Authors On The Net

Today we have the pleasure of being a stop on Austin Camacho’s blog book tour. I asked Austin a few questions about his book and how he is promoting it. Here are his answers:

Announcing the release of Russian Roulette (buy at Amazon by clicking here), the fifth novel in Austin S. Camacho’s mystery series about Hannibal Jones, an African American private detective working in Washington DC.

Phil: What is your book about?

Austin: Like every good crime novel, this book is about deception. A Russian assassin threatens Hannibal’s woman to force him to take a case. He must investigate Gana, the wealthy Algerian who has stolen Viktoriya, the woman the assassin loves. Evidence connects Gana to Russian mob money and the apparent suicide of Viktoriya’s father. More deaths follow, each one closer to Viktoriya. To save the Russian beauty, Hannibal must unravel a complex tangle of clues and survive a dramatic shootout side-by-side with his murderous client.

Phil: Tell us about you.

Austin: On the surface I’m a public affairs specialist for the Defense Department who has written five detective novels in the Hannibal Jones series - Blood and Bone, Collateral Damage, The Troubleshooter, Damaged Goods and now Russian Roulette. I’m active in several writers’ organizations and teach writing courses at Anne Arundel Community College.

Inside I’m a philosopher and a teller of morality tales thinly disguised as mysteries or adventure stories. I’m also a husband and father, a flirt and a loudmouth, with a big heart and an even bigger ego. And I’m a hard-working marketing fool who wants every adult alive to read my novels. My manual, Successfully Marketing Your Fiction in the 21st Century is the result of those efforts.

I was born and raised in New York, spent my Army career as a broadcast journalist and now live in Springfield, Virginia with my lovely wife Denise and Princess the Wonder Cat.

Phil: Who is your target audience?

Austin: I started out thinking that hardboiled detective fiction was for young men. However, the great majority of my readers are women between 30 and 60 years old, so I now write for them.

Phil: What are the 5 top marketing tactics you would recommend to other authors?

Austin: My overall plan this year is to focus on creating buzz by working the internet. So my top marketing tactics are:

1. Blog Tour: This month I will appear on 16 of the best crime fiction and literary web sites (like this one) and the content varies – interviews, synopses, reviews by the blog owners, a real variety. The object is to make Russian Roulette part of the general conversation.

2. Reviews: the more the better. I sent books to the usual reviewers, but I also sent books to top Amazon.com reviewers. These people have a lot of credibility. The new twist was to offer a free advance copy to ANYONE who would commit to reviewing my book and posting their review in at least 4 places on line. Again, I want to raise awareness and generate conversation. Most of the amateur reviewers post on their own blogs but also on Amazon, BN.com, Dorothy L, Shelfari and other places readers look.

3. Video: I got a book trailer because it’s an easily passed calling card. But I also taped a promotional video for Russian Roulette in which I personally explain my book to the viewer. This personalizes me and helps readers connect with me. It hasn’t exactly become viral but it has gotten me a little better recognized. And I have posted these things EVERYWHERE!

4. Social Media: I’ve gathered an audience and post daily on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Gather, Friendster,Crimespace, Book place and Bebo. I also maintain a presence on Red room, Black Authors Showcase, Maverick Marketers, LinkedIn, Shelfari, and Goodreads. Aside from my own blog (Another Writer’s Life) I post on three group blogs – Criminal Minds at Work, Acme Authors and Make Mine Mystery. And did I mention the Hannibal Jones Yahoo Group? The idea is to stay connected with people and share your writing news.

5. Direct mail: I’ve never done the post card bit before, but to make it most likely to pay off I targeted the zip codes of the bookstores I’ll do signings in. And the mailing lists are of known mystery readers. Note that this is the most money I’ve spent on promotion and I have the least faith in its value but we’ll see how it goes.

