How To Get A Literary Agent

After all your hard work you’ve finally completed your official manuscript. The big question, “Great, now what?” Well, you have two options to choose from. The first is the do it yourself method and self-publish and the second is to cast your line and hook a literary agent. For the purposes of this blog post, we’ll be looking at the latter.

The best way to get an agent is to start thinking like one. Literary agents get thousands of manuscripts every week. The vast majority are delivered without a request and as a result, many of them are shelved for review sometime later, if at all. Keeping your manuscript out of the dust pile means networking with agents and introducing yourself first so that when they ‘invite’ you to submit your manuscript it’s because they truly want to read it and they’re expecting it.

Networking with agents is much easier today that it was in the past thanks to technology. Find out the names of the agents that you’d like to pursue and connect with them through social media. Support them on Twitter and ‘like’ them on Facebook. Interact with short, brief dialogues, but don’t make them about you or your sales pitch just yet. Once you’ve built some momentum, indicate that you’d enjoy sharing your author’s resume for consideration and review. With a little luck, you’ll have an invite to share more.

If social media networking seem a bit tedious try joining a writer’s group or even attending workshops with other published authors. Connecting with other published authors, and editors, is a good way to build relationships and even request permission to name drop. Agents are much more receptive to people who are in the know with their clients than perfect strangers.

Take the time to investigate how each agent prefers to be approached. Just because a one person enjoys receiving an unbound printed manuscript with a business card stapled to the front doesn’t mean that they all do. Doing your home work shows that you’re professional and that you’re following guideline and protocols that agents have put in place for a reason. This will set you apart from the flood of others who haphazardly submit without a thought. In this business, having a leg up is vital and rising above your competition can be just the ticket that you need to succeed.

Planning and Designing Your Book Cover: 5 Tips

Because so many authors are self-publishing these days, many of them don’t have the luxury or access to a publisher’s in-house graphic design team. Plus, technology has moved books into an online world and graphics need to be flexible enough to upload and post on the web, as well as appear in print. So if you’re getting ready to tackle the design of your book cover consider some of these tips below to make the process simpler.

1.  Research

Your book cover should appeal to your audience’s interests, reading levels and background. Knowing what they want or what grabs them can help you determine how to present your layout and deliver the message on your cover.

2. Images

Make absolutely certain that you’re using high-quality and high-resolution images in your design. You want your artwork to look clear and crisp regardless of it’s size. If you take shortcuts with your images you can potentially end up with pixelated and fuzzy graphics.

3.  Themes

If you’re an author, chances are that you’ve written more than one book or that you’ll be writing more than one book. For this reason, think about creating a theme in the designs that you build and look at ways to tie the aesthetics of your publications together. Even though your books may be about completely different subjects, your theme can bring a cohesive feel to them that lets readers identify with you as an author of the work.

4.  Typography

The choice of font that you incorporate into your cover can play a major role in giving the reader a tease about its contents. Use a script font to show off a feminine theme or an angled serif to create an Asian feel. The rule here is don’t flood the cover with too many different fonts and keep it legible. You don’t want people de-cyphering what your cover says.

5.  Feedback

Instead of coming up with just one great design, try to develop a group of three or four. Once you’ve got them laid out you can share them with others to get honest opinions about what they prefer and why. Although friends and family might seem like an obvious choice try hitting up strangers and conducting your own poll. It’s a great way to learn about what works and what doesn’t.

Web 2.0 Publishing

The advent of the web has completely revolutionized the way that books are printed, published, promoted and sold. Technology has made each of these components more accessible for the average person to use and benefit from. Instead of relying upon a publisher many authors now have the ability to do it all on their own and for a fraction of the price.

Let’s take a look at printing. Print-on-demand (POD) is a process where authors are able to upload a print-ready file to a POD publisher and when an order arrives for your book, the book is printed on the spot and delivered to your customer. Much cheaper than batch printing which include inventory storage and shipping costs. Another plus to POD publishing is that you’re not limited to just one. Use a group to determine the most affordable for you.

POD publishing transfers easily to large online retailers like Amazon.com and BN.com. As an author you can create your own page on these sites and as orders are requested you can have them fulfilled via your POD group. The general public will never know the difference and it gives writers a tremendous amount of control over the production of their books. Furthermore, you can also sell and promote through ClickBank, Kindle and on iPhone’s Smashwords – all are excellent tools and purchase points to boost your sales.

