Marketing Archives - Page 7 of 8 - Writing As A Second Career

The Death Of eBooks Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

You may have heard recent news reports about ebook sales dropping and print sales increasing. As a reader, this likely makes little difference to how you prefer to read (or listen) to books. I read about half ebooks and half paper books depending on whether I’m traveling, how quickly I want to get a book I’m interested in, and whether one of my friends who buys favorite authors’ book in hardback passes them on to me.

As authors, though, how much time and effort we put into marketing print books versus paper books might be affected by reports about ebook sales. For that reason, this Friday I recommend reading Nate Hoffelder’s Digital Reader post. In it, Nate explains why these reports about ebook sales dropping keep appearing, and why the figures, though accurate, are misleading because they leave out a large number of ebook sales.

Those missing sales include, as just one example, any ebook sold by an independent author who publishes without an ISBN. Amazon, among other ebook publishing platforms, does not require an ISBN for ebooks. There are over 5 million ebooks on Amazon, so if even a fraction are published without ISBNs, that significantly skews the figures.

For other reasons results regarding ebook sales are skewed, read Nate’s article here.

Until Sunday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Writing And Selling Short Stories

In 2016, Gregory Norris sold 54 short stories and 4 novellas. A full-time writer, Norris is interviewed on this week’s Self-Publishing Podcast.

Whether you plan to write short fiction or not, this Friday’s recommendation, Making Money with Short Stories with Gregory Norris, is well worth a listen. (If you want to skip the opening chitchat, start around 8:30, when Norris joins the podcast.)

Norris talks about paying markets for short fiction, writing a strong cover letter, how much you can earn at short stories, and how the form differs from novel writing.

Until Sunday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

On Getting A Traditional Publishing Deal

I’ve had articles, short stories, and poems published traditionally, but a lot of my posts focus on self-publishing, as that’s how I’ve published my novels.

Because of that, I haven’t kept up as well as I’d like with current trends and practices of traditional publishers. To try to remedy that, I checked out this episode of the Self-Publishing Formula.

I hope you’ll find it as interesting and helpful as I did.

SPF-050 How to Land a Publishing Deal – with Alex Clarke, Headline Publishing

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Paperback Writer: Using KDP To Self Publish A Paperback

There are a couple ways to self-publish your novel in paperback. I just tried a new option from Amazon’s KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) platform. Until recently, you could only publish a Kindle edition through KDP.

For my Awakening supernatural thriller series, I used a different Amazon company, CreateSpace, for the print editions. Because I was short on time, rather than try the do-it-yourself options, I paid CreateSpace to format the manuscript and create a paperback cover. The explanations on CreateSpace for how to do those tasks myself struck me as too daunting and technical.

KDP seemed like a simpler and clearer process, so I decided to try it.

I chose a very short book I published a few weeks ago for Kindle, How The Virgin Mary Influenced The United States Supreme Court: Catholics, Contraceptives, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc., about how Catholic views of women influence our legal system. Based the length—only 6,700 words (28 printed pages)—I figured formatting for print should not take too much time.

Here’s my view on using KDP to publish a paperback, feature-by-feature:

Cover

Verdict: Thumbs Up

It was easy to create the cover once I got the hang of using the features. I uploaded the JPEG file I already had for the e-book. KDP automatically created several paperback options with a spine and back cover based on the front cover design and colors.

I choose the option that made the front cover an exact match for the e-book cover and extended the background across the spine and the back cover.

By clicking on the text boxes KDP provided, I pasted in my author biography and book description from a Word file onto the back cover. My title and author name were automatically included on the spine, minus the subtitle because the text is too long.

Overall, an easy process.

Manuscript Layout

Verdict: A Qualified Thumbs Up

I’d been hoping that KDP would magically convert my e-book file (a MOBI file I created in Vellum) into a paperback, but no such luck. Instead, I needed to upload a Word file.

Uploading was easy. Formatting the Word file before uploading was more challenging.

KDP provides templates for whatever paperback size you want to use, but the template I downloaded included only the correct margin and sizing. I chose a font in Word that I thought would look good (Book Antiqua 12 pt.).

