Nancy's Notes From Florida

RWA17 Workshop Recap – Attracting Readers
August 14, 2017

At the #RWA17 conference, I attended several sessions that told us how to attract more readers. See my post on building Mailing Lists below if you’ve missed that one. Again, these conference notes are subject to my interpretation. So let’s look at some of the suggestions.
Reader
Respond to readers by replying to their emails, tweets, and Facebook posts. Mention their name in your response. Tag them if you want to catch their attention. You want to turn “cold” leads into customers, then fans, then friends, and finally into ambassadors.
Use social media tools to get your message across several platforms. Check out https://meetedgar.com/ for managing social media posts. It allows you to schedule posts across several sites. For limited time posts, you can set expiration dates. Another site is https://www.socialjukebox.com/. This allows you to set automated tweets and also link to Facebook and LinkedIn. I use this one and it’s a great time-saver. Resharing your evergreen content keeps your social profiles active and gives your posts more exposure.
Post regularly and vary the content of your posts. Do #ThrowbackThursday (old photos) and #TGIFriday (plans for weekend). Always include hashtags on your tweets and Instagram posts.
Involve your readers. Bring them into the creative process. Ask for opinions on cover art or book titles. Ask which secondary character they’d like to see in your next book.
Video is popular on social media and so are photos. Try Facebook live video or adding photos to a post. It will have a higher organic reach. Boost your posts. Share to a page or group. Link your Instagram posts to show up on Facebook and Twitter. Establish your brand on Pinterest.
Upselling counts in the book market. Offer new mailing list subscribers a freebie then say that for only $X, they can get the next book. Utilize drip mailing campaigns to this purpose. At each step, you’re offering something new.
Maximize your social media channels. Facebook ads were discussed along with other ways to get newsletter signups using widgets and links to your opt-in form. Use pinned tweets when you want to advertise a new release or giveaway. Invite interactors to Like your page. Participate in Goodreads and join special interest groups on the different sites.
Pricing and Sales. Indie authors can run sales campaigns on more expensive books at other platforms like iBooks. Ninety-nine cents may be better than free in a campaign because you’ll rank in the sales charts, and readers are more likely to read a book they paid for than a freebie. Although, I have to say I’ve found new authors from free books offered on BookBub and at The Fussy Librarian. Then I’ve gone on to buy their entire series. Sales of your backlist titles can carry over to your frontlist (new) titles.
Cutting Edge Technologies like apps and Facebook Messenger ads could become more important. Offer a free book or chapters via Messenger as part of a drip campaign. Build your Messenger subscribers, but your newsletter mailing list should still come first.
Use Multiple Points of Entry. Offer readers full-length novels, short stories, novellas, spinoffs, mini-series within a series, sample chapters.
Diversify your Book Formats with ebooks, print, and audio. Do box sets with your own series. If you do a group promo with other authors, make sure the story you offer relates to your series.
Cross-Promote with other Authors using the sites mentioned in my Mailing List post or with your own “lifeboat” team. Newsletter swaps are becoming more popular. You mention each other’s new releases or sales in your respective newsletters.
Do what you can, and don’t stress over the guilt that you’re a slacker compared to others who are doing a gazillion more promotional activities than you are. Recognize your limits but strive to learn something new. Set business goals each year along with your writing objectives. Do one new thing at a time. Then it won’t seem so overwhelming.
What other techniques would you suggest to gain readers? As readers, how do you find new authors to read?
For my conference photos, Go Here. https://www.facebook.com/NancyJCohenAuthor
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Crime Fiction Giveaway, Aug. 7 – 14 LAST DAY!
Enter Here to win 40 crime fiction novels and a Kindle Fire. My revised Author’s Edition of Highlights to Heaven ebook is included.
Booklover’s Bench Giveaway, Aug. 1 – 18
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RWA17 Workshop Recap – Mailing Lists
August 9, 2017

