publishing with Amazon or going through a small publisher or even going with a big brand publishing company. Marketing is a must. Now, depending on what route you take, you may not need to do a lot of your own marketing. But as an author, you are always going to be interacting with fans, old and new, and striving to increase the visibility your book has.
If you rely on a company to do it all for you, you’re not going to do as well as you would pitching in. After all, you’re the writer, and people who are fans of your work want to talk to you, not your publisher. So you have to know about marketing, which is why we’re talking about it in regards to publishing.
A Launching Point
Everyone needs a launching point as an author. If you’ve been doing this for a while, you’ve already found and used yours. You’re moving on to finding new and better ways to do things. But if you’re new… Well, chances are you’re feeling overwhelmed and have no idea where to start. Even if you’re not new, there’s a chance you’ve overlooked this crucial launching point for authors in marketing.
To those who are new, let me just say… Take a deep breath. You’re going to be fine. You’ll make mistakes along the way, but that’s fine. We all have and still do. You’ll have to if you want to figure out what works. The good news is, in this day and age, there are lots of people who have done it before you and have figured out what works. And those people have an easy avenue to share about it online. You wouldn’t be reading this if we didn’t.
So, what is the starting point? In marketing, your starting point should be an email list. Social media is fine and all, but you don’t control that. If you’re locked out of the account for some reason and can’t get in, you’re not going to be able to engage with your audience there. The same is not the case for an email list. You own that, and you can send content to subscribers at any time. As long as you’re not doing anything sketchy or illegal, you won’t have to worry about being shut down.
As such, this is your starting point.
How Does Marketing Work With An Email List?
Glad you asked! For authors, there are lots of choices for marketing to an email list and for marketing to potential subscribers. The thing that seems to work the best for me is to offer free content of some sort or to give away a coupon that discounts one of your books (if you have your own website and a connected store).
Attracting New Subscribers
This is the concept of having a lead magnet. You have to give something to get something. In this case, no one wants to give up their email address if they’re not getting anything useful in return. The possibilities for a lead magnet are endless. I’ve offered coupons (as I mentioned earlier), completed short stories that are only available free to new subscribers, and free previews (the first few chapters) of books. Sometimes, I’ll offer both the free preview of a book and a coupon to go with that book, but it all depends on how I’m doing things at any given time.
If you haven’t started an email list yet, your lead magnet and choosing a platform to use for the mailing list is your first priority. You don’t have any subscribers yet, so you’re not going to be too worried about what content to send. But, once you start getting subscribers, content is a concern. So, let’s chat about that next.
Marketing to Current Subscribers
This one’s a little more work. A lead magnet is done once you have it up. You do the work up front to make it the absolute best it can be regardless of what you’re going to offer. But once the work is done, it’s done, and you don’t have to repeat it.
Marketing to the subscribers you have is harder. The goal you have is to make sure that you know your audience. Who are you trying to talk to?
Let me give you an example. I’ve talked before about who this blog is aimed towards, but for those who weren’t with me for that post, I’ll review. My goal is to provide writers with content that is professional and coming from a position of expertise. If I don’t know something, I go research it before I decide to talk about it. I make sure I know what I’m talking about.
But, I also target readers. I’m an author and a freelance editor, so my goal is to not only establish my credibility as an expert in my field but to also give the readers in the crowd something they can enjoy. That’s why I do book reviews. It’s my way of sharing books I love with other readers. At the end of the day, I’m an author and editor, yes, but I was a reader first, and so I like connecting with my readers and with others who just enjoy a good book like I do.
I take that same approach when dealing with my newsletter. The content targets both my readers and my writers. You, if you figure out who your target audience is, can do the same thing. And your goal with your lead magnet is to make sure that free or discounted content attracts people who will actually want to look at your emails.
Why Does Target Audience Matter?
Okay, story time. When I first started my newsletter and got my lead magnet set up on StoryOrigin to start attracting newsletter subscribers, I offered a short story for free. And I got a lot of subscribers. But here’s the problem… I was losing five or six every time I sent out a newsletter.
My newsletter only goes out once a month right now because, a) that’s all I can manage and b) if my audience is anything like me, once a month is fine but more than that is a nuisance in an already full inbox. I tend to unsubscribe if I’m getting emails every day or every week, and I’m less likely to buy anything from someone I feel is spamming me with content. So, I just don’t do that.
But, apparently, for the people I was attracting to my audience, one email was too much. Now, there will always be people who sign up just to get the content you’re giving away and then unsubscribe, which is why I prefer to offer coupons or discounts instead. And there will always be people who sign up and, despite your best efforts, seem to expect something from the newsletter that you never advertised. It’s good for those people to go so your list isn’t cluttered with people who have zero interest in your content.
Avoiding Freeloaders and Zero Interest Subscribers
If you’re filling your list with people who just want free stuff and have zero interest in what you have to offer, then the moment you send a newsletter that talks about a new release or markets any of your products to them, you’ll lose them. I’ve watched this happen with my newsletter before, and it’s not only frustrating, it’s disheartening. You can’t stop it from happening entirely, but gear your reader magnet or lead magnet toward those who have an interest in what you have to say.
That’s why it’s crucial you take the time to figure out your target audience and how you want to approach marketing. Your marketing strategy will be very different if you’re trying to establish expertise in your field versus trying to entertain your audience.
Now What?
So now you know why you should be building an email list and some strategies for making the process smoother. But now what? Where do you go? What email providers are best? Can you do it for free?
No one platform ever fits every person. As a result, I can’t tell you which platform you’ll like best. Usually, you can start a free account and have what you need to get started. Therefore, as long as there’s an option to export your list of emails if you choose, you can try something else and find what works.
I’ve chosen to go with MailChimp. It integrates with my website’s store and other platforms well, and I don’t have to pay to get that feature. Since I don’t pay, I can say that it’s a little limited on what it can do at times. I can automate welcome emails and organize the email list as I wish, but I can’t schedule emails for future dates. Instead, I write the email, save it, and manually send later. A little inconvenient, but it gives a lot of features that other platforms don’t always give, so no complaints here.
Options for Integrating Your Email Subscription Provider with Lead Magnet Sites
On this one, I also found that MailChimp is easier to find integration info for. However, the two sites I use for lead magnets do support other email list sites. I’ve liked working with StoryOrigin best for gaining new subscribers with lead magnets. They seem to have more options for joining promotions with those lead magnets than BookFunnel. However, BookFunnel also has options and has more ways to control the delivery of ARC copies than StoryOrigin does. However, you do have to pay a monthly (or annual) subscription fee. So if you’re looking for free, StoryOrigin offers quite a lot for being free software.
Conclusion
Well, that’s all on marketing for this week. Next week, we’ll go into some other areas of marketing that you’ll need to give your book its best shot at publication. I look forward to having you all join me!
As election season gets into full swing and everyone is posting about this or that that’s got their hackles up thanks to something “the other side” has done, I’ve been watching what people on both sides are saying. And while I think that both sides sometimes have good points, I’m alarmed by what I see. Even more so as I’ve been reading through 1984 by Orwell and waking up to just how many parallels there are between the world Orwell presents in the book and our own world right now. (If you see lots of quotes from Orwell’s 1984 in here, now you know why.)
Scrolling through the comments on political posts or my newsfeed on Facebook where both liberals and conservatives are posting, the thing I see most is an overwhelming proliferation of ignorance. Yes, you heard right. Ignorance. Sure, they’re well informed about what they can’t stand about the other side or what their side has done that they may or may not be super happy about (such as the newest things Trump has done to make the liberals angry or the fact that the right is pretty happy Sanders dropped out of the running). But they’re uninformed otherwise or they wouldn’t be sitting there arguing over two sides who are both going to destroy our nation.
Looking at history–and no, I don’t mean history textbooks because they’ve been changed often enough that you can’t even get them to match what the federally protected national parks say about the historic events in them–reveals a lot about how we ended up here. I understand, as Orwell said in 1984, the how, but I do not understand the why.
Bear with me here. Don’t shut me down right away because this isn’t really about politics or any one political party. That’s just the most recent outlet for the bigger problem I’ve been seeing for years in people of every political stripe and affiliation.
