Hello Rebels, welcome to episode 52 of the Rebel Author Podcast. Next week I’ll be doing a solo show to celebrate the one year anniversary. But today, I’m talking to a marketing queen, Penny Sansevieri. We’re looking at seasonal marketing, how you can make the most of upcoming holidays and festive periods and maximize sales.

This week’s questions is:

What is your favorite episode of the last year?

Book recommendation of the week is: Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer

Apple: https://apple.co/3hIMSLJ

Amazon UK:  https://amzn.to/2RAKsnC

Amazon USA: https://amzn.to/2ZPHgJl

Note that these are affiliate links and I earn a small commission if you purchase the book at no additional cost to you.

Find out more about our guest Penny Sansevieri here:

Twitter: @bookgal 

www.amarketingexpert.com 

Instagram: @therealbookgal

Rebel of the week is Renee Gallant

I’ll be live on the iWriterly Chanel with Meg LaTorre, Jenna Moreci and Daniel Willcocks on the 23rd September at 9pm UK time

http://bit.ly/iwriterlylive

Join me for the Rebel Author Anniversary Poison and Prose on the 30th September 8pm UK time https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebelauthors/

The Anatomy of Prose: How to Breathe Life into Your Story, Characters and Sentences WEBINAR

1 new patron this week, welcome and a huge thank you to William. A giant thank you to all my current patrons too. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 052 How to Run Seasonal Marketing with Penny Sansevieri appeared first on Sacha Black.

Now what?

Previously you might have organised a blog tour, thrown up some tweets, a Facebook page post, maybe scheduled a couple more tweets, told your friends and then…? Well, back then, maybe your got sales. Today? I doubt it.

With the rise of the ‘pay to play’ market, getting serious levels of organic traffic to your book sales pages is next to impossible UNLESS you join in and pay to advertise.

Enter Mark Dawon’s Course

I want to learn about Mark’s course

I know, you don’t like it, you don’t really want to do it because it’s big and scary and not ‘you’. Believe me, you’ll soon get over advertising your books once you start earning good money from sales.

Advertising your books

To get book sales you need eyes on your books. To do that, you need to DRIVE traffic to your sales pages. Enter Amazon Ads… or Facebook ads or maybe BookBub ads. Either way, you need to pay for quality advertising to drive eyes onto your sales pages.

My personal experience of his course

I’ve spoken before about Mark Dawson’s courses. I’ve personally taken both the SPF 101 – a grounding in how to create and build a self-publishing career as well as the Ads for Authors course.

Mark’s courses are only open a few times a year because they’re so highly sort after. But right now, his Ads for Authors course is open.

Unlike the last course, which gave a solid grounding in how to build your career, this course is highly specific.

It will teach you how to master:

+ Facebook advertising
+ Amazon advertising
+ BookBub advertising

It also has bonus modules like teaching you how to write better blurbs, how to design attractive ad images and the SPF university.

Here’s why I love Mark’s course

• Once you sign up, it’s for life, no time limits, no expiry. All yours to study at your own pace.
• Mark doesn’t just give you the stated course content, he’s constantly adding mini modules and bonus features like tech tutorials.
• Unlike some courses, Mark constantly updates his materials, so if something changes in the industry, our course content is updated too.

I want to learn about Mark’s course

In Mark’s words, when you’ve finished studying the course, you’ll be able to:

” + Find your perfect readers and hit them with beautiful, well-crafted ads that convert them into buyers and fans.

+ Build an automated email sequence that introduces new readers to your writing and encourages them to move on to your paid books.

+ Grow your email list exponentially with readers who have signed up because they are eager to know more about you and your writing.

+ Turn some of those readers in to fans, and then into superfans (and members of your Street Team – selling more books for you!).

+ Write engaging emails to your readers that build strong lasting relationships.

+ Start growing the core posse of 1,000 true fans any creative artist needs to build a sustainable and reliable business doing the things that you love.

+ And – I almost forgot – SELL BOOKS.”

What are you even waiting for? Go check out the course:

I want to learn about Mark’s course

If you enjoyed this post, you might like this:

Book hooks and blurbs – Can you catch a reader? #Mondayblogs

The post Do you want to learn how to advertise your books? appeared first on Sacha Black.

As an indie author there are many aspects to publishing that are important, hell, all of them are, you’re in charge afterall. But for selling purposes, your cover and book hook are THE most important.

You slave over a book for weeks, months… possibly even years. Sweat, blood, tears and probably a number of other bodily fluids go into the masterpiece that is your glorious book-baby.

But then what?

You wrap it in a shiny cover, then throw it lovingly onto a number of retailers websites and wait…

and wait…

and wait some more.

There’s a problem. No one’s buying your book.

There are a thousand reasons why someone might not buy your book, but two you can do something about quickly.