There’s been a lot said about promoting your book, but with web 2.0 the empowerment for authors continues. Instead of traditional book-signings and tours, writers can engage readers through podcasts, blogs, Google Book Search and social media. No matter how you slice it, promoting your book using various online tools and resources is a sure fire way to boost sales and build awareness about what you’ve written. That equates to exposure and more revenue for you.

In a nutshell, think of web 2.0 as a term that describes how writers can become more self-sufficient. Being able to do things on your own shouldn’t be viewed as a burden, but as a way to guide readers to your book and keep them engaged beyond the writing.

eBook Marketing Tips

As important as it to plan a marketing strategy for the paper and ink version of your book, it’s equally vital to develop one for your ebook version. A well-crafted ebook marketing plan can determine the success or failure regarding the quantity of copies downloaded and sold. Before you embark on an ebook promotion, consider incorporating some of the following techniques to supplement your strategy.

Build a Website

If hearing this reminds you of a broken record then that’s a good thing. Times have changed and it’s crucial that you have build an online home to for your ebook to reside in. Once you’ve got your site up and running, make sure that there’s either a dedicated page or subdomain exclusively for your ebook. Give readers plenty of details, features, benefits and testimonials that highlight your ebook’s contents.

Advertising

The internet makes advertising affordable and customizable for any budget. You don’t need a Superbowl-sized pocketbook to get the word out. Sign-up for a Google AdWords account and explore some of the price models and options available. The nice thing about a pay per click campaign is that you only pay for the visitors who actually click through your ad link and visit your site. Compared to traditional advertising (i.e. newspaper ads, TV spots, etc.), this is a more cost-effective way to drive traffic and create awareness about your ebook.

Connect with ClickBank

Click bank is a fantastic resource that makes it very easy for authors and writers to sell and promote their ebooks. They are connected to more than 10,000 publishers and have 100,000 active affiliates that are ready to co-promote what you’ve written. There is a small fee involved to establish an account, but it quickly pays for itself with the rapid sales of your ebook. Visit ClickBank for specific details on how to get started.

Article Marketing

Create articles that are closely related to what your ebook is about and upload and publish them to  article directories like Ezinearticles, Buzzle and Suite101. For each article that you write and publish you have an opportunity to create a short byline that can be used to promote yourself as an expert and you can include a link within the article’s contents to bring traffic to your ebook’s sale page on your website.

There are so many ways to promote your ebook. Use traditional marketing strategies and customize them to fit your needs and work in an online capacity.

Book Marketing Plan: Create One In 5 Steps

Developing a marketing plan for your book can be frustrating if you don’t know exactly where to start. Fortunately, whether you’re creating a marketing plan for a restaurant, a new skincare cream or a roofing company, the core elements of the plan will never change. As long as you have some of the basics down, you’ll be able to assemble a solid plan that will help you market your book and help you achieve amazing results. Here’s a summary of what you need to consider before putting pen to paper.

1.  Research Your Consumers

You need to know what people are buying, where they’re buying and how they’re buying. Selling what people want is what will get them to purchase. Hit the web and look at historical trends for books in your niche. Look for commonalities among them like simple plot line, memorable characters or outstanding publicity blitzes. Use what you learn and apply it to your own plan.

2.  Make It Easy to Distribute

Even though you’re an author who’s created something tangible that you can touch, hold and keep, most of the world is electronic based. This means you’ll need to come to your audience and make your book searchable, portable and shareable. Do this well and your book has the potential of becoming a viral phenomenon.

3.  Create a Sense of Urgency

As your gathering and researching for your marketing plan, consider creative ways to make your book a stand out from others. There’s quite a bit of competition so start getting clever about how you’ll sell your product. Think about promoting a limited quantity available or only allowing people to purchase if they buy two at the same time. There are many unique ways to get consumers excited and compel them to act.

4.  Set A Budget

Once you get your creative juices flowing you may find yourself with an arsenal of great marketing  ideas and strategies for your plan. Unfortunately, they’ll all probably come with a price tag. Decide what you can afford to do and what you can’t and get realistic about costs. Your book needs a website, but anyone who’s offering to build you one for less than $500 highly questionable. This is an instance where you get what you pay for.

5.  Don’t Be Afraid To Ask

Whether this is your first book or your fifth, it doesn’t hurt to connect with a successful peer and ask them for advice and insight. People love to teach and share with others. Send an email or pick up the phone and ask others what made their marketing plans a success. Use what you learn to focus your own book marketing plan.