A bit of setup here to help you understand my background and where I’m coming from on this topic… Growing up, I was homeschooled from start to finish in a Christian home. Now, my more liberal readers may be tempted, in many cases, to assume that means I’m brainwashed and don’t know anything… Not saying you all do because that would be too great a generalization and therefore untrue, but I’ve heard it more than enough times to know that’s the general consensus about homeschoolers from the liberal crowd. I don’t even get a chance to say what I think before those of you in this crowd form an opinion of me, all because I said I was homeschooled and a Christian.
May I suggest to you a point of consideration? For those who grew up reading the firsthand accounts of history, it’s also easy to look at you, listen to the “facts” you rattle off from the history textbooks you were taught to believe, and shake our heads as we think exactly the same about you? We understand, of course, how you can believe something so strongly.
But don’t people on both sides of the argument understand that? I think most of us understand that it’s pretty typical for those who were taught a particular viewpoint (as opposed to being taught to think for themselves) to cling to whatever lies they were told even when presented with an alternative that’s supported by the facts. Both sides do it all the time. And we can respect a person who’s clearly intelligent and holds an opposing view even as we wonder how they could be so misled, can’t we? We do it all the time. Agree to disagree, right?
My point is this… You may look at the other side and shake your head thinking they’re idiots for holding onto something that’s so clearly “false” to your way of thinking, but they’re doing the same to you, and it gets no one anywhere. Express your disbelief in the “stupidity” of others if you must, but don’t forget… There are always two sides to every story.
I get that not every homeschooler has (or had) parents who really encourage them to think or make them sit down and read the accounts of those who literally lived history. Mine did. My parents had me read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, many of the classic authors (both fiction and non-fiction) who have been pulled from our public school curriculums, and countless autobiographies from various Presidents, Founding Fathers, and other important men and women. I learned to love history not because of a textbook but because I was able to practically live it in my mind as I read from those who had actually lived it.
My parents’ goal to teach me and my siblings (the youngest being 13 now) about a history our nation has all but forgotten involved a trip we all took from Illinois down to Texas. We drove, and along the way, we took the time to visit national park after national park. We read the plaques, walked the grounds where historic moments occurred, and read what the men and women from those days had to say about their stories, about why the things that occurred did.
And you know what? Time and again, those firsthand accounts of history don’t fit the narrative given in the textbooks used in public schools or, even, in the ones we used at home, which were sometimes more accurate than the public school textbooks and sometimes less. How have we ended up at a point where the accounts of the men and women who lived through the history we claim to know don’t match up with what we’re being told happened?
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy nut, this isn’t an accident. People altered the records. How else could they change so that they don’t match what the people living in those times had to say about the events going on? Lies don’t self-propogate with no origin point. The victors write the history books, as they say, and they most certainly did in this case. We ought to stop worrying about what one side or the other is doing and start worrying about what has happened to us.
We’ve elected officials, on both sides, who have supported changing the records of history as taught in our schools to our children. We’ve allowed our children to be taught lies as if they are truth, and we’ve done nothing. We’ve even participated actively in removing the influences that might undermine the social conditioning and the lies our government is encouraging, in some cases. As Orwell said in 1984, “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future” (Orwell, 1984.) He couldn’t be more right. And I think the most frightening part is the point we’ve reached.
People argue that we’ll never end up like Orwell’s society in 1984, altering every record to fit whatever the government’s chosen narrative is and controlling all information–even the very minds of our people–but we’re already well on the road to that. Maybe it hasn’t gotten that bad, but if we don’t wake up, it’s going to. We shouldn’t expect, friends, to walk the same road of destruction others did, refuse to turn around, and then not end up at the same disastrous end that they did at some point. We’re already doing the same things he warned us about on a small scale. The country we know today is not a country our Founding Fathers would be proud of. Our federal government has more power than it ever should’ve, and every day they take more. We don’t notice it because it seems insignificant to us at the time, but Orwell couldn’t have said it better when he stated, “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end” (Orwell, 1984).
We’ve reached a point where we look at the warnings embedded into books like 1984 or Animal Farm, at the warnings in the non-fiction writings of so many who lived during the time when socialism, fascism, communism, and more were emerging, and think, that’s not ever going to happen to us. We can use those systems and not end up like them. Why do we think this? Because we don’t know history, people. We don’t.
Kids today aren’t taught history. They’re taught propaganda. I’m not blaming it on the teachers. They don’t decide the curriculum, and at this point, the ones who fight to keep the truth in our schools are viciously attacked and called ignorant for wanting to promote reality instead of this new reality that exists only in the minds of those buying into it. The ones who don’t often don’t even know the truth themselves because they too were taught a lie. The lesson I have learned from my time in a secular community college, a fundamental Christian college, and watching the opinions of both sides is this: those who do not know history are doomed to repeat its mistakes, and we do not know our history, so we are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
I know this isn’t a popular opinion. It isn’t a popular statement. No one wants to be told that they’ve willing chosen to be ignorant. But here’s the reality of it. If you choose to accept what your history textbook says without checking the “facts” presented against a primary source, you have chosen to rely on someone else’s word for your own heritage and your own country’s history. You have chosen, then, to remain ignorant of the voices of those who lived through it, which reach beyond the grave to dispense their warnings, wisdom, and truths. You chose that. And so, then, you are responsible in part for the current state of affairs where we squabble over things that are symptoms of a larger problem, not the real root of the problem.
To those who actually know what I’m talking about when I quote Orwell, it’s time to wake up. It’s time for you to face the music. I don’t care what side you’re on. If you keep refusing to turn to the past–the real past as it’s presented by those on both sides that lived through it–you’re responsible for what happens as a result. You are responsible for the decline and eventual destruction of your country as you know it. I can’t speak for how things are in other countries and whether or not their history in schools matches history as it’s told by the primary sources, but I can speak for America because I’ve seen it firsthand, and it’s horrifying.
In twenty years, how much more will history have changed? Will you even realize that it has changed? Did you pay enough attention to educating yourself and thinking for yourself–no matter what political party you belonged to or where you were schooled–to notice when those “facts” change yet again? For most people, the answer would be no. Do you even care?
We need to wake up and realize what’s going on. We need to turn back to educating ourselves and our children on the real history and how things happened. The national parks and museums are one place to start. The firsthand accounts of people like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and other famous leaders and individuals in our country’s history are another place to start. It isn’t as though it’s really hard, though it will require mental exercise and purposeful intent to learn the truth from those who have spent a lifetime ignoring it and dismissing it as unimportant.
History has all kinds of important lessons. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Learn from them. Find ways to do better than those who went behind us. You might be surprised at how much you discover that doesn’t match with what the popular opinions of the day say about our history. Learn to be curious, to think, to aspire to know more, to understand the why not just the how.
If we want to preserve our freedom, we must do all of this and do it now before it’s too far gone. You don’t have to contribute to a further downward spiral of ignorance of your own heritage. Take responsibility for finding out the truth and holding onto it even if people mock you for it or call you crazy for doing so. After all, “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad” (Orwell, 1984).
The third stop on our discussion of preparing for publication is finding ARC readers. To start off with, for those who don’t know what ARC readers are, they are advanced review copy readers. They are not beta readers and shouldn’t be considered such. Instead, they are readers who read the book before it’s out for the public and review it on release date. So let’s talk about how you get them and where.
Where to Find ARC Readers
The first step is finding your ARC readers. There are many places and ways to do this. First, you can use sites like StoryOrigin and Bookfunnel to join promotional events for reviews run by other users. On sites like these, people sign up for your ARC copy, and you approve them. Recommendation here for these platforms… Pay attention to the stats. I know you want reviews, but don’t just accept anyone. Look at the stats if they’re provided and approve reviewers who have decent stats and reputations for following through with reviews. I learned the hard way that if you approve people with no stats or bad ones, your risk is very high that you’re just giving away free copies of your hard work in exchange for nothing at all.
The other possible places to find reviewers are social media sites, writing forums that allow you to post about that kind of stuff, and through family connections. A word to the wise on family connections, though. Family members and close friends can review the book, but not on Amazon. If they do and Amazon catches the connection, you could lose all your reviews and both of you could be banned from reviewing. Not good news, so don’t mess around with this. If family members or friends want to review, have them do so on platforms like Goodreads and Bookbub.
One other avenue is by reaching out to the readers on your newsletter. If you’ve done a good job building your list, then there should be at least some who will be happy to help out in exchange for a free copy of the book.