I struggled with page numbering. After consulting a lot of Help screens and experimenting, I learned how to break the manuscript into sections, which in theory allows different pagination for each, but I never could get it exactly how I wanted it. I settled for small Roman numerals that start with page 2 on the copyright page (I’d wanted them to start on page 2 of the Preface) and ordinary numbers from Chapter 1 on.

After the page number challenge, I opted not to try to create headers with the title on the left-hand pages and my name on the right, though I would have liked to do that.

Now that I’ve done formatting once, I suspect I’ll have an easier time in the future. But when I was doing it, I concluded I’d rather pay someone else to deal with it.

Book Description For Amazon

Verdict: Thumbs Up

The book description from the Kindle version appeared in that section for the paperback automatically, so that was easy.

Price/Royalty

Verdict: Not Enough Data

Because this book is very short, I wanted to keep the price low so readers would not be disappointed or expect a full-length book. The lowest price I could choose that ended in .99 was $3.99. That resulted in a royalty under $.30.

I suspect I couldn’t go lower because there’s a basic set up cost Amazon wants to recover before its worth allowing an author to publish. Because this was an experiment, I was okay with this price structure.

Based on my experience with CreateSpace, the numbers should work out better for a longer book. I plan to try it for my standalone supernatural suspense novel, When Darkness Falls, which is over 80,000 words. I’ll update this post once I do that.

Print Quality

Verdict: Thumbs Up (plus a gold star)

With CreateSpace, I always request a print copy to proof before approving the final version. I do that because I like seeing how the cover and page layout look on paper. I also find it helpful to proof the book on paper one last time.

KDP Publishing does not offer print proofs. I assume that’s part of what keeps the upfront cost to the author at zero. The only way to do a last check of the book is via the online preview function. That was pretty easy to use, and I was able to eyeball the entire book to make sure it looked OK.

It made me a little nervous to hit publish without actually holding the paperback in my hands. But I was happily surprised that the paperback looks great.

Author Copies

Verdict: Thumbs Down

Every year I share a table under the Chicago Writers Association tent at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago. I also have live book events for new releases in my Awakening series.

Through CreateSpace, I’m able to buy print copies of my books at cost and sell them for whatever price I choose at live events. (The shipping charges add to my cost, so I don’t earn a lot, but it is generally $1-$3 a book.) CreateSpace also usually sends a small number of free copies to the author.

KDP publishing does not offer author copies or the ability to buy at cost for authors. The only way to get copies of the book is to order them off Amazon. The author does still get the royalty for that, so you’re getting the book at the cost. But it means paying more money initially.

For that reason, I doubt I’ll use KDP for books that I envision selling at events.

On the other hand, this feature matters not at all for the other reasons authors make paperbacks available. Those include (1) offering a paperback for readers who don’t have ereaders; (2) highlighting the lower Kindle price through comparison to the paperback price; and (3) validation (many readers feel better trying out a new author whose books are also offered in print).

To that last point, though, oddly, Amazon so far has not automatically linked the paperback and Kindle versions, which I would have thought it would do given that I published them from the same platform. If that doesn’t happen soon, I’ll email KDP Help and ask them to do it.

Distribution

Verdict: Neutral

Unlike CreateSpace, KDP does not offer distribution to non-Amazon sites. So my small book on the Supreme Court will not be available through Barnes and Noble’s website, though the books in The Awakening series are.

I’ve heard the country distribution is more limited on KDP than CreateSpace, though the KDP help screen says KDP distributes to Japan and CreateSpace does not, so that may work both ways.

The proportion of paperbacks I sell compared to ebook and audiobook editions is small, and I mainly publish them for the three reasons listed above, not as a money generator. For those reasons, the distribution doesn’t matter that much to me.

If you are focused on selling paperbacks, you may want to look further into the distribution question.

Conclusion

In summary, I had a good experience with KDP for creating a paperback. I give it a Thumbs Down solely for the lack of author copies, a neutral/not enough data rating on pricing and distribution, and a Thumbs Up for cover, manuscript formatting, book description, and print quality.

I hope that’s helpful. If you’ve tried KDP or another platform for your paperbacks, please share you experience in the Comments.

Until Friday—

Best,

L.M. Lilly

What Does The Future Hold For Publishing?

