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Elizabeth SaFleur needs help in choosing her next cover! Her debut novel "Lovely" is the first book in the Elite Doms of Washington series. We need you to vote for the best candidate!! We tally up tomorrow so make sure to weigh in on this fun contest. The link below will take you to our 99Designs contest where you can rate and comment on your favorite and not so favorite! CLICK ME TO GET TO THE COVER CONTEST!!  Elizabeth SaFleur is an erotic romance author and recovering public relations practitioner who writes, tweets and posts under a pseudonym since her former business clients might be shocked at her new career choice.
She wrote the Elite Doms of Washington contemporary erotic romance series, debuting in January 2015, after a thirty-year career serving D.C. clients. Today Elizabeth shares twenty-eight, wildlife-filled acres in Central Virginia with her husband and dog, and is sometimes separated from her laptop to indulge in dance classes and local wineries. Elizabeth is a member of the Romance Writers Association and avid reader of all fiction genres. www.ElizabethSaFleur.com  Another session during #RWA14 was with Laura Kaye dealing with promotions. She describes the difference between Marketing and Promotion as... Marketing = paid stuff you do Promotions = Free stuff you do She focused on FREE this session and explained the 6 things you want to achieve to promote your book.
Now if you're looking at this list and thinking, "huh?" then you might need a bit more explanation. Take a look at each social media outlet. These are the places you'll find the six different types of promotions where most authors find success. For instance, most authors find that Pintrest is a great way to 1) Get exposure for their book, 2) Get Recognition as an author and 3) Can build relationships with readers.
Now look at the chart again. Make sense? What this does is tell you that maybe your promotion of finding new readers should be concentrated on Triberr, Group Blogs, and Blog Hops, but not Twitter, Facebook or Pintrest. Want sales? Concentrate on your blog, blog tours and Group blogs. ACTION ITEM: Build a promotions strategy based on this knowledge.  I have the ultimate Sylvia Day Rafflecopter contest! If you've already read "Holiday Submission" by Marilyn Lakewood and haven't reviewed it yet/or even if you have, here's your chance to win print copies of the following Sylvia Day collection! One lucky winner will receive these items:
I know Amazon can be--difficult--so a screen shot of a confirmation for the review sent to [email protected] will due! All the others, I just need a URL of the review in the rafflecopter box and your set!! A readers honest review is the life blood of authors, but I know it takes time and thought out of your day, so I wanted to make this prize extra special for taking the time for this debut author. If you like D/s M/F stories, this is a hot little read! If there is anything I can do to make it easier for you, the reader, please let me know!! We appreciate your support of our debut authors! Thank you!!
 Having lunch with one of my authors, we discussed the importance of community. An author without a community might as well be a book never read.
Author's are connectors, idea makers, thought provokers, and sometimes the town weirdo. Author's are commonly successful through innovation and determination. But, we need an audience. We need feedback. We're writing this stuff down AND publishing it for heavens sake. If we didn't want your feedback, we would keep the stories locked in the basement. Many authors don't realize they are the motor that drives community by their thoughts written down on paper (or a monitor). They draw community in by their ideas. So many authors are asking, I know community is how you gain readership, but how to you gain a community? It's heart breaking. And...I'm working on the very idea of how to build that community with an author cohort. But for now, I do it through a tweet team that promotes my freebies that you can only get by giving an email. If you like the community you find yourself in you stay--if you don't you leave. Simple. Yet it takes a little know-how to set up. Here's a tweet I use: Become an author's accountable police and get "But For You, Yes" #free #romance for joining SNMcKibben! http://ow.ly/wGSPo I use hashtags and a URL shortener and I get at least 1 new person every time something like this goes out. That URL link goes to my author website where you will see this: Subscribers get sexy, informative emails that includes them in my writing process...join and get a free story!! (email here) That will in turn take them to the Mailchimp double opt-in confirmation email. When you click the confirmation you go to a welcome email with the link for the book to download. Three days afterward, I send another email asking if you liked the book and if you could put in a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I provide links to both so it's easy one touch stuff. I have a built a community by this means--but slowly. Slowly isn't a bad thing. You can be personable, you can grow in a way that doesn't have you scrambling. But it's also easy to forget to be involved in your community so set a schedule to talk to your readers. They may like once a week, once a month or maybe if you're lucky, they want to see every selfie you post on facebook. Go where your readers go, but have a source you can connect with them first. This is the best advice I can give you on how to build your community. Perhaps later, I can give you something more. But without a doubt, know that you are the ring master. Others may be spinning their circles for you, but it's you that must get the ball rolling. ACTION ITEM: Set up your email list procedure. Even if you have no book! If you have the time, do it.  Holy macaroni, batman! I might have actually done something right this week! WOOT!