I must tell you that I also went old school for visibility and got a couple print ads. After assessing my target audience I placed ads in Mystery Scene and Crimespree Magazine. Even if they don’t generate a lot of sales, they will be good for my ego when I’m at Bouchercon.

I also sent personal letters to each of the 47 bookstores in this country that specialize in mystery fiction informing them of the imminent release of Russian Roulette and respectfully asking (alright, begging them) to order a few copies. I even promised them a pizza party for their staff if they sell 50 or more copies. Yeah, I’m shameless.

As you can see, the top marketing efforts for me involve more time than money. When your book is ready to hit the shelves you need to think it through and do what will work for you. Keep good records so you’ll know what did pay off, and be careful of buying services that don’t come with guarantees.

GET the latest news about my novels at http://www.ascamacho.com
READ my blog at http://ascamacho.blogspot.com
JOIN the Hannibal Jones Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hannibaljones

If you want to learn more about running a complete social media book campaign visit The Author Platform.

I’d say the price of a book is of moderate importance. Most books cost between $14.95 and $24.95. If a book I really want to read is $24.95 I’m going to buy it. I’d probably pay $49.95 if I had to and if I could buy the ebook version for $9.95 I’d buy that. The price is not a huge factor for me unless I think it’s a ridiculous price - like $49.95 for a paperback book.

The key factor for me is do I want to invest hours reading a particular book. I’m sure other people have other opinions, but this is the way I value a book, i.e. time rather than money.

Here is a more in-depth look at this question and I think at the root of the article is this issue of time investment. The key for book marketers: create real “need” for your book and understand that what readers are really investing is their time and the quality of your book, whether it be entertainment quality or “message” quality.

Click here to read the article, Worlds Beyond: You Can’t Judge a Book by Its Price Tag.

For two weeks in May I partnered with a local representative of a national company in Salt Lake City, Utah to have them display our new book, How To Become a Total Failure: The Ten Rules of Highly Unsuccessful People, in 14 book fairs. These fairs were held in corporate office buildings, corporate board rooms, hospitals, colleges, factories and a number of other venues. Here’s a video of the book fair held at the Utah One Center, a large office building in downtown Salt Lake City.

Bill and I were very pleased with the results and especially the feedback. For example, we sold 10 books at an Ikon factory and 0 books at a hospital. This is excellent market information. We will ramp up our efforts in the fall with better merchandising and some special offers and have a goal of selling 200 books.

If you want to participate, we are accepting up to 50 authors. We can only accommodate 50 authors per 20 book fairs as the company needs to keep its primary focus on the mainstream books it sells. It is also important that we place independent author books next to mainstream books as cross-promotion helps sell independent books.

If you are interested in this program, please email me at info@authorsonthenet.com We are accepting applications now for the fall book fairs that start the last week of August. The cost per 20 book fairs is $250.

Here’s another video of the book fair at the One Utah Center. In this video you will see that our book was first placed near the register. While at first this seemed like a great idea, in later shows we placed the book on tables with other self-improvement books and produced much better sales results.

Here’s a message I received from novelist Tracy Cooper-Posey about how she is challenging the status quo of publishing:

I’m a novelist, which means I always have a lot to say. In this instance, I’ve been challenging the status quo about the publishing industry for exactly a year, in particular about the hidden niche of authors that I’ve dubbed “anchored authors” – the huge slice of published fiction authors who can’t earn enough from their fiction and have to keep a day job to survive. (http://www.anchoredauthors.com). Lately, my challenge has been that fiction authors shouldn’t be aiming for New York publication, and the best sellers lists. Nor should they be aiming for Kevin Kelly’s “1,000 True Fans” model. Instead, they should be carving their own niche out of the long tail – one that suits their brand of fiction, and provides them with a comfortable income. It’s the only way fiction authors in particular are going to survive the fracturing of the publishing industry.

I’ve been hammering this message for a while now (as the archives on the blog will testify). On the 20th I will be posting a long summary/overview on this theme that rounds up the year on Anchored Authors (yesterday was the anniversary).