In the 1990s, a friend told me he’d read an article that said in the future no one would buy books. Instead, people would have this amazing device that could turn into any book just by asking for it. That sounded impossible to me, and I didn’t connect it with the computer on my desk with its giant monitor, bulky processing unit, and dial up Internet connection that made odd pinging noises.

Yet here we are in 2017, and I both read books on Kindle and publish my novels in numerous ebook editions. (I still read paper books, too, as do many people, so that part hasn’t completely come true.)

Publishing seems to change by the minute, and advances like cars with built-in capacity for streaming audiobooks and virtual and augmented reality technology will no doubt will cause further evolution. So this Friday, my recommendation is the podcast/video episode from The Creative Penn on the future of publishing.

Enjoy!

Until Sunday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Freelancer Or Entrepreneur?

This Friday I recommend the first episode of Seth Godin’s Startup School: Freelancer or Entrepreneur? The entire series of 15 episodes is worth listening to for insights on starting a business regardless what you plan to do with your writing. But this first one is particularly eye opening for someone like me, who has one profession (law) where I typically charge an hourly rate and one (writing) where I earn money selling products I create.

Before listening to this podcast, I didn’t quite grasp why some of what I learned starting my own law firm, which I thought made me an entrepreneur, didn’t quite translate to the business side of my writing. Now I know that as a solo lawyer, though it was my name on the door, I was still much more like a freelancer than an entrepreneur. For one thing, I still mainly sold my time and expertise. That’s not bad, but it does explain why I ultimately found the experience less satisfying than I expected. I’d kept the same model I had at the large law firm–the reward for good work is more work. That’s good for the short-term bottom line in a financial sense. But in the long run, you never get off the treadmill.

https://soundcloud.com/startup-school/freelancer-or-entrepreneur

Whether you are paid now by the hour or not, I think you’ll find this discussion of being a freelancer versus an entrepreneur both enlightening and practical.

Please let me know what you think!

Until Sunday, when I’ll write about doing-it-yourself versus hiring freelancers–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Your Book Will Be Judged By Its Cover

After you finish a book, you probably don’t decide whether you liked it or not based on its cover. But when deciding whether to buy a book, especially by an unknown author, most of us do judge by the cover.

In some ways that’s unfair, but there’s not a lot else to go on. There is a book description. But odds are if you don’t like the cover, you won’t ever pick up (or click on) a book to read the description.

The cover should tell you as the reader about the book, including:

Is this the type of book you like to read? Whether you like or dislike romances, for example, you can probably pick one out immediately by the cover.

Does the tone of the book match what you like? I love mysteries, but I’m not a fan of satire, farce, or cute stories. So if I see a cartoon-like illustration or a cat on the cover of a mystery, I pass. Someone else, though, would grab the same book in an instant.

Is the book likely to be well-written and edited? A confusing or sloppy-looking cover suggests the writing will follow suit.

If you’re publishing your own work, the great news is you get to decide what your cover looks like. The bad news is, that’s not always easy, and it usually costs money.

Custom Designs

The most expensive approach, and most effective, is to contract with a professional graphic designer who has a lot of experience in your particular genre and with ebooks if you are publishing in ebook format. This can cost anywhere from $100 to several thousand dollars, though you can get really nice covers for under $500.

The difference in price in part has to do with how in demand a designer is. But more of the price difference is how much you hire the designer to do.

If you want someone experienced to create original illustrations, you’ll need to pay at the high end of the range. If you want the designer to use stock photographs (you can find those at istock or similar sites), that will cost a little less.

One way to lower costs and still get a professional design is for the design to be based on a single photo. I had two covers designed this way at cost of a little over $110 each.

For the first, When Darkness Falls, a supernatural suspense novel, I chose a stock photo and sought the designer’s input on whether it was a good one. She said it would work, and she then modified the colors and heightened certain aspects to fit the genre before adding the title and author.

For the second, a collection of short horror stories, I told the designer I wanted to use a photo of the Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower). I pointed her to a few I liked, but I left it to her which one to choose.

My favorite designs came about when I found Damonza.com. I really loved their sample covers. I showed the designer assigned to me my first three covers for the Awakening series, gave her information about the story for the fourth book and samples of the covers I liked by other authors, and left the rest to her.