First impressions count

Here’s my psychology background coming into play, but first impressions take seconds, not minutes to form. Between 7 and 12 of them to be exact. But that’s when you meet people. Browsing on Amazon or Kobo you have even less time to make an impression.

In marketing terms, books are what we call impulse purchases. They’re low cost enough a shopper will make a snap decision to buy because the consequence of buying a book is low financially. Which means you can pick them up just as easily as you can lose them.

So what can you do to ensure you pick them up rather than drop them?

Do a book cover scan

Covers along with edits are the mortgage of publishing. You don’t want to change them unless you absolutely have to. But, if you’re advertising your book and it’s still not selling then I’d suggest doing a scan of the covers in your genre. Is your cover similar to the ones in your genre that are selling? Or is it displaying flowers when the others are showing tanks?

Now, I know you might be screaming “but mine needs to stand out,” but hear ye, hear ye little writer bees… That’s exactly what you don’t want it to do.

I know, I know. But you want them to spot yours, you want to be ‘seen’ in the crowded book forest. But you stand out by standing in.

And yes, I know how insane that sounds. What you want is a reader to walk into a shop and spot your genre area. Your cover needs to stand out ‘within’ the parameters of your genre. More on that

Ask yourself the following:

• What similar elements can you see in the popular covers in your genre?
• Are there colour schemes that keep cropping up?
• Are there patterns or styles of font you see frequently?

Edit your book hook

Editing your book’s blurb or tagline is where the real money can be made. It’s also significantly faster and not just cheaper than changing your cover, it’s FREE.

I recently took a short course in an endeavour to learn how to craft better hooks and blurbs. I’ve written about synopses before (see the links at the bottom of the post). But I wanted to focus on grabbing readers at the first opportunity possible.

So I took Adam Croft’s Writing Killer Blurbs and Hooks mini course. Boy was it awesome.

Before I share some of the things I learned, let me tell you, not only is it jam-packed full of information, it’s only $29. AND once you buy the course, you get it FOR LIFE. Interested? Click the button below.

I want the book hook course

Of course, it’s a paid course, so I won’t give away ALL the details, but here’s a few highlights:

What is a book hook?

Your book’s hook or tagline is a single sentence placed at the top of your book’s sale page. It’s purpose is to be eyecatching, and draw the reader in.

Quick Tip: hooks that ask a question work extremely well because our brains are biologically wired to answer them.

Which means if your hook is a question you’re almost guaranteed to drive a reader on to read the rest of your blurb, if not purchase your book.

Your blurb isn’t a summary of your plot. In fact, most of your plot isn’t even relevant to your blurb. Your blurb should capture the heart of your reader. You want to actively avoid telling them the whole plot otherwise what’s the point of them reading your book?

I also learned how to beautify my book blurb. You know when you go to Amazon and an author had bold bits and stars and italics and your blurb is all plain text and boring? Yeh, well. Now I know how to make them pretty too. And before you panic about HTML coding, there’s a cheat but you gotta take the course to find out what it is!

Okay, I’ll stop spilling secrets. Just go take the course and learn in one hour how to master your hooks and blurbs.

Please note this is an affiliate link and I will earn a small commission if you purchase the course, however, as I mentioned previously, I’ve personally taken this course and found it very useful which is why I’m recommending it. 

I want the book hook course

For selling purposes, your cover and #book blurb are THE most important part of #bookmarketing Learn how to craft the perfect blurb #indieauthor #selfpublishing #IARTG #ASMRG #writingcommunity
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If you enjoyed this post, you might find this useful too:

5 Things to Remember When Designing Your Book Cover With @AuthorhelenJ

https://sachablack.co.uk/2016/01/04/how-to-snag-a-publisher-first-time-with-your-synopsis/

The post Book hooks and blurbs – Can you catch a reader? #Mondayblogs appeared first on Sacha Black.

It terrifies me to say it, but 2017 will see me publish actual, word filled, hold in your hands books, and hopefully, a few of them.

But any author worth their salt, knows they can’t and shouldn’t be launching alone. Visibility is the one thing that connects indies to new traditionally published authors. I say it all the time, but Amazon, is a rainforest of books. Getting seen in any part of it is difficult.

We might day dream about coffee shops and alone time to ink our hyperbolae in peace, but getting a book from chapter one to finished product isn’t a one man job. While the writing might be, there are beta readers, cover designers, formatters, editors and reviewers that help with the rest. If writing a book isn’t a one man job, why should launching one be?

Mastering a book launch isn’t really about the big day, it, like anything you anticipate for a while, is  a bit of an anticlimax. Besides, if you want sustained sales, then don’t focus on the launch. Focus on the lifetime of a book. It’s not about its first day, or week, or even its first year. It’s about optimising that book as an asset, it’s a product you can earn from again and again and again, so why worry about getting sales in it’s first week. You want to be worrying about getting them for the next ten thousand weeks.