Dealing with ARC Reader Deadlines
The next thing to consider is your deadline for ARC readers. Some people read faster than others, and you want to make sure you leave enough time for even slower readers to make it through the book before your release day. I recommend giving them roughly a month to read it. The best scenario is that everyone is able to finish and reviews on time.
Of course, we all know the best scenario is rarely what occurs in every case. You’ll have readers that don’t do it on time and need to be followed up with. If you acquired your ARC readers via social media or your newsletter/email list, you should know how to get in touch. The problem that I run into all the time with getting ARC readers through StoryOrigin and similar sites is that people’s emails and contact info aren’t given to you until the reader has actually submitted reviews (showing interest, therefore, in your work). This means you have no way to get in touch, and while the sites remind them to submit their review links and review, they can ignore that. If they do, there’s nothing you can do, and you can’t even contact them yourself.
What to Do If They Don’t Review
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot you can do. If you have contact info, you can get in touch and try to find out what’s going on. You can encourage them to leave the review and kindly remind them about the deadline for the review. But if they still don’t review, you can’t force them to do so. You want to keep relationships good and stay as professional as possible, so don’t be abrasive or too pushy about it.
If you don’t have contact information, there’s nothing at all you can do. You just have to wait and hope that the site your reviewer applied through will succeed when they try to remind them to review. Without contact information, there aren’t any options open to you if they don’t fulfill their end of the deal. That’s the risk you take. This is why you should look at the stats on how often they reviewed in the past to try to find reasonable assurance that they’ll review.
Bottom Line on ARC Readers?
The bottom line is that your new release needs reviews. Amazon’s algorithms won’t kick in to help you sell the book until you have at least fifty 4-or-5-star reviews. The only way to get a good start on that is to have reviews when the book comes out, and you can’t get those without ARC reviewers. Do your best to screen the people you’re giving the ARC copies to, and if you can, try to have contact info for the majority of reviewers promising a review on release date. I can’t promise you’ll have 100% participation, even though you should if you swapped a free copy of your book for the review promise, but at least if you can follow up, you’ll have a better chance of getting the reviews you were promised.
Voices by Ursula K Le Guin was the last book on my March reading list, and I actually finished on time, but I’m a little behind on posting the review. At any rate, I’m done reading it, so let’s take a look.
Reader’s Review: Voices
This is the first YA fantasy novel I’ve reviewed on my own without a request for a review here on the blog. Le Guin didn’t disappoint either. The piece is well-written and perfectly suited to this blog. I have read Le Guin before, as I read her Earthsea series when I was fourteen or fifteen. I loved those books, so I had high hopes for this book. And, as I said, Le Guin didn’t disappoint. She masterfully wove a story that captivated me with a rich story, a vibrant world, and dynamic characters.
The only real complaint I have is that it was in present tense at the beginning. I really don’t like that in books, but because it was first person and was almost written as an address from the MC to the reader, it was easier to move past. It did eventually switch to past tense as the full narrative got underway, and it was much easier to enjoy then.
The book is suitable for older children and teens. I’d say it’s fine content wise for anyone who’s at least twelve. The book does mention rape and abuse of women by the soldiers in the city where the book takes place, but nothing is actually shown or discussed in much detail. Similarly, there are one or two conversations the MC ends up roped into where one of the soldiers’ sons was talking about sex and trying to figure out if any women the MC knew would be available, but the MC shot the conversation down quickly and not much detail was actually given. The author keeps it PG-13. The language, to my recollection, was clean. Overall, I would recommend parental guidance for kids under twelve, but it is a YA book and stays appropriate for teens.
Writer’s Review of Voices
As the title hinted, our discussion today will center on Le Guin’s masterful use of religion in her work to bring the story and its civilizations to life.
I know some fellow authors who, as Christian authors, strongly object to religions besides Christianity being in their work. They won’t include any deities in their writing, made up or otherwise, that are not the Christian God or a representation of Him. I respect that, and if you’re in that camp, you’ll probably find this particular writer’s review rather useless to you. But if you do want to include deities and religions in your world for authenticity or other reasons, as many writers do, Le Guin has a lot to teach.
Her work Voices mainly represents two religions: that of the Alds and that of the people native to the city the Alds conquered before the book began. The two are in conflict to start because the Alds believe in and worship only one god, believe writing is evil, and see the gods the natives worship as demons that must be purged from the earth to make way for their god’s return.
To start with, they only conquered the city in an attempt to find the origin point of all evil, which their legends say is located in the city or the land around it. They march in and destroy all libraries, writings, and statues of the gods they find along with anything that they believe to be a temple.
The natives are then forbidden to worship any god besides the Alds’ god, and anyone found with books is killed. Naturally, this doesn’t sit too well with the natives who were used to their worship and to governing themselves. It creates a great amount of hatred, tension, fear, and suspicion.
Le Guin uses religion to add to the conflict as well as to bring the world to life. If you dislike stories where religion, even made up religion, takes a strong roll, Voices probably isn’t for you. But because religion is an indispensable part of the world, the conflict, and the story, Le Guin’s work is an excellent place to start learning how to use fantasy religions, or even real ones, to bring your story world to life and to add fuel to your fire of conflict.
I could go on and on about the ways Le Guin uses religion to add to her story, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that observation of how it’s done well is one of the best ways to learn when it comes to writing. So go read Voices. See how Le Guin uses religion and then apply the principles you see to your own work. You’d be surprised what this kind of practice and learning method can do for your writing. Good luck!
Okay, this won’t be a terribly long post since the only covers I tend to do are the artistic, silhouette-style covers you see on some of the re-covered classics. You know, the ones with the flowy, decorative fonts and more of a focus on shapes and color than fancy Photoshop skills. So I’m not really the person to talk to if you want to a lot about cover design like you see on most books. And that’s not the focus of this blog anyway.
But, if you’re an author, you do have to know how to handle your cover. It’s the very first thing a reader sees, and readers do, unfortunately, judge a book by the cover. This can be turned to your advantage, but only if you’ve gotten a designer who designs or have yourself learned to design cover art that’s a match with the genre and the feel of the book. If you haven’t… Well, your cover may send the wrong message.
The main things you need to know about cover art are as follows:
Designers are not one-size fits all.
You must own the image rights.
You want the cover to fit the genre: the goal is not to necessarily stand out but to fit in while giving readers a general idea of what your story is about.
Designers Are Not One Size Fits All
This is pretty straightforward. Not every designer will be a match for your project. Make sure you do your research. Look at what they design and the artwork they’ve done for other covers. If you can, talk to people that have purchased for them or read reviews left on their work. Ask for samples.
Most designers have a style they stick to. Their covers are going to feel somewhat similar just as paintings from a particular artist will feel similar when you look at them. A Van Gogh, for example, looks far different than a Leonardo Da Vinci. We can pick up on those styles of each artist and differentiate between the two. It’s similar for a designer. You can tell if someone’s being honest about the work they’ve done by looking for those similarities in the designs. If their work is all over or has some designs that are way, way different than anything else in their portfolio, be careful about it. They may be using other people’s art. Just be smart, basically. Do your research and take your time because your cover can really do a lot for the book.
You Must Own Image Rights
I don’t care what images your designer uses, you need image rights. If they create the piece entirely from scratch, which some do, then you get the rights when the artist is paid and gives you permission to use the art they created for the cover as they created it. But this means you need a piece that, from font to background image, needs to be entirely 100% owned by the artist. Otherwise, things get trickier.
If your artist didn’t create the image and the font 100% on their own, you need to own rights to images for use in that way. Places like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels that offer free stock photos with Creative Commons zero licenses (use them basically for anything with no attribution) aren’t reliable. There have been issues I’ve seen occur in groups where artists used their images only to discover that the image was originally not the poster’s image and, as a result, the artist was in trouble for copyright infringement. It’s serious, guys. Don’t use these sites. Invest in a subscription for a year to a place like Envato Elements or buy individual stock photos from places like Shutterstock or Adobe Photoshop if you’re not going to require your artist to do the work to get images that you’ll have rights to using in your cover. Same deal for the fonts. If you’re in doubt on the fonts on what you can use it for, ask the designer. Free for commercial use may not always extend to ebooks or covers (As dumb as it is), so make sure you check with the person who’s listed as the creator. At least that way, with a written paper trail, you can say you did your due diligence to make sure you weren’t infringing on copyright.