SEO and video: get better search results for your book

If you’re an author with a video trailer you’ll want to take full advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that can be used to enhance awareness of your video with the search engines. Optimization means utilizing keywords and other elements that add terms and tags to make your video more relevant for user searches.

Let’s say that you’ve just written a publication roasting coffee beans. Your SEO efforts would include specific words, like roasting, coffee and book, so that your video would be more likely to appear in Google’s search results. In addition, there are many other SEO steps that you can take to promote your book’s video.

1.  Title

Start with a catchy keyword title. Remember that catchy is different from obscure so try to avoid getting overly creative. Keep it simple and use keywords that can be directly associated with your book, subject matter and general content.

2.  Video Transcript

YouTube is evolving and this is a good thing. Word on the street is that it will begin to use voice recognition to capture audio which will then be made searchable. This will bolster the likelihood of your book video appearing in related searches. This technology is coming down the pipeline so prepare for it now by creating a keyword focused transcript to accompany your video trailer.

3.  Meta Data

Meta data is a fancy term of descriptive keywords, or tags, that are used to find your video book trailer. There are many free online tools available that can help you discover popular and relevant keywords that you can use in your meta data. Use single words, two-word phrases, even three-word phrases. A word of caution on meta data – try to limit your meta data collection to around 16 to 18 word, otherwise you’ll appear to ‘spammy’.

4.  Sharing

Put all your hard SEO work to good use and share your book trailer video on other video sites. Beyond YouTube, there are countless other video sites and uploading to each one can be time consuming. Try using a video distribution service like TubeMogul to get your SEO video out to the masses.

5.  Syndicate

Publicize your video by using RSS feeds like Blinkx. Send the URL link to your video and you’re done. Millions of people will now have instant access to your book trailer.

Authors, Books, Business & Multiple Streams of Income

As an author, selling your book should be first and foremost on your list of to dos. Selling copies leads to revenue and that’s what pays the bills. Beyond selling your book, did you know that there are other profit avenues that you can explore and expand on? Well, there are and to make things easy, we’re highlighting a few of them below.

Ebooks

These days, quick access is the name of the game. With the advent  of the internet, people have become more impatient and used to clicking a button to download what they want. Fortunately, you have the ability as an author to tap into the world of instant gratification for consumers by creating an ebook. Convert your printed version into a PDF document and charge for live downloads and online purchases.

Audio

We’re a race of people on the go. From working out at the gym to extended commute times to the office, there seem to be fewer hours available to curl up and enjoy a good book. Not anymore. Authors can adapt to the fast-paced lifestyle of people by developing an audio version of their books. It can easily be downloaded and burned to a CD or MP3 player for portability and listened to while on the move.

Ecommerce

Brick and mortar retail locations are great and they’re certainly not going extinct anytime soon. However, make it more convenient for readers to purchase your book by incorporating ecommerce into your website. Customers can avoid long lines and inventory fluctuations when they buy directly from your site.

Affiliate Programs

The largest affiliate program comes from Amazon Associates and if you’re an author it’s a must that you join. Through the program, website owners feature Amazon.com ads on their sites for books and products. When site visitors click on your ad, you receive a commission for the sale of your book. There are many affiliate programs available, as well as resources that compare and contrast their features and benefits. Do your homework and find one that suits your needs and you’ll be on your way to sales and profits in no time.

There are many other ways to generate additional points of income from your book. Explore the web for inspiration and test the waters for yourself.

Viral Video For Book Marketing and Book Promotion

Earlier this year, Erik Qualmann’s book Socialnomics created international buzz when its video book trailer went viral. The book offers a fascinating look at the impact of social media on businesses and consumers, but the video does it even better. Hence its viral accomplishment. The questions are how did this video go viral and what has it achieved in doing so.

Understanding the transformation can provide you with some insight on how to take your own video trailer to the masses successfully. First off, the video wasn’t exorbitantly long, just more than four minutes. Although most video attention spans rank at one to two minutes, Socialnomics has a fast paced format that keeps the visuals coming quickly and creatively.

The content is condensed into eye-raising statistics that leave viewers feeling surprised and mesmerized at the same time. Each fact relates back to the book and a specific social media reference. Regardless of whether you’re a social media novice or a guru, the content that Socialnomics shares is exceptional. Plus, it’s set to a trend Fat Boy Slim song that creates a sense of urgency and movement.