Launches are about driving yourself crazy and into a six foot deep grave through stress sustained activities over long periods, garnering stacks of reviews, running competitions, paying it forward for other authors, teaming up or compelling your own boxsets and unfortunately, paying for advertising.

I’ve been doing a chuff load of research on marketing and book launches, so today, we’re talking street teams, and for anyone willing, there’s a personal request from me, to you, to join my street team.

STREET TEAMS -What in the shizzle are they?

Street teams are a group of generous writers, bloggers, readers, reviewers, friends, family, dogs, cats, cousins, chimps, chocolate… wait…

It’s a group of people willing and able to help you launch and promote your books.

I say books plural, because that’s the ideal. Otherwise it would be a right pain in the arse having to create a new team for every single book, especially if you publish more than one or two a year? Sure, not everyone in your street team will help with every book launch, but still – why have more than one group to manage? If people are happy to be kept in the loop and help when they can, keep it simple.

Pat Flynn, from the smart passive income podcast has a great podcast on street teams, you can check it out here. The most important lesson I took from his podcast, is the importance of building your team early, and not just a week early either. Months early. The earlier you gather your team, the longer time you give them to help you. Makes sense right?

WHAT DO STREET TEAMS DO?

The way I see it, street team work is split into two parts:

1. Street Team Reviewers

The reviewer side of any street team could also be called an ARC team which stands for (Advanced Reader Copy).

You give them an electronic copy of your book (or, if you can afford it, a paper copy) for FREE and in exchange they leave you an honest review, and if they are super lovely and have the time, in more than one place, i.e. Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Goodreads, at least, that’s what I do.

While that all sounds lovely and candy floss covered, it isn’t quite so straight forward, the stats I’ve read vary massively, but with an engaged group of street teamers (as opposed to a KDP Select freebie day), you could expect an average of a 25% return rate, so for every 100 books you give away, on a good day you might get 25 reviews back. (I know this is a rough figure, not everyone will have the same experience)

Giving your book away for free won’t hurt your campaign/launch/career either. You need to think long term. Giving fifty books away for free now, might lead you to a hundred sales later, especially if that person leaves you a review or tells their friends about your book. Short term pain for long term gain. Besides, lots of people who receive books for free actually buy copies of books they love to support the author, I know I do.

2. Social Media Sharers

The list of things you could ask your social media sharers to do is endless, but here’s a few ideas:

• Create sharables (i.e. pre-made tweets, statuses or other social media content with photos for them to share at their leisure)
• Guest posts, or if you don’t have time to write stacks and stacks of new content then half a dozen posts that can be reused on different blogs
• Blog tours
• Publishing review posts
• Sharing and promoting competitions you run
• Telling their friends, family and networks about your book
• Join in a Thunderclap

HOW DO YOU GET A STREET TEAM?

Well, it ain’t rocket science. You suck up your introvert tantrum, undo your zipper, slap out your steel balls and quite simply… ask.

Ask EVERYONE.

Friends, family, bloggers, writers… I’m not going to repeat the earlier list, but if they breathe, can hold a pen and write more than their name, bloody well ask.

You can encourage street team sign ups by treating them with the utmost respect and giving away freebies, creating Facebook groups and organising special prizes just for them.

HOW BIG SHOULD MY STREET TEAM BE?

How big can you manage? Some people like small an intimate, ten or twenty reliable people who you know will post a review. But I have also heard other authors speak about the benefits of having a less engaged but much larger team of five hundred or more. You have to decide what you want to achieve, what you can give your street team as thanks and how you’re going to stay on top of the organisation.

The other factor to consider is how many reviews you want. Bookbub doesn’t accept a book for an advert unless it has a shit ton of reviews. Lindsay Buroker author and podcaster extraordinaire says that while she has had books accepted with less than 100 reviews, its easier with more.

What are the best book launching tactics you have ever come across? Let me know in the comments below.

So, that’s a short run down of what a street team is, what they do, and how to get them.

Now for my personal ask…

It’s a bit early, as I’m not launching till next year, but I’m a planner and like to be organised. If you’re interested in joining my street team – where you’ll get free early access to my ebooks and other goodies, and would be willing to either post and honest review, or happy to share my launches on your social media, then let me know in the comments below.

Please note, by agreeing to help me, I will use the email address you use to comment to contact you. Your email will ONLY be used to send information in the run up to launches. There will be no spam, no newsletters or content of any other kind.

If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe for my monthly round up of posts, and the latest in publishing news.

The post Street Teams – The Smart Author’s Tactic for Book Launches appeared first on Sacha Black.