A Cover That Fits the Genre
Lastly, make sure your cover will fit the genre. Make sure your designer does good work within your genre too before hiring them. You aren’t looking for something that will be super unique. Only something that draws the reader’s eye and gets them to click on the blurb. And, ideally, you want those people drawn in to be your type of reader. If you write dark romance, you probably aren’t too focused on drawing in fantasy readers unless your dark romance is set on another planet with elves and dwarves. Same goes for the reverse. I, as a speculative fiction writer, am trying to draw in speculative fiction readers with my cover not readers looking for a light, feel-good romance or some other genre.
So it’s important that your cover fits the genre and then, if you can, try to incorporate some aspect of the book. It can be a vague representation, but having a little bit of something to give your readers a general idea of what the book will be about helps with marketing, so don’t ignore the boost it can give your book.
Conclusion
That’s all for today, everyone! I hope this has been helpful to you. See you next week on Thursday Technicalities to discuss more topics from our current discussion on publishing preparation. Stay safe with all of the craziness currently going on with this pandemic. Until next time!
With everything going on due to the Coronavirus, there has been yet another opportunity for me to learn to trust God. It’s a stressful time for most people, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t stressed at all. While I’m not particularly worried about my job security like some are right now, I’m adjusting to a new situation in life. For the first time in years, everyone is home. It’s not just me, my parents, and a few of my younger siblings. It’s all eight of us, and that hasn’t been the case since I was eighteen and graduated from high school.
It might not seem like that much to complain about considering what everyone else is dealing with, and admittedly, it’s not. But with everyone home, tempers run high, and people get stressed. Working from home, while it has its perks, isn’t as wonderful when you have everyone at home making noise or interrupting you to do things during work hours. And in all of that, there’s the temptation to lash out, get angry, and lose it on the people around you, especially when you can’t go anywhere.
Learning to Trust in the Storm
I’m not the most patient person in the world, so this has definitely been a learning situation and a trust situation to boot. I’m having to learn to trust that God can help me stay calm and patient with people around me. Those who know me more personally know that along with not being very patient, I also am not very trusting. I struggle with trusting people, and I struggle with trusting God. While I’ve learned to trust Him on some things, it’s an ongoing process with each new thing, it seems like. (Apparently, I’m not a very fast learner or the concept is just not quite computing.)
But, as difficult as it can be, I appreciate the opportunities to learn to trust. Maybe not at the exact moment I’m being tested, but afterwards, I do. A few months ago, it was trusting God while I was looking for a job. I determined that I wasn’t going to stress about it because stressing meant I wasn’t trusting God. I also determined that, aside from those family members who already knew and were praying for me, I wasn’t going to ask for prayer. Probably sounds a bit weird, but in my head, I needed to go through the struggle alone. It wasn’t something that I felt I should share because it felt like it was between me and God. I needed to go to Him on my own without relying on others’ prayers for me. Normally, I wouldn’t do that with something. I’m all for asking for prayer when I’m struggling through something hard, but that was one learning experience I just felt needed to happen alone.
And God got me through it. He helped me to grow, and He showed me that there wasn’t a need to worry. That was the least stressful job hunt I have ever gone through even though I only ever heard back from one company on an interview months after I started looking.
Now I’m in another situation to learn to trust God. To trust Him to provide, aid, and bolster. Being stuck at home every day with no ability to leave unless I absolutely have to in order to get meds or shop makes me feel claustrophobic and trapped. It would be easy for me to get worried, frazzled, and scared like so many people have. It would be easy to look at everything going on around me and wonder what I’m supposed to do with everything going to pieces around me.
Instead, I’ve chosen something else. I’ve chosen to trust God. To believe that He will get me through this and help me to respond in a way that honors and glorifies Him in spite of what’s going on. I have chosen to remember the God that I serve and who He is.
Psalm 46 – A Very Present Help In Trouble
The Scripture that has been most on my mind of late has been Psalm 46. I learned this through a song by Judy Rogers called Refuge. (If you’ve never heard it, you should go listen to it. It’s a perfect reminder for the times we’re living in, in my opinion.) I’ve put the Psalm below (KJV version), and I’ll explain why it’s been such a help during this time of storm in a moment.
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore, will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Why Look to These Verses?
These verses have been an amazing comfort to me because they remind me of a few things about God. First and foremost, He is in control. He could stop the virus, but He has chosen not to. Granted, I wouldn’t say the virus itself is a good thing, but God has already been using it for good. In China, there are already stories of how local and government authorities have received the word of God from Christians they would ordinarily persecute because those Christians were willing to serve God and risk their own lives to help others. We don’t see that in America and, in fact, the prevailing attitude among many Christians I’ve seen talking on Facebook posts has been that we need to take care of the temple God has given us.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but ultimately, if God is glorified by us being tortured, persecuted, killed, or getting sick and dying helping others, then we are actually a hindrance to His work and His glory by trying to take care of ourselves. So often, that is an excuse to allow fear in situations like this to keep us from doing what we know God would want us to do. Obviously, right now, many of us are in states with shelter in place regulations. We can’t go out on the streets to pass out Bibles and face masks like the Chinese Christians did, and if we were to disobey our local authorities in this matter, it wouldn’t be very God honoring. Not to mention there would be very little point in doing so because who would be around to see it in many cases? But the point is that many of us in America are so wracked by fear and a me-first mentality that we can’t even fathom the idea of risking life and limb to trust God and do what He asks even if it’s dangerous.
So the first thing I see is that God is in control and is using this for His glory. Just as it says in the tenth line of the Psalm, Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. He is doing just that. He is exalting His name through this virus in spite of the fear and the attitude of distrust many Christians in many countries, including our own, have displayed. That alone should be a comfort because we know that even what others view as evil can be turned for good in an amazing, miraculous way.
But the second thing I see from this is that we have an amazing God who is our refuge and our strength. I don’t need to be afraid because He is in control and He is my refuge. No matter what happens–even if I get sick and die–He is working everything out for His glory and my good. Ultimately, if my death brings Him glory, who am I to argue? I am given the greatest gift I could be given in that moment because I am dying to give Him the glory and I know I’ll go to be with Him. Paul says in Philippians 1:20-21 “According to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but that with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
It is an honor and a privilege to live for Christ and nothing but gain to die for Him too. So if I know He is in control, that even death is a gain, and that He is my refuge, why would I fear? Why wouldn’t I trust? Sometimes, I look at myself and am amazed that I have such an easy time trusting on the big things and such a hard time with smaller things. But I’m human, and that’s one of my particular shortcomings. Nonetheless, I’m grateful for His calling and His faithfulness to work in me the good work He chose to begin. And in this area of trust, He continues to give me chances to grow.
Struggling with Trust
Maybe you’re also struggling with trust. Maybe you look around you and see everyone panicking, and you too feel a little twinge of fear, an urge to take things beyond what is wise or full of temperance and moderation. It’s easy to see everyone else freaking out and feel like we should too, isn’t it? But if you’re in Christ, if you know Him as your Master and your Savior, you too can hold onto the promises made throughout Scripture. You can say along with Paul that to live is Christ and to die is gain. You can hold onto the promise in 2 Timothy 1:7 where Paul writes to Timothy that “God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”
Take it from your own experience and from someone else who has been in plenty of storms where she chose not to trust God. It’s so much better to let Him have control. In the end, He does whether you admit it or not. The only thing you do by trying to wrest it from His grasp is stress yourself out, scare yourself, and add additional pressure into your life that doesn’t need to be there. If you’re doing this, trust me, you’re not alone. I’ve done it. I’m very prone to doing it. But if I can learn to let Him take charge without being afraid and stressed out, so can you.
The takeaway today is this. If you’re His child today and you’re stressing out or scared about what might happen due to the current world events or what has already happened because of this virus, stop. Take a deep breath and go to Him with your fears and concerns. You may have something He wants you to do, but I can guarantee that if you don’t stop and pray first, you are going to take on a whole lot of things He doesn’t want you to do, and you may even miss doing what He does want you doing.