Last week I told you about Tuesday Tools: PickFu ~ well, the wonderful, talented, Google-fu adept John Li has so graciously given me the opportunity to spread the word about PickFu and with his super powers of *discount* I am able to give you the super secret code: TROLLRIVER for a 20% off a single poll. The coupon's good for 1 year from May, 2014 so if it's May 2015--It's too late to use the coupon. I recently got a chance to use PickFu on my latest and greatest cover for Dr. Vampyre! Check out my poll HERE! You can see the awesome explanations everyone gave about my cover and why they chose it. When I did my poll it was 2 in the morning and in about 10 minutes I had answers rolling in. I went to bed and in the morning the poll had finished and I got my answers!! I also did my own poll I did through my own email list with my beta-readers (300 people) and the outcome was the same with much the same answers. Wow! Awesome stuff! PickFu does polls right! I'm a fan for life! ACTION ITEM: Use this coupon when doing instant market feedback poll! Author ULRIKE reviewed in The Metaphysical Express! Below is the page of the interview: 
Here is the full copy of the magazine for your enjoyment!  ULRIKE is an inspirational writer/author and metaphysics teacher. She teaches the art of right thinking in a scientific, step by step program, that benefits all areas of your life; health, wealth and most of all happiness...
you can contact her at: Website Goodreads Books on Amazon YouTube  My lazy side is debating if I should just give you a list of Book Blog Tour Companies to go explore, but, I might first want to explain what a book blog tour is, does and does not do for you as an author.
ATOMR explains best what a Book Blog Tour is..."a virtual tour to help an author promote their book without traveling." The Book Publicity Blog goes into depth as to how a BBT works, but I'll give you the elevator pitch: BBT's are a group of book enthusiasts that blog about your book. A good BBT will guide you as to what to expect, and half the time, you should expect to work, pay or both. So that's what a BBT is, let's read about what a BBT does: They - schedule hosts of blogs - distribute to those hosts - mediate between author and blog host Sounds easy, right! Well, scheduling your book tour is like herding cats. So many things can go wrong. Many BBT's do it for the love of books. If you don't believe me, search "book blogs" contact those people, get them to agree to host a guest post on a certain day and make sure you give them what they need and followup with them. What a BBT does not do for you: - Guarantee sales - Guarantee your book will become a NY best seller ACTION ITEM: There are some great companies out there that really do it for the love of books. Prices range wildly--like from $5 - $700 so make sure you read about everything they give you. Most are very thoughough and give you a check list and instructions as to what to do. Granted you have to know what a guest post is, what an excerpt is and it helps if you are prepared for interview questions to answer, but otherwise, they walk you through their system. The first one is overwhelming, but once you've done it once, it's just the time in writing the posts!  I've discovered a new promotional site for authors called eBookSoda. They look like they promote to a UK audience and not just a US audience. I've place two books so far and the result was not bad for $5.
eBookSoda promotes your book for a day for $5. Be sure to schedule it early as they have a process. Make sure your book has these 6 criteria they want: 1. A book well-formatted, free from typos and grammatical errors. 2. A great cover. Something professionally made. 3. A rating with a minimum of 8 reviews with an average star rating of 3.5 unless it’s a new release (less than 3 months old). 4. Standard lengths such as:
6. Your ebook should be on Amazon (they only feature books that are available from at least one major retailer.) ACTION ITEM: Try eBookSoda for $5  Week 3 of our 6 Simple Facebook Contests you can set up in 5 minutes and it time for Solve to Win!
This was the photo and the question was--"How many wolves are in the picture?" The answer: 3 By now my author has determined that the effort is not worth the yields and wants to direct her efforts in a different direction. But I love the idea of Facebook engagement. Sometimes, though, your fans just want you--and that's okay. Will I stop using Facebook as a platform? No. I don't subscribe to the method that authors need to be in all places at once. I believe they need to concentrate on the platform, or platforms, that they feel most comfortable in and work it! My favorite is twitter but I also love Facebook. I don't cross promote on the platforms very much so it keeps both places fresh and different, but sometimes cross promoting is best for you. I don't know--it's only a suggestion. But the important thing to remember is, know what you want to do on your platforms. Do you want interaction or promotion? Either one takes a unique approach on any platform. This experiment we did was under the promotion category and we found out our fans want interaction as their engagement. So fans get what fans want! ACTION ITEM: Take from this what type of interaction your fans want from you on each platform. |
Dear Reader,
My efforts are to make this a learning blog where writers can see the flip side of publishing. If you have comments that will improve your experience or have a certain topic you'd like discussed, please contact me through email - HERE. ~ Sincerley, Your Editor Stephanie McKibben Head Troll Troll River Publications Books on Kindle
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