She came up with the concept, offered me several choices, took a different approach based on my feedback, and offered me more choices. Below is the one I settled on.

I liked it so much I asked her to go back and redesign my previous covers. The four Awakening covers cost me nearly $500 each, but I think it was worth it. These are my best sellers, and sales increased dramatically with the new covers.

Design For A Lower Budget

Another option if you’re on budget is to use a premade cover. Many designers have covers they created for various types of books. If you like one, you pay for it, and the designer inserts your title and author name. You can look at those covers on the designers’ websites. For instance, the designer who did The Tower Formerly Known As Sears has premade covers here. These are $85 right now, but I’ve seen premade covers on other sites for as low as $35.

You also can hire someone to design a cover off the website Fiverr for as little as $5. I have not done this myself, but I know that some authors use this option.

Doing It Yourself

You can put together your own cover. I did this for a nonfiction book I just released. How The Virgin Mary Influenced the United States Supreme Court is based on a paper I wrote for a seminar I took called Reason and Religion. Enough people were interested in the topic that I rewrote it and published it as a Kindle ebook.

People generally buy non-fiction by topic rather than by author or by cover, so the goal is to get the topic across, which mainly means your title being clear. This topic is geared toward a limited number of people, and I don’t expect to earn a lot, so I figured I’d try creating a cover myself.

I did this one on Canva.com. You can set up an account for free. Canva has ebook layouts already available and also has access to stock photos. Many are free, some are available for a low fee. The above cover cost me $35 total, as I needed to pay for a couple of the photos in the background.

The cover below, for a book on plot structure I’ll be releasing next month, cost nothing, as the background photo was free:

Actually, it’s not true that the cover “cost nothing.” Both these covers cost me time. I had to learn Canva, play with font sizes, photos, and colors, and experiment. But I felt it was worth it because I plan to release several non-fiction books on writing this year, as well as a book of essays. If these covers work (as in, if sales are what I hope), I can use them as templates. If not, I’ll need to decide how much I want to invest in my non-fiction catalogue.

In summary, while I’m willing to try creating my own covers for non-fiction, for fiction, I recommend a designer because it’s so vital to convey the genre and tone of the book via its cover.

If you have questions about covers or would like to share your experiences, please add a comment. I’d love to hear what you’ve been doing with your books.

Until Friday-

Best,

L.M. Lilly

The Cost To Create An Audiobook Edition Of Your Book

Releasing an audiobook edition of your novel or other book is one way to earn more income from a manuscript you’ve already written. Those of you who know the story of how The Martian sold know that’s a big part of its success.

One question I get a lot is how much it costs to have an audiobook edition of your book produced.

Just as there are traditional publishers for print and ebooks, there are companies who will produce your audiobook. Podium is the one that produced The Martian. Just as with traditional print publishing, the publisher, not the author, pays the up front cost.

You can also create and release your novel as an audiobook yourself, in partnership with a narrator/producer. That what I did.

Doing It Yourself

So far, I’ve used ACX for my audiobooks. ACX is an Amazon company. It operates as an exchange where authors and audiobook narrators/producers connect with one another. The author supplies the manuscript and the narrator/producer records and produces the audio and uploads it to ACX.

Shiromi Arserio produced the second and third books in my Awakening series, and is currently working on the fourth. Here is her recording studio modeled after the Tardis on Dr. Who:

Different narrators have different sounds and styles. For a good example of two different professional narrators in the same genre, you can listen to Shiromi in the sample for The Unbelievers and to Jewel Greenberg, who narrated The Awakening.

Your audiobook, once finished, will be available through Amazon and iTunes. (And any other platform ACX publishes on. As with other terms, this can change, so you need to check the terms on ACX when you’re ready.)

ACX pays a percentage of the sale price as a royalty. This, too, can change, and it has gone down since ACX began. This is part of why some authors are now using Author Republic. I haven’t tried that platform, so for now I can only tell you my experience with ACX.

Paying Your Narrator/Producer

There are three ways to pay your narrator. The first is to pay per finished hour (PFH) of audio. The second is a royalty-share deal. The third is a hybrid option.

Paying up front means that once you as the author pay the narrator/producer PFH, the royalties you get through ACX are all yours.