So pray. Ask Him to take away your fear and replace it with His peace that passes all understanding. Let Him in. He cares for you, and even when things are hard, He wants to work in your life and will work things out for your good whether you understand how it’s to your good or not. Trust Him. He knows more than you ever could. As the Psalm I quoted here said, He is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. That hasn’t changed. It never will. And so, you are able to also say you don’t fear even if the earth is destroyed, the mountains thrown into the sea, and the waters roar and are troubled.
I recently finished reading Some Monsters Never Die by E.A. Comiskey, and let me say, I was impressed. More on that in a few. To start with, E.A. Comiskey is an author that I already know fairly well from working with her in our critique group. She’s awesome to work with, and when I put out the word that I was looking for fantasy books to review for The Fantasy Nook, she asked if I’d be interested in her book, Some Monsters Never Die. Boy, am I ever glad I chose to take her up on the offer.
Some Monsters Never Die: Reader’s Review
E.A. Comiskey really brought fantasy to life with this book. First off, it’s set in the real world in real (or fairly realistic) places, and that alone makes this piece seem more real than some. I loved the humor, magic, and larger than life events that moved the story along. The characters themselves were masterfully written. They’re also the most unlikely heroes and heroines. I mean, the female lead maybe works, aside from being a bookworm. But two old guys from a retirement home hunting demons and the unnatural?
Let’s just say it makes for quite the ride, and more importantly, it opens up all kinds of opportunities to grow on the parts of all the main characters. They set off on a quest all together and end it all together but as better, stronger people than they started out. Definitely worth the read!
Writer’s Review
Some books I’ve reviewed, like the Vine Witch, have done an excellent job of weaving magic into the world. Others have done a phenomenal job of world-building. But in this book, E.A Comiskey has managed to bring fantasy to life. Granted, most of the fantasy stuff she brought to life is the horrifying, monster side. The kind you never want to meet, right?
But, if it’s any consolation, her main characters are two old men and one bookworm woman. Not exactly the kinds of people you’d think would be able to handle things that belong in fantasy books as the antagonists coming to life, but hey. They manage.
And that’s part of what makes this book such a great piece. Comiskey took characters that seem so unlikely to succeed or even cope, with the exception maybe of the old guy who’s a hunter, and she threw them into a world where the horrors of a fantasy tale are all real. Skinwalkers? Check. Giant worm-like things that burrow in the ground and try to eat people? Also check. Dragons? Well… Stanley killed the last one a while ago, but beside the point.
Comiskey uses humor, unexpected heroes, and larger than life threats to really bring fantasy to life in this book. I’d label it as paranormal or maybe urban fantasy, but it’s by far one of the most unique takes on both genres that I’ve read in quite some time.
The Takeaway?
There’s lots to learn from and glean from reading this book, but for today’s focus, I have just one takeaway. Focus on how she weaves the monsters and their magic into every day life and then apply those techniques and principles to your own work. You may not be writing something that’s meant to be even a little bit funny. You may not intend to focus mostly on supernatural monsters and magic spells to kill them.
But if you’re writing fantasy, then there’s going to be some fantastical element you need to make real to your audience. And if you want to bring fantasy to life, especially if you want to do it in our world, Comiskey’s book will show you one way how, and it will do it well.
We’re taking a break from our discussions on publishing to talk about Pinterest today. Mainly, the focus will be on Pinterest for authors. This was a request for a guest post over on the Burning Embers blog. It’s up over there today as well, so check their blog out. They’ve got lots of useful tips for authors and writers. Their topic this month is marketing for authors. Let’s get started!
I’ve talked to quite a few of author friends who are sitting in front of their computers hemming and hawing about whether or not they need to be using Pinterest. If that’s you too, let me make this super easy! I mean no offense to anyone by saying this, but you should be using it! No two ways about it, you should. If you aren’t, especially as an author who has plenty of graphics and covers that would fit right in on the platform, you’re missing out.
But, Ariel,
you might think. I have no time to add another social media platform. And if
that’s you, you’re in good company. You’re also in good company if any of the
following excuses have crossed your mind in reference to Pinterest:
1) I don’t
know what to post.
2) I don’t
know how to use the platform.
3) It’s
social media, and I really dislike using that any more than I have to.
4) It’s time
consuming and maybe it costs something?
5) Any
other excuses to procrastinate. I’m sure someone else has also thought of them
even if I haven’t.
Answers to the Questions and Reasons Why Not
Okay, the
sarcasm and joking aside, I get that people have a million reasons not to
start using Pinterest for their business. But let me answer some of those
concerns right up front before we dive into how to get started, what you can
do, and what you need to be doing.
1) I
don’t know what to post. Well, by the end of this post, you’ll have some
great ideas for things you can do, so this will no longer be a problem.
2) I
don’t know how to use the platform. Also not going to be a problem when
we’re finished here.
3) It’s
social media, and I really hate using that more than I have to. False. It
is actually a search engine, not social media, and you get to use it for free
along with all the analytics tools that come with search engine optimization
(SEO) on the site for free! Yup, you can stare at the pretty line graphs and
see your traffic go up and down, see your viewer demographics, and track link
clicks and so on. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My point is, this is not
social media, and you should not be treating it as such. If you do, you’re
shooting yourself in the foot from the start.
4) It’s
time consuming, and maybe it costs something? No, it is not time-consuming.
I mean, sure, it’s going to take you some time if you choose to go the entirely
free route because you’ll have to manually upload the post, but it takes maybe
five minutes tops once you know what you’re doing, so that’s less time than it
takes to write the average blog post or even some Facebook posts. You could do
it on your lunch break. As for costing something, it doesn’t if you’re not
paying for ads and you post your own content. And, most importantly, it is not
pay-to-play like so many other sites, so you can still build traffic and
succeed without paid advertisements if you’re smart.
5) Any
other excuses you can come up with? Since I don’t know them, I can’t
guarantee I’ll give you a reason not to procrastinate, but by the end of this
post, I’m hoping you’ll be fully convinced that you should be doing Pinterest
even if you’re not doing much in the way of other social media.
Who is Pinterest For?
Let’s start
with this. Who’s on Pinterest? Well, hopefully your ideal reader. But let’s
just break it down to something simpler. Lots of people are on Pinterest.
Varying age groups are on at different times during the day, and they’re all
looking for different things. But mainly, Pinterest attracts people who are
doing a few things:
1) Shopping
around to figure out what they want to buy for any given type of product
(decor, books, electronics, you name it)
2) Looking
for amusement because they’re bored (so maybe they’re looking at humor, book
reviews, DIYs, or memes)
3) Looking
for information (They want to know about something or how to do something, and
they’re looking for free blog articles or graphics explaining how)
4) Needing
inspiration for a project (painting a new room, decorating their house,
planning a wedding, writing a book, and anything else under the sun)
Why is Pinterest great for these? Because it’s a search engine in a visual form. People see Pins, which is just another word for visual search results created by Pinterest’s content creators (aka me and, hopefully, you too soon). If they look under the Pin, they see the title and maybe some basic information. Let’s take a look:
I’m a
fantasy writer, so I looked up fantasy writing prompts. The image above shows
all of the results that fit into the screenshot when I took it. Notice that
some have titles while others don’t, but all of them have some kind of visual
that lets you know what it is. You shouldn’t need the title to figure out what
you’re looking at in most cases. So if I’m looking for inspiration for a
project, for example, maybe I choose the third result: Sunday Story
Prompt.
Now that you
understand who is on Pinterest and why, let’s move on to understanding how
people move through the site and how you can use it to gain traction for your
blog!
Understanding the Site Layout
You’ve
already seen how to search for things in that first screenshot, and we talked a
little about why it’s such a useful way to search. Your viewers can figure out
if your content is something interesting to them without even reading the
header in many cases. Not that you don’t put a header in, since that helps to
improve search results and pop your Pin to the top of the results page when
certain keywords are hit. But they shouldn’t need it to have a general idea of
what the Pin is and to be drawn to looking at the Pin further.
So once
someone has clicked on your search result, what do they see? I clicked on the
Sunday Story Prompt result I mentioned earlier, and here’s what I get.