So how does this factor into going viral and what can you do to tap into its power? Truth be known, most people want to be entertained. There’s a time and place for being conservative, but if you want to grab someone and shake them into a response, you’re more likely to get it done with something amusing.

Think about compiling tidbits and pieces in a unique way so that viewers will want to discover more. If that seems challenging, consider adding a bit of controversy by taking an opposing view point through your video. Anything clever is sure to get noticed and that’s what can bring you epic numbers of viewers.

Once you’ve accomplished what you want with your video, don’t rest on your laurels. Take a cue from Qualmann. Instead of deciding ‘mission accomplished’, he has created a reloaded version of the video to continue driving and building its momentum. Guess what? It’s working. Once you’re satisfied with your own video trailer, test it out and don’t be afraid to make adjustments and release fresh versions. There’s no right or wrong way.

Use Qualmann’s video as inspiration to craft your own and see where it will take you. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Difference Between Book Marketing Strategy & Book Marketing Plan

The terms marketing strategy and marketing plan may sound similar, but the truth is that they’ve quite different. Many people often mistake the two for one another and that can sometimes lead to ineffective marketing, especially when it comes to your book. A marketing strategy is shaped by your goals and is more of a summary that illustrates your position compared to the competition. In contrast, a marketing plan is the actual application of what your strategy is. The marketing plan is your roadmap that takes you from point a to point b.

The first step in developing a marketing strategy is to decide what you want your promotional efforts to accomplish. Do you want to sell more books in Texas? Are you interested in increasing your audience base to include auto-biography fans? Create a detailed list of what your short-term and long-term objectives are and they will become the foundation that your marketing plan is built upon.

Your marketing plan will include in-depth details such as budget, sales forecasting, strengths and weaknesses and market data such as, market growth rate, consumer trends and competitive information. The combination of all marketing plan components will provide you with a working document that can be used to focus your efforts and measure their outcomes. This is important because it illustrates success and failures and allows for fine tuning your plan if needed.

You can’t have a marketing plan without a strategy and a strategy without a plan is worthless. They both are needed in order for your marketing efforts to work effectively. Think of these two pieces like a pair of legs – they’re both required if you want your marketing to stand on its own.

The nice thing about a marketing strategy and plan is that they aren’t set in stone. If you’re headed down a path that doesn’t seem to be producing the outcomes that you had hoped to achieve all you have to do is sit down and re-focus. Because these are working documents, they’ll grow as you grow.

Book Marketing Mistakes For You To Avoid

When it comes to book marketing, it’s definitely more of an art rather than a science. Standard marketing tactics are pretty straightforward and without much variance. It’s the level of creativity and personalization applied to the marketing tactics that can make or break them. Like all techniques there are a few mistakes that you’ll want to avoid making.

1.  Not having groundwork for your platform. If you don’t conduct research and start building a network for your book before it’s published, you won’t have relationships or connections in place to help you push and promote what you’ve created. Like the old saying goes, “It takes a village.”

2.  Narrowing the scope of your audience. You may have a sci-fi novel that would move Asimov to tears, but focusing solely on fellow robot enthusiasts is selling yourself short. Broaden your audience base by exposing your book as much as possible. Take care of ISBN title registration and ensure availability of your book through major wholesalers.

3.   Failing to embrace technology. It’s been said many times throughout this blog, but just in case, here’s a repeat. Your book must have a website. It’s an absolutely critical marketing component that has a direct impact on sales and recognition of you as an author. Times have changed and online is where you have to be, including your book.

4.  Poorly edited manuscripts. Your book is a reflection of who you are as an author. Make absolutely certain that you take the time to have your book professionally edited and reviewed for any text errors. Having clean and cohesive content is an essential part of any good book. Don’t cut corners with editing.

5.  Poorly designed cover art. Hate to say it, but as human beings we’re attracted to aesthetically pleasing things. Spending the time to work with an experience graphic artist or designer can make a huge difference in how appealing or enticing your book jacket will look. Unattractive or substandard isn’t going to sell. This is one rare instance where you can judge a book by it’s cover. If it’s not appealing, it’s probably going to gather dust.

Take the time research and outline your book marketing strategy. There are a lot of moving parts so consider each one carefully before embarking on your book promotion journey. A little effort will go a long way.