To give you an idea what the cost might be, my second novel (a supernatural thriller), The Unbelievers, was 84,400 words, which resulted in 9.1 finished hours of audiobook. If a narrator charged $300 PFH, that would be $2,730. Some narrators charge less than that, and some more.

With the royalty-share deal, you pay nothing up front as the author. But when the audiobook sells, ACX pays you half the royalty and the narrator half the royalty.

A hybrid deal is where the author pays less–usually around $100 PFH–toward editing, proofing and mastering costs, but royalties are still shared. It’s a great way to attract good narrators if you can’t afford their usual PFH rate.

Which Way Is Best?

Deciding which to do depends on your budget, your long-terms goals, and on what terms the narrator you want is willing to work.

Pluses to paying full price up front include:

Long-term, if your book sells well, you will earn more because you won’t need to split the royalties.

It may be easier to find a good producer/narrator because you won’t be asking that person to bet a lot of time and expertise on your novel, you’ll be paying up front. For royalty-share, you need to sell the potential narrator on the value of your work, usually by showing a track record of good print or ebook sales, or best seller rankings.

The minuses are what you’d expect:

Not everyone has the funds to pay up front for an audiobook, and even if you do, you might want to invest those dollars some other way.

You don’t know how long it will take to earn that money back.

The positives for authors of royalty-share deals:

No up front money to invest.

The narrator/producer has a lot of incentive to help promote the audiobook so she or he gets paid.

You may be more motivated to promote knowing someone else has taken a chance on your work.

Minuses of royalty-share for authors:

If the book really takes off, you will be splitting the royalties with your narrator for a long time, so you may spend much more than you would have had you paid up front.

The narrator you most want to work with may not be willing to do a royalty-share deal.

To do royalty-share, you’ll need to agree to keep the book with ACX and that narrator for a number of years (check ACX for exact terms).

The hybrid deal threads the needle. You’ll still need to pay some up front costs, but it’s a lower investment. For my 9.1-hour book, that would be $910 instead of $2,730. While you’ll still be sharing royalties, a good narrator/producer makes a tremendous difference. Poor sound quality or an unprofessional narrator can mean that no one buys your book at all, as most people listen to the sample before buying. In my view, better to have a good narrator with whom you share royalties than no royalties at all.

Other Costs

In addition to the dollars you spend, whether up front or through splitting royalties, you’ll also need to invest time. Your narrator will spend the most time producing each hour of audio, but you’ll need to listen to it and check to see if it is accurate and sounds good.

Though I didn’t track the hours, my best guess is I spent at least 15 hours listening, taking notes, and corresponding with the narrator on the 9.1-hour Unbelievers recording. And I had a fantastic, super-competent narrator who rarely made errors and whose production quality was excellent. In the long run, that is not a lot of time, but I mention it so you know it’s not as simple as just handing over your manuscript and watching royalties roll in.

You’ll also need an audiobook cover. You can start with your ebook or paperback images, but the covers on Audible are square, so at the very least, you’ll need to resize your current book cover. It’s best to pay a designer to do this, because she or he can make sure the quality of the image remains and rearrange the elements so they are balanced for the square size.

Other Benefits

Not only will you have another edition of your book to sell, you’ll learn a lot by hearing your book read aloud by a professional. With my first supernatural thriller, The Awakening, I discovered there were words I overused in my writing. Despite that I’d read much of it aloud to myself when proofreading, I simply didn’t hear that until I heard a narrator read it. Other people tell me they don’t notice, but it jumped out at me.

With The Unbelievers, the second in my Awakening Series, I discovered nuances in the characters that helped me as I was writing the third.

The Tough Question — Profits

How much you’ll earn on an audiobook through ACX is hard to say. First, while you are paid a percentage of the sale price, the sale price varies, and it’s set by Audible, not you.

For example, right now, the regular price of The Unbelievers on Audible is $19.95. But an Audible member can buy the book using a credit, and typically members pay $14.95 a month to belong and get 1 credit per month (though sometimes Audible gives you extra credits).

A member also can buy the book for the purchase price, which might be $19.95, but other times is less. People who already own the Kindle version of the book can buy the audiobook on Amazon for $1.99. Also, sometimes the book is just priced at a sale price of $1.99.