Now, notice
that this individual didn’t give the Pin a title. Generally, that’s not the
best because as a search engine, Pinterest is going to use your title and description
to show your Pin to Pinners searching for content using your keywords. So don’t
skip the title. If the Pin has a title, you can see that here:
Notice that now you see both the website link and the title of the Pin above the description. The title is the first thing a Pinner sees, and if that isn’t what they were expecting, they might still Pin the content since the image appeals, but they’re probably not going to click the link to go to your blog (which is what you want them to do since Pinterest is meant to be a funnel, not just a fun toy to amuse yourself when you’re bored, right?).
And After the Title?
After they see the title, if that’s still interesting, they’re probably going to look at the description. If the Pin is for an actual blog post, then you should describe what the post will do for them and how it can help them. Include a brief explanation of that and then a call to action (if you’re sharing a product or asking them to do something specific). If you’re not selling a product (Which I recommend you don’t, typically, since Pinners aren’t interested–yet–in buying anything. They’re converted to buyers once they leave the platform, like what they see, and check out what else is available from the Pinner they are looking at.), then your call to action might just be, click the link to learn more on my blog. Super simple.
So, this is
what one of my descriptions looks like. This one has no particular call to
action since the Pin itself is really not intended to specifically do anything
beyond what the graphic provides. If your Pin is like that (we’ll talk about
why you might have Pins like this), you can do something like this.
Notice that this includes a few questions to add on to the content I provided in the original prompt. (Ignore the blue circle. My personal account just wants me to click on the link. Pinterest will encourage viewers to do that with outbound links sometimes if they’re newer accounts. My personal one is because I originally converted my personal account to business when I started this. I’ll explain that later on.)
Anyway, the questions I provide ask them if they’re in a predicament of sorts. Then I provide the solution by saying, hey, you’ve got a prompt here, so finish the story. This has in the past gotten me engagement on the Pin in the comments, but not always. Regardless, that’s my call to action. If readers like that, then they’re going to keep reading and, in another situation, may choose to go read the blog article. In some cases, even with Pins of this nature, you’ll get visitors to your blog anyway. I actually do quite often on these Pins in comparison to others.
Pinning It
Last point
before we move to the next section of the article! Once they’ve decided they
like the content, user can choose to Pin it. You can see below that clicking
the save button will give them options to save it to Boards. This is kind of
like saving things to different folders in your bookmarks but more visual since
the Boards will display a certain number of the most recent Pin images saved to
that Board. Quite handy if you want an idea of what was saved to it beyond just
the title.
Here’s what some
of my author’s Boards look like.
I’m
explaining all this in case you’ve never used the site because you’re going to
end up doing some of the same things your potential readers and followers will
do. You’ll have to start off from scratch, and that means pinning other
people’s content more often than your own to begin gaining traction.
Fortunately, it’s far easier to do that on Pinterest than any social media site
because a Pin’s lifetime is up to two years instead of the two-or-three-hour
lifetime of most social media postings. So, hey, there’s a reason right there
to start using Pinterest. You don’t have to spend as much time posting and
monitoring, and pinning other people’s content is even easier than creating
your own.
Why Business Pinterest?
Now that you
understand the site’s layout and have a general idea of how people move through
the site, let’s talk about your author’s or blogger’s Pinterest account. First
off, if you already have an account, you can’t just use your personal account.
You need a business account to access the analytics, create your own pins, view
stats on the pins, and to connect your website. As you can see, my personal
Pinterest account is missing quite a few options that my business account has.
I’ve got a red plus sign for creating pins on my business account in addition
to an announcements section to see what fans are saying on my pins.
So, bottom
line, your blog needs a business account. You can do that one of two ways.
Either you can convert your personal account to a business account (free of
charge regardless of which way you go) and then take down any boards you
created on the personal account that don’t relate to your business or your blog
(so go into the board’s settings and turn it to private. We’ll go over that in
a bit.) or you can create a whole new account and simply choose business
instead of personal.
Notice that
in the image below, I’m on my personal account and am given the option to add a
business account under settings and Account Settings. It’s near the bottom of
the screen. That’s where you’d go to convert your own account to a business
account.
Claiming Your Website and Socials on Pinterest
Once you have that set up, you need to claim your website and any social media links you may have. I’ll show you where to go for this, but note that if you’re not a techy sort of person, you’ll want to get your host site to help you get the two sites connected. I had to get help when I wasn’t self-hosted because WordPress.com is difficult and I couldn’t find what I needed.
Otherwise, Pinterest has an article on it as do other bloggers on the web, and it’s pretty simple to figure out if you follow the steps. If you have issues, you can always reach out to your website host or Pinterest to get someone to walk you through it if you can’t get it working. I’m always having to do that for new features on my blog and site, and I’m sure I drive the support teams nuts when they see my name and the newest problem, but hey… I’m nice about it, and that’s why they’re there.
To claim
your site and social media links, you should go to edit settings and then to
claim, which is just below the account settings tab where you switched your
personal account over to a business account. Here, you’ll see slightly different
options for business accounts. It should look like this:
Notice that I already claimed my website and my Instagram. I don’t use Etsy at all or YouTube (often), so neither of those accounts are connected. But you can connect any of those platforms or social media accounts if you need to. I won’t go into detail on this because Pinterest’s help article on it explains far better than I can.
Secret Boards
Once you have your account moved over to business on
Pinterest, you need to go through your boards and delete or hide any that don’t
relate to your blog and business. To be an effective funnel for traffic, your
account needs to be attracting only those who will actually find your blog,
business, and product useful or desirable. Keeping only boards relevant to your
business will ensure that Pinners do some self-selecting on which category they
fall under.
To turn a board to secret or delete it, just go to the board
settings and select one of the two then save or confirm. You can use the images
below to help you find where to do that if you’re new to Pinterest and haven’t
edited a board before. I chose to show the steps on my Writing Fantasy Tips
board. You can either delete at the bottom or, under Visibility, check the box
to keep the board secret if you still want to use it but don’t want others
seeing it. I’ve used this for quite a few of my own personal boards. Just make
sure you save if you decide to use visibility settings to hide it. I should
also note that this is all done from your profile under the Boards tab that I
showed earlier.
So, now that the account is set up, how do you use it? What
do you Pin and how do you create your own content? Glad you asked! That’s what
we’re going to discuss next!
What to Pin
To put it simply, both your content and that of others. But I’m going to talk about content creation a bit later, so let’s focus on what to Pin from others. As stated earlier, every Pin should reflect your brand and business. As an author, there are a few directions you can go.
Start With Your Approach
I’ll explain what I have chosen to do just to give an example, but you should do what fits your blog’s focus and your business’s brand. Every author has a slightly different approach and branding they’re trying to stick to. My way isn’t the only way!’
The Fantasy Nook is focused on providing quality content for
readers and authors. My goal has been to establish myself as an expert in the
market for writing and editing, especially for fantasy in particular, by
providing quality educational material for writers and authors but also by
providing reliable book reviews for readers. I also share short flash fiction
pieces to demonstrate that I know how to use what I preach.
All of this is aimed at establishing in my viewers’ minds that I am a credible source with a high level of skill and expertise in the field.
How Pinterest Ties In
With that explained, how does my Pinterest account show
that? Well, it focuses on writers and readers both, and it has both repined and
original content that centers around book reviews, book-related stuff, editing,
blogging, and writing in one fashion or another. It’s a mix of fun stuff like
writing prompts and reviews to more educational and resource-based materials.
This draws people in because it offers them something that
helps them. In our most recent generations, people buy things advertised or
placed in front of them for one or more of the following reasons:
They’re convinced they need it.
It’s not too expensive, and it’s an impulse buy.
It makes them feel good because it supports a cause they like.
It’s interesting, and they want it.
It fulfills some area of their life that they already needed help with.
Focusing In
Younger generations in particular focus heavily on what they
get out of it. They’re not terribly interested in reason 3, but if it’s one of
the other reasons, then heck yeah! They’re all about that. Reason 2 is iffy
depending on the person, obviously, but in general, your millennials (to some
degree) and your Gen X (to a very high degree) are very concerned with what
you’re giving them. Self-centered? Absolutely. But hey, it is what it is. And
in a business world, unfortunately, you’re not going to go anywhere if you
don’t pander to the way people think and advertise accordingly. Prove to them
that they can use it and can’t live without it, and you’ve got a new customer,
hopefully permanently.