Also as part of the anniversary, I’m running a survey to try and collect some demographic data about anchored authors. Everyone who completes the survey goes into the draw for a $100 Amazon gift certificate. Everyone who encourages another anchored author to complete the survey also goes into the draw for the gift certificate. So yes, you can have multiple entries in the draw, and you can be in the draw even if you’re not an anchored author.

Every author who completes the survey will also get a copy of the final results. The survey is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=mwYdPhyh_2blzZ3jFqipx77w_3d_3d. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let your readers know? The more solid data we get about anchored authors, the more relevant the survey will be.

What are you doing to transform the publishing industry?

This is what one of our authors told me while sipping tea at the Oasis cafe in downtown Salt Lake. He just placed another order for 500 books and we helped him set up his blog about a year ago. He told me he stopped going to his blog several months ago.

Ten minutes after making this statement this author told me about an exciting speaking engagement he had coming up. Here is his direct quote, “This hospital in Idaho came to my blog and I guess they liked what they read there because they invited me to come speak.” This is a paying gig by the way, a gig where he can take his books and sell to his audience up there.

What amazed me was the author did not see the connection. I would think that if my blog were helping me get speaking engagements I would get serious about keeping it up to date.

While many authors do sell books directly from the blogs (Bill and I sell a $4.95 ebook version of our book from our blog, www.tenwaystofail.com), I understand many authors do not see direct book sales from their website. Here are a few tips to improve your conversion rate and keep you motivated:

1. Be sure a link to Amazon or to your own shopping cart displaying your book is in the upper left-hand corner of your blog. This is the area that catches the most eye-balls.

2. Put a link to your shopping cart where people can buy a cheaper PDF version of your book.

3. Have chapter samples on your blog. I don’t mean whole chapters, but rather small samples of every chapter. See www.howspiritworks.com to see a great example.

4. Don’t forget to schedule time to leave conversation-building comments on other, high-traffic blogs.

5. Run a Twitter campaign for your book to drive more traffic to your blog.

These are just a few things you can do to increase the conversion rate for your book. And remember that no matter what you sell, selling is a numbers game. If you have a 2% conversion rate, then expect to sell 20 books for every 1,000 new visitors. To see what your conversion rate is, you need to first get a lot of new visitors to your site and then track the results.

If you have some ideas of your own, feel free to let us know and if you want to learn more about driving traffic to your blog and how to convert more people to book buyers, take the 15 day free trial at www.TheAuthorPlatform.com

Yesterday I blogged about setting the goal of selling 5,000 books and how this goal may help you land a royalty publishing contract or at least make your book a profitable venture for you. Here are a couple of follow-up articles you might want to read to learn more . . .

http://www.sitepronews.com/2009/04/10/book-authors-how-to-sell-more-books-and-get-your-publisher-active/
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2009/04/victoria-strauss-stupid-articles-on.html

I recently posed this question to a forum and received mixed results. The root of the question is will selling 5,000 copies of your own book - a self-published and self-promoted book - help you land a contract with a royalty publisher like Random House. Here is a summary of some of the answers:

One person said that any form of self-publishing is delusional and only royalty-published authors have any credibility or any chance of making money.

Another person ran the math and figured out that at 5,000 books an author would make profits with his or her book so having a goal of selling 5,000 books makes business sense.

Then a royalty publisher chimed in and I think he hit the issue right on the head. He said:

The answer isn’t black and white. If you sell 5,000 copies it shows the publisher your book has merit and that you know how to promote and sell books, but if you’ve just sold all the copies the market can bear in your niche, then a publisher may not be interested anymore. The key is showing the future market potential of your book.

And I agree. The answer isn’t black and white, but if you are self-publishing, then having this goal of selling 5,000 copies will help you focus and whether or not you get picked up by a royalty publisher doesn’t really matter because you’ve made money on your book and you have positioned yourself to be accepted by a royalty publisher if that is what you want.