You do get a bonus if a person signs up to Audible for the first time and chooses your book as a free download. That’s only happened three times with The Awakening.

As the author, you have limited ways of promoting the audiobook beyond telling your own email list about it and including it on your website and social media. Because you don’t set the sale price or know when it’ll be on sale, you can’t purchase listings anywhere featuring a sale.

Sometimes Audible includes your book in its own sales email. Once I saw The Unbelievers for $1.99 in an email with five other books. I was happy about that, but I had no control over it.

Sales of the ebook edition can help sell the audiobook, because of the low price for people who own the Kindle version. Lately, I’ve had a lot of audiobook sales of The Awakening because I’ve made the ebook version free to generate sales for the rest of the series. That means the buyers are likely getting the audiobook for $1.99.

That’s a worthwhile strategy when you have a series, as it usually prompts sales of the later books. But if you are selling only one audiobook, it will take a lot of those sales to generate much income.

The Bottom Line

An audiobook edition can definitely be a nice added source of income for a book you’ve already written. On a royalty-share deal, you’re investing only your time up front, but there are caveats, including that you are tied to the narrator. If you like working with that person, as I do, that’s fantastic. If not, you will be less happy.

On the other hand, if you are paying up front, it might be quite a while before you recover the cost of your audiobook edition, so you’ll need to weigh whether you believe your book will sell well enough and for long enough to justify that.

I’ve been happy so far with my audiobooks and I think it’s been worthwhile. If you decide to do one, or if you have experiences to share or other questions, please post in the comments.

Until Friday–

L.M. Lilly

P.S. 9/15/17 Update: KOBO is now offering audiobooks. If you’re interested, check out Listening To Jim and Bryan Talk About KOBO And Audiobooks.

The Prosperous Writer’s Guide

This Friday, I’m recommending The Prosperous Writers Guide To Making More Money: Habits, Tactics, And Strategies For Making A Living As A Writer by Brian D. Meeks and Honorée Corder.

This book covers in a fun way why it’s important to understand the numbers involved in selling books. Also, and more importantly, the authors show you how to use those numbers to increase your sales. Focusing mainly on Amazon, the book helps you figure out whether the cost of an ad is worth it, whether your book description and cover are helping you sell your novel or hurting your chances, and how to choose keywords that can get your novel in front of the new readers.

Even if you are not yet publishing, or if your novels are published by a publishing company, it’s worth reading this book to better understand the factors that affect sales and how visible your novel will be on Amazon.

Much of the The Prosperous Writer’s Guide is helpful for other publishing platforms, too. The authors include tips on improving your book description and how to evaluate whether and how much overall sales have improved based on different ads or changes to your book description or cover.

I hope that’s helpful.

Until Sunday, when I’ll talk about the cost involved in creating an audiobook edition of your novel–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Social Media For Authors

Figuring out when and how to use social media as a writer can be overwhelming. It’s easy to while away hours checking Facebook or clicking on links to articles or videos and then feel guilty because we “should” be doing something else, like writing or promoting our writing.

Also, many people dislike everything about social media. It can seem like a place people go to toot to their own horns endlessly or tell everyone that they had eggs for breakfast, and who wants to be “that person”?

Having Fun And Being Who You Are

Over the coming weeks I’ll offer some tips on social media. Today I’ll share a bit about how I use social media as an author (and a person).

My main rule for myself on social media is that I need to enjoy what I’m doing and genuinely want to connect with the other people there. Which I guess is two rules. If you follow those two, you’ll have a happier life and be less likely to come off as, or to be, that person who’s just there to try to sell people things or say how great you are.

As part of that approach, I stick with a few social media platforms I like and use for reasons other than my writing. I do sometimes make a few of them do double duty, which is a good way to get a little bit more exposure without more effort.

Facebook

I got on Facebook in the first place because my nieces and nephews lived in other states. I liked being able to occasionally see a post about how they were doing and see photos of them, and they were nice enough to accept my friend requests.

After I started publishing my writing, I started posting about it occasionally on my personal Facebook page. I try to share only big news or something particularly exciting. Recently, I shared that the first book in my Awakening series, which is temporarily free to publicize the series, reached number five on the Amazon Best Seller List for free books. I figured that qualified as pretty cool, and my friends were excited for me.