For authors, it’s much more focused on proving to this group
that your book or story is going to entertain them better than something else
or another book. Daunting prospect, but really, it comes down to getting your
product in front of them and grabbing their attention. This group will impulse
buy, depending on the person, and ebooks—even ones in the 2-3 dollar
range—aren’t terribly expensive. Less than a coffee at Starbucks, and it lasts
a lot longer. So for you, your goal with Pinterest should be to get them to do
the following:
Click on the Pin and then the blog
link
Get interested in your content
See your book
Find it interesting
Buy the book not the coffee
Obviously, your blog itself plays a direct role once they’re
off Pinterest, but that’s not the focus for today’s article. At the end of the
day, figure out your goals and the image you’re going for in your brand and
marketing, then go Pin accordingly.
Creating Your Own Content
Elements of Creation – Examples
Pinterest is a visual platform, so your content needs to be some sort of graphic that lets others know what the Pin is about even without clicking. If they don’t know what it is, they’ll keep scrolling. That means engaging images, bold and clear fonts, colors that work well together and grab the eye, and a clear representation of the main idea. Let’s look at a few Pins to see how to do that well and what you should think about.
To start off, take a look at these search results. The image is small, but some results stand out better than others. For example, the font on the cover in the first search result is still fairly readable even though it’s small. This was actually one of my book reviews. I didn’t know it would pop up, but it’s the only good cover example here, so let’s use it. For reviews, I only post covers, typically without any sort of other title over the top. I’m trying to highlight the book, not necessarily just a post. Covers are more difficult to see sometimes on small screenshots, but they’re easy to see and admire on a phone or even on a computer, though most people will browse on a phone or other mobile device like tablets and ipads.
The next pin to stand out is the one with orange, blue, and white as its color scheme. You should quickly see the one I’m talking about. It has a big font and can be read even on this small screen. The Pin’s title on the graphic is How to Use Allusion in Writing. It’s a good example of using brighter colors to draw the eye, and it has pretty decent contrast. Maybe it’s not as pretty as it could be, but it does the job, and the colors don’t clash.
The last pin we’ll look at is actually one of mine as well! I didn’t know either of these would show up in my search (writing), but they did, so we’ll look at this one since it stands out from a lot of the other writing prompt pins that are on this results page. (That was intentional too when I created the template I use for these.) Notice how lots of the search results are bland colors with less than appealing graphics? They all kind of blend together after a while, and it’s easy to scroll past them because you don’t have to stop really to read them or think about it.
A Word on Creating Your Own Background Art
What I did with my pin, however, is different. In the
closeup, you can see it has a nice background image (one I know I have a
license for, which is really important when you create graphics for your Pins.
Don’t use Unsplash, Pixabay, or Pexels. There have been issues with stolen art,
and if the pirated content’s poster doesn’t have a license, they can’t give you
one. Even if they do, if they’re not the original owner, they still can’t give
you permission to use it. But I digress.), and the font is in a color that’s
made to stand out. It doesn’t have giant bold font like some of the more
informational posts do, but that’s fairly standard for writing prompts that
aren’t one liners or simple like dialogue starters. You can also see that I
included my blog’s link, and it shows up over the image at first when people
pull up the Pin. This was before I had a special page for writing prompts on my
blog, so you’ll note that I have the link sending people to my homepage,
something I generally wouldn’t do.
I could go back and edit, but I’ve chosen to just leave it
be.
What Else To Include?
Besides the graphic, you need a title, a brief description, and a link to your site. Let’s talk about each individually.
Title
Besides the image, this is the most noticeable part of the
Pin. Name it using keywords that reflect your content.
Description
A good description will, as we discussed earlier, explain
the Pin’s purpose in more depth than your title. It should contain long-tail
keywords—more on that in a minute—and hashtags if useful or relevant. Pinterest
searches using both to give Pinners content most relevant to their search.
Link
If you can, try to avoid sending your viewers to your
website homepage. Instead, show them the content that relates to the Pin. If
you have a post on the topic, link to that and write your description accordingly.
Readers and visitors tend to feel disappointment when they click on your link
expecting read more of what they were viewing only to be sent to a homepage,
or, worse still, a sales page. Unless the Pin they’re viewing is related to
those pages, don’t send them there! They’ll go look if they’re interested.
Otherwise, they’re probably not your target reader anyway, so let them go
without too much consternation.
How to Create Pins
Pinterest makes it really easy to create Pins. Take a look
below to see how step-by-step.
Fill in the page you’re given with the information we already discussed.
Research For Your Pin Description
Now, before you choose a board to publish this to in the top
right corner, you need to take a few minutes to do some keyword research to
find the long-tail keywords that will go into your description. Pinterest won’t
do this for you, but it does make it easier to do than some search engines. You
can find your long-tail keywords and examples of descriptions for content like
yours in the search bar and results. Let’s look at how.
In my search bar, I typed writing. Now, all these other
suggestions come up from Pinterest. These are your long-tail keywords. I’ve
circled the one we’re going to go look at for the next part: finding examples
of content like yours.
I get a ton of results, and I’m going to scroll through them
to find things that look relevant and similar to what I’m trying to Pin. Let’s
say I’m trying to write a Pin description for a Pin about writing your
antagonist and making them terrifying. Okay, lots of stuff shows up in writing
characters that isn’t relevant. So I just keep scrolling until I find the first
one that looks relevant. How about the one below? Looks pretty relevant.
So, I’ll open it up and take a look at the description they used. Keep in mind that I already have my long-tail keyword, or one of them, anyway. We went with writing characters. But maybe this description will help us figure out a better long-tail keyword. If you’re not sure if your idea for the keyword is something people are searching, just start typing it in like I did with writing and see what Pinterest suggests. As long as your search is specific enough, you can look at the top results to see what they’re doing and mimic that (without copy pasting, of course).
Maybe for some reason this one isn’t giving me what I want or I’d like more examples. In that case, I can scroll through the Pins below it in the More Like This section to find other relevant, similar content. That can be helpful for mining keywords that are common to Pins. If they’re near the top of the results, it means they’re doing better, so keep that in mind.
Now, notice that to start, I can’t see what their
description is, but I can see a few keywords in their title, which is another
important thing to notice. They use words like writing, antagonist, tips, and
how to. I might want to use some of those words too. Now, let’s look at the
description up close.
Okay, so we’ve got all the key words in here, a good strong description of what the question we’re asking should be, and the solution. This individual presents first the importance of the topic, then two questions about handling the creation of a strong antagonist (paralleling the topic presented in the title), and gives a solution by ending with the title to bring us back full circle to the blog post (I assume it’s a blog post) that will answer those questions we now have. This is a good pattern to follow, and while she isn’t talking about how to create a terrifying villain after all, and therefore might not be exactly what we need for keywords, she is a good pattern for the structure of our description.
Finishing Up and Publishing Your Pin
Hopefully you’re seeing now how to do the research. Once
you’ve done it, write your description, upload your graphic, insert your link,
and include the title. Finally, Pin it to a board by choosing a board from the
drop down menu in the top right corner of your content creation/pin creation
screen, and hitting publish.
That’s it!
If you choose to publish content of the same type regularly like I do with writing prompts, you can create a background template graphic and change only the text for each new Pin graphic. This saves me a lot of time. In addition, you’ll get used to what keywords, hashtags, and long-tail keywords work best for similar Pins. Check them every so often with the keyword research process to make sure that they’re still trending and current, but in general, if you chose well, they’re going to last a while as long as you’re not buying into a fad.
Does Pinterest Really Work?
What’s the best part of this? You don’t have to touch the
Pin again once it’s up. Aside from checking to see how it’s doing, you can sit
back and let people continue to repin with no work on your part, ads or no ads.
You’ll have to build traffic, but it happens. I started end of October of 2019
and had this by the same date in November a month later (Impressions are your
number of views, engagements are the people who clicked on your post, audience
is who’s looking at any of your boards, and engaged audience is made up, in
general, of those who click on things frequently and visit links):
I thought that was pretty great. Here’s where I’m at to date
with everything. October through to January barely registers. It might as well
be zero in comparison to what I’ve been getting.
This was January 29th to February 29th.
Big difference, right? My peak here is at 16.25k views in a day. I’m usually not below around 1K views in a day now, even though I only post twice a week and Pin others’ content sporadically throughout the week when I think of it. This came from work at the beginning of the account’s lifespan to build my following by pinning content from other users.