Keep in mind the average book sold through bookstores sells 5,000 copies so this goal, while achievable, will not be easy. But then again, success in any business is rarely easy.

Steve Fortosis, author of today’s article, is definitely on the cutting edge of book promotion these days. In his article, he gives some sound advice on issues most authors face, especially POD published authors. I have to tell you, after reading Mr. Fortosis’s article, I am convinced that to succeed in today’s book market, authors must take book promotion into their own hands and the best way is to know what tools are available and how to use those tools intelligently.

Tools like Twitter. When I first heard of Twitter I wondered what all the fuss was about. But 30 days after launching my Twitter campaign, Twitter was the second largest traffic driver to Authors On The Net. And the best part was that it was mostly automated. Leveraging Social Media and then knowing how to close the sale is the most cost-effective way to market books. Here’s Steve’s article:

Lost in the Sea of Marketing Madness - Top Ways to Market Your Book
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Steve_Fortosis]Steve Fortosis

You have a book idea, a manuscript, or a book soon to be published, and you have no idea what to do next. First of all, you want to keep some things in mind up front. You should write about something you know and are interested in. If you couldn’t care less, it will be reflected in your book. Second, it helps if you write about something that is in demand-something people like or care about. If you write a book about the Care and Feeding of Pet Snails, you’re not likely to get many sales no matter how much you promote it. Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve ever wondered if social media is an effective method for promoting your books, check out Tim Ferriss’s blog. Tim Ferriss is the author of The 4-Hour Workweek and in an interview with Steve Harrison, Tim said he used the Internet and social media as his primary book promotion strategy. Watch the following video to learn more about driving traffic to your blog . . .

Tim and Rami are two authors engaged in breaking paradigms. I was surprised by a few of the things they mentioned in this video, like writing long blog posts vs. short blog posts and loading up keywords in the first paragraph of your posts. I’ve also found it is important to write for people first and search engines second and I’m more concerned with the right people coming to my blog than thousands of untargeted traffic.

To read Tim’s post and watch other videos visit his blog at click here. When you visit, look how he has his header setup. This header is both search engine friendly and people-friendly.

The Author Platform

Authors are both artists and entrepreneurs. Authors absolutely need to be paid for their work, but it seems this new digital age we are in is creating the mindset that if it’s on the web, it should be free.

What caught my attention the other day listening to NPR’s All Things Considered story about Pirate Bay losing its case in court, is the answer one of the Pirate Bay’s founders gave to Laura Sydell. When she asked him point blank if he thought artists didn’t need to be compensated for their art, he said that artists are not entrepreneurs and that his battle was with the corporate world.

In fact, here’s a direct quote from their lawyer:

Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin said he was confident that higher courts would dismiss the case against The Pirate Bay, which he described as a battle between the corporate world and “a generation of young people who want to take part of new technology.”

Umm . . . “a generation of young people who want to take part of new technology.” Now there’s a nice euphemism for copyright infringement.

Pirate Bay says it’s battle is with the corporate people - the record labels and distributors. Yet, they haven’t made any efforts to ensure that artists get paid for their work.

I’m convinced that ebooks are on the verge of a tipping point. When this happens, I think we’ll see similar issues in the news about pirate sites for ebooks like we are seeing with these pirate music and movie sites. Also, how we use ebooks as marketing tools, how we price ebooks, the levels of protection we apply to ebooks and so forth are all issues we entrepreneurial authors must understand and then make opportunities for ourselves.

I think our dependence on publishers, book stores, book distributors and even Amazon will change. How readers find our books will change. When we know how to leverage social media and get our ebook in front of our target audience, we can revolutionize how we sell books.

To listen to the NPR interview, click here:
All Things Considered, April 17, 2009 · In Sweden, four men have been convicted of violating copyright laws for running a Web site that connected people who wanted to share files illegally over the Internet.