I also post articles on my Facebook page that I think might interest my friends or anyone else who stops by my page. My Instagram account (more on that below) also links to Facebook, so if I post a photo of my parakeet on Instagram it also shows up on Facebook.

I also periodically update a separate author page. There, I am more apt to list day-to-day developments in my writing.

When I use Facebook, I rarely read the newsfeed. Instead, I look at Pages of people I want to keep up with. That limits my time on Facebook and ensures that I enjoy it.

Twitter

As you probably know, Twitter allows you to post very short comments (which is called tweeting) as well as photos. I love Twitter for connecting with other writers and people who share my interests.

This is the banner I use on both Twitter and Facebook.

I have occasionally bought or sold e-books through Twitter, but mostly I like it for the people and for finding articles on helpful topics. I met the producer/narrator who later went on to produce the audiobook editions of the last three books in my Awakening series on Twitter.

I also started learning about self-publishing there, as I searched for #self-publishing and found tweets and articles by authors Joanna Penn and Melissa Foster. Neither was very well-known at the time and both were generous about sharing what they learned as their author businesses grew. Now I tweet about the articles on this website, as well as about what I’m reading or watching. I still connect with and learn from other writers on Twitter.

Pinterest has online bulletin boards where you can tack photos virtually. I used it quite a bit for a year or two. I have several boards, including one for whenever I finally decide to remodel my bathroom and one of fictional female heroes.

I still visit For When I Remodel My Bathroom as I try to decide what to do and when. I haven’t been to the other boards very much lately because I have stepped up my writing schedule and that’s the social media platform that fell by the wayside. I still like it though and I’m sure I’ll go back at some point.

Pinterest posts can be linked to Facebook and other social media, so if you like it, it’s a good way to post on multiple platforms at once.

Goodreads

As I wrote about Friday when I recommended Goodreads For Authors, I love this social media platform. As a reader, I use it to track books I want to read and to review books or place them on my virtual shelves by category. I have an author biography there and I’ve made sure my books are listed.

As an author, I like reading the reviews of my books by Goodreads users. They generally include a lot more information about why they rated the book as they did and what they think about it. I’ve also done giveaways of paperback editions through Goodreads, I created an author blog, and when I review books, I include a paragraph at the end for other writers talking about what they might learn about fiction writing through reading that particular book.

Goodreads also can link to Twitter and Facebook, so every review I do also is posted on those social media platforms, which is nice. Reviews can be automatically posted to the author blog on Goodreads. So, it’s another nice way to do one thing and have it appear in multiple places.

Wattpad

Wattpad is a writing social media platform. Many people write chapter-by-chapter and post as they go. Others post finished work one part at a time, which I’ve been doing with The Awakening since last summer.

I also really enjoy seeing what other writers are doing. The platform skews younger, so for me there’s an added advantage in seeing what’s engaging to readers and writers in a different age range.

Whether Wattpad helps sales is hard to say, but I don’t see much downside to doing it. Once I spent a couple hours setting up my bio and learning the platform, the time commitment became minimal. It takes me only about 10 minutes to post a chapter each week. I usually spend another 10 minutes or so looking around the site and answering any messages.

Instagram

Instagram is pure fun for me. So far as I know, nothing I do there helps me sell books. I mostly connect with people I already know personally or have met through Facebook.

My oldest niece, who told me about Instagram, once said that she loves it because everyone’s happy there. People typically post photos that make them feel good, and there is relatively little in the way of political commentary. I most often post photos of my parakeet or of really nice sunrises or sunsets or beautiful photos of Chicago streets and buildings.

You can put links to websites or products on Instagram and you can buy advertising, but I haven’t looked into doing either one. I like having a platform that is just fun.

Instagram does also link to other platforms, so mine was linked to Facebook and Twitter. Recently, though, I had to update my passwords and I actually haven’t figured out to how to make that connect again with Facebook and Twitter. Once I do, my Facebook page will have a lot more photos.

I hope this overview has been helpful. Please share in the comments what social media you like and whether you use any platforms I’ve missed.

Until Friday-

Best,