I attended numerous sessions on marketing at #RWA17. So much new material was presented that I scribbled notes, intending to decipher everything later. With thirty-six pages filled in my notebook, I can’t possibly review each workshop attended and have time left for writing. So I’ll summarize the high points of what I learned. It may not be all new information, but I’ll include enough to give you the gist.
Mailing Lists
Build a mailing list and use it. Why does this matter? You own your list, not Facebook or another social media giant that might cut you out someday. What can you do with it? Ask your fans for reviews on backlist titles. Send them a message explaining why this is important and request a review if they’ve read your book. Do surveys or polls to see what readers want and to ask their opinions on book titles, cover art, etc. Share new release information. This is your forum. Make it count.
newsletter
How do you gain sign-ups?
· Put your call to action in the front and back material of your books.
· Entice the reader by offering a bonus in return. Give away a free novella, the first in series, a behind the scenes glimpse, or a character profile.
· Add your sign-up link to your signature files. Check out https://www.wisestamp.com/ for professional signature templates.
· Do Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads with your newsletter link.
· Have a Call to Action in your permafree book to entice readers to sign up for your newsletter. Maybe offer them book two as an incentive.
· Offer giveaways such as Rafflecopter or Kingsumo (WP Plug-in). When you get a mailing list from a contest, send a few emails to these people in an isolated list first to see how many bounce or unsubscribe. Add the entrants to your general lists after three to five mailings.
· Multi-Author Giveaways at Instafreebie or BookFunnel or at contest sites like AuthorsXP and Booksweeps help gain readers along with contest junkies. Try them out and see what works for you.
Every workshop on marketing emphasized how important it is to build your mailing list. I could write more on author newsletters, but I’ll do so another time in a post with my own advice.
So with this goal in mind, Sign up for my Newsletter for my latest book news, giveaways, bonus content, and events. Free book sampler for new subscribers.
GIVEAWAYS
Crime Fiction Giveaway, Aug. 7 – 14
Crime Fiction Contest
CLICK HERE to win 40 crime fiction novels and a Kindle Fire. My revised Author’s Edition of Highlights to Heaven ebook is included.
 
Booklover’s Bench Giveaway, Aug. 1 – 18

ENTER HERE to win a $25 Amazon/BN gift card from Booklovers Bench
 
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Crime Fiction Giveaway
August 7, 2017

Crime Fiction Giveaway, Aug. 7 – 14
I’ve teamed up with 35+ fantastic crime fiction authors to give away a huge collection of novels to 2 lucky winners, PLUS a Kindle Fire to the Grand Prize winner! 
You can win a copy of my revised Author’s Edition HIGHLIGHTS TO HEAVEN ebook, plus books from authors like Sara Paretsky, Linda Fairstein, and Lisa Gardner.
CLICK HERE to enter. Contest runs for one week only, so enter now!
Crime Fiction Giveaway   Highlights to Heaven
 
Booklover’s Bench Giveaway, Aug. 1 – 18
ENTER HERE to win a $25 Amazon/BN gift card from Booklovers Bench
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RWA 2017 Overview
August 4, 2017

I had a wonderful time at #RWA17, the Romance Writers of America national conference. The site rotates each year, and this time it relocated to Orlando, Florida at a hotel not far from our condo there. Thus I commuted to the Dolphin Resort on a daily basis. Sessions began at 8:30 every morning, although I got there by 8:00 to cruise the goody room and see who I could run into at the conference lobby. On the left, here I am with Jane Ederlyn and Tina Stitzer. On the right, I’m with Pam Stack.
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Before I get into summaries of what I learned, I want to mention that in addition to the educational aspects, networking is a prime goal of mine at these events. I was happy to see many of my fellow members from Florida Romance Writers as well as mystery author Joanna Campbell Slan from our Florida MWA chapter. Here are photos of all of us having fun. Below are Tina Stitzer, Elayne Cox, Kristin Wallace, Victoria Pinder, and Jane Ederlyn on the left. On the right is Joanna Campbell Slan, Melanie McCarthy, Zelda Benjamin and me.
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Publisher booksignings meant giveaways, and I took home a collection of books to last months if not years. I only selected the ones in my favorite genres so as not to be greedy. Indie authors had their own signing event too. Signing below are Zelda Benjamin, Lynnette Hallberg, and Heather Graham.
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Then there was the massive “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing that raised $44,163.59 on behalf of ProLiteracy Worldwide and the Florida Literacy Coalition. According to ProLiteracy, the amount donated from this Literacy Autographing over the years has helped 40,000 adults learn to read.
Reading is what it’s all about, and we authors learned how to reach readers through marketing skills until it felt like steam coming out of my ears with info overload. When I’ll have time to implement any of this information is your guess as well as mine.
I especially liked the luncheons, where we could meet new people at our tables, and the mixer with librarians, booksellers, and bloggers. Individual sessions with industry reps were also helpful. In my next few posts, I’ll try to summarize the workshops to the best of my ability.
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Stuck in the Middle
July 25, 2017