At the start, I had hardly any of my own content, and I was lucky to make it to 50 views on any one of them. Now, I’ve got a few pins that are anywhere from 15K to 60K views. It snowballs. Maybe now you guys understand why Pinterest is such a powerful tool. I get more clicks to my website from this than any other platform I use and far more than I ever have seen from social media. This works if you put in a bit of time up front to learn it and play around.
Pinterest Topics
Now, some of you still have no idea what to Pin, so I’m
going to leave you with a few ideas for content that has worked pretty well for
me (some better than others).
Book covers for books you reviewed or liked with a link to the review if you have it on your blog. (These do okay, but they aren’t my highest-viewed posts.)
Writing Prompts (These get the most attention with my highest sitting right around 54K views when I last checked, I believe.)
How-To Pins (Relevant graphic and link to a how-to article. I don’t do as many of these, but I know they work well for many people.)
Informational Articles (Similar situation to the how-to pins.)
Blog Tour Schedules with a link to the schedule on the blog (Mine was my second most viewed Pin to date for On Twilight’s Wings. It got roughly 12K views in a day when I posted it, which was a shock for sure!)
Product-Service related pins (Much like the ones you see when Pinterest shows Pins they’re promoting or brand-sponsored pins.)
Humor related to your blog or those who are in your target audience
Boards with collected images that help readers visualize the world and characters in your books
Inspirational material your audience would find useful
Quotes related to your brand’s audience (similar to humor)
Conclusion
This
was a really long article, and for that, I apologize! There’s a lot to cover,
but I hope that this has been useful to you in some way or another. For those
who have never used Pinterest, I hope it’s provided a crash course that you’ll
be able to use to get started. If you were already using it, I hope this has
convinced you to use it more frequently or to start using it for Business. It’s
a handy tool and it’s free, so why not start today? You’re the only one who
misses out if you procrastinate on it!
Last week, I put up a post on publishing tips and tricks. It was an overview of the most important things to do before your publication date along with some tips on them. Well, now we’re going to go through them one at a time and talk about them in more detail. Today, we’re talking about editing and formatting!
Editing and formatting are two of my favorite parts of the publishing prep process. I know they’re probably not most people’s, but they are mine. And as a freelance editor and editorial designer (interior book designers/editorial designers make the actual book pages between the cover pages look pretty), I’d be pretty miserable if I didn’t! So this is one of my favorite subjects to talk about besides actual writing topics. I’m sure it shows as this is a bit long. However, there’s a lot to cover. I’ve done my best to ensure it’s all useful.
This week, we’re going to do something a little different format wise. Depending on what you guys think, maybe I’ll do these a little more often. But for today, I decided to record the discussion about this instead of writing it out! It’s on YouTube, but I’m embedding it here to make it easy for you guys to view it. If for some reason it won’t load, you can also access it here.
Let me know in the comments if you prefer this format, the usual blog post, or both! If you guys have any questions for me regarding editing and formatting or even about other areas of writing and publishing, feel free to ask! I’m happy to answer the questions or to save them for my next video/post if I’m going to be discussing the topic soon anyway.
I recently finished listening to The Vine Witch on Audible. It was a great listen and a wonderfully written fantasy novel. This is the first fantasy novel I’ve reviewed on here that wasn’t by request too, actually. As always, I’ll start with the reader’s review and then go into the writer’s review. Don’t read the writer’s review if you want to avoid spoilers!
The Vine Witch – Reader’s Review
This book was a great listen! I got it from Audible and wasn’t at all disappointed. The characterization, imagination, and craft behind the story creates quite a bewitching tale. The only fault I had with it was that I didn’t like the way they brought actual words in for the spells here and there. They didn’t always do so, but I’m not fond of magic systems that use spoken incantations. While I don’t necessarily get too upset over being told a character chanted an incantation or spell, I dislike when actual words are used since I have no way to know what’s actually being said if it’s in a foreign language, which it sometimes was here.
The author clearly did her research on the darker side of the arcane arts, but I was pleased that she kept it clear that blood magic, demonic activity, and arcane/dark magic were considered evil and not to be meddled with. Whatever problems I had with the way she handled spells, this clear delineation between a magic that allows for things like crafting superb wine or creating pastries that allow one to realize the validity of love towards another and magic that kills, consorts with demons, and delves into darkness was something I greatly appreciated.
The other thing that I’ll note is that it’s fairly clean. No sex scenes, barely any heated kissing, and little that would cause me to say the book wouldn’t be okay for a younger audience. The only thing that might cause some parents to prevent their children from reading it would be the dealings with the darker, Satanic type of magic. I wouldn’t recommend the book for young children because of it, but it’s probably okay for thirteen and up.
The Vine Witch – Writer’s Review
As the sub-title of this post notes, we’re going to be looking at the integration of magic into the world within The Vine Witch. We’ve talked about magic in previous posts on Saturday Setups, with the most recent being on the consequences of it. Weaving it into the world can be difficult. However, Smith did a good job, and we can learn a lot from her techniques. So what were her techniques?
Spoken Spells
As I mentioned in the reader’s review, I didn’t like the use of spoken spells. Smith didn’t use them every time you turned around, which was good, but it still bothered me. That said, it did lend a certain sense of realism to the piece. Why do I say that? Well, not every type of magic that Smith had used spoken spells. Some did, but often, the spells used by the vine witches in the vineyards had more to do with remedies and unspoken communication with nature than it did spoken words.
Still, other kinds of witches, especially those dealing in hexes or curses, do use spoken spells. One interesting thing about how Smith chose to weave this into the story is that she uses rhymes. While some of the words used to activate spells weren’t English (And who knows what language they were. They didn’t sound familiar to me.), many of them were actually rhymes.
That part was quite interesting. Many of the spells the main character used were nursery rhymes she’d learned as a child. That isn’t something I’ve seen done much, but it gave the magic a unique flavor and served to blend it into the world more clearly.
Making Magic Indispensable
Worth noting is that this book is set in the real world somewhere in France (I believe). So while Smith didn’t have to create a new world, she did have to find a way to spin a tale where magic could fit in. In the case of The Vine Witch, people are actually quite open about the use of witches.
Everyone in the Chateau valley where the vine witches work knows about the witches who work the vineyards. In fact, the witches are revered because no one makes good wine without them. In this way, Smith makes magic an indispensable part of life. Usually, magic used on an Earth setting for a book tends to be less relied upon. Smith didn’t choose that path. She wove a tale where magic and life couldn’t be separated.
In fact, that was proved many times over in The Vine Witch because when the male lead tried to force the use of magic out of his vineyard, the vineyard constantly failed. He didn’t make good wine, and everything kept going downhill until he was willing to open up to a world he couldn’t see.
Differing Views on Magic
The other thing that Smith uses to bring the world to life is the difference in views on magic. Some view it as purely evil while others have a more complicated view of it. Even the witches themselves have areas of magic that they believe are absolutely foul and should never be touched (such as blood magic). The main character initially falls into the camp that magic is superstition at best and evil at worst.
He finally is able to reconcile magic with reason when one of the monks at the local church talks to him about it. The monk tells him that once upon a time, the ideas of bacteria, pasteurization, and cars would have all seemed like magic too.
Why? Because they were beyond the realm of human imagination and senses at the time. The monk notes that the vine witches are able to see a part of the world that normal human senses can’t but that being able to do so doesn’t necessarily make them evil. Magic, like any other tool, can be used for good or for evil.
I don’t necessarily condone that perspective of things as some of the magic used in the book is undeniably evil. The author doesn’t try to make it seem good either, but in moments like this, there is cause to question whether she really believes it’s evil in every case.
As a Christian speculative fiction author, I prefer more clarity here. However, each author and reader has to make that choice for themselves. My personal convictions won’t match everyone’s, and that’s fine. As I said earlier, there were things that bothered me about the book. However, it was a good read overall with a lot that authors can take away from it.
Conclusion
As both a reader and a writer, I found The Vine Witch to be an engaging and interesting read. I was pulled in to the story and kept enthralled until the very end. It had twists and turns I didn’t expect and characters I could relate to and bond with emotionally. I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy with the caution that if you’re staunchly against any kind of spell-based or spoken-word magic, you may want to steer clear.
