The Only Thing You Need to Know about Marketing Online

GUEST POST BY NICK THACKER

I am delighted to be able to welcome author Nick Thacker to add his thoughts on marketing. The more information and suggestions we glean