While writing a novel, you are plodding along during the first half of your book, and all of a sudden you come to a halt. Now what? Are you stuck in the middle of your story?

It’s too soon to start the revelations leading to the killer or to the romantic resolution. You need more material to make your word count. It’s also a good spot for a turning point in your plot. So what do you do? You face the blank white page and experience a sense of fear that your story will come up short. You’ve reached the dreaded Muddle in the Middle.

 

Do not panic. Instead, read your synopsis over again or review your chapter-by-chapter outline. Haven’t done them? Do so now. Reviewing what you’ve written will reveal plotting elements you might have forgotten or personal threads you can expand on. Here’s what else you can do:

Raise the body count.
This is especially easy in a murder mystery. Just throw in another dead body. Who is dead and why? Who could have done it? How does this deepen the primary mystery? Could two different killers be involved? What if this victim was your prime suspect? Who does that leave? A whole new investigation will start based on who is dead, and it may throw your sleuth’s earlier theories out the door. Now she has to go in another direction for answers.

Crime Scene

Have an important character go missing.
If a character disappears mid-point in your story, that’s going to disrupt everyone’s plans. Is this person in jeopardy, or is he guilty of perpetrating the initial crime? Did another bad guy betray him? Or is this act staged, and the person isn’t really missing after all? How do your other characters feel about this missing person? Was he loved or despised? What efforts are being made to find him? How are the police treating his disappearing act?

Introduce a new character who shows up unexpectedly.
Think about a secret baby, secret lover, or secret sibling. Or a secret spouse. What is this person’s role in the mystery? How does his appearance change the investigation? Who was keeping this character’s identity a secret? This would be the time for that secret baby to come to light or the past husband no one knew about or the former girlfriend with a grudge. Or it could be someone who’s heard about the case and wants to cash in somehow. Could this new arrival be a fraud? How does his presence affect the other characters?

Twins

Resurrect a character thought to be dead.
This is possible if a death was staged, meaning no body was ever found, or the corpse was not identifiable. Is it someone who’d been gone for years or whose alleged murder started the current investigation? What made this person decide to reappear now? Or, what is the clue that leads the sleuth to believe this guy isn’t dead after all?

Steal a valuable object or return one.
Why was this item taken? Is it a clue to solving the mystery? Does it relate to another crime? Who took it and why? Is it meant to be a distraction from the murder investigation? Or was it part of the same crime all along? In the reverse, you could have a valuable object turn up, like a missing will or a more recent one that names a different heir.

Build on secrets and motives already present.
If you’ve laid the proper groundwork for your story, your characters have enough secrets, motives and hidden depths that you can explore as the story moves along. Write down each loose end as you review the high points and make sure you go down each trail until that thread is tied. Usually you’ll find you have enough material already hiding among your pages. Snippets of suspicions your characters mentioned can be plumped out until laid to rest. So give your people enough layers that peeling the onion takes the entire book. Except just when you thought you knew it all, throw in another twist like one of the points above.

What are your tips for getting through the muddled middle?

Stuck in the Middle of Your Story? #amwriting #writetip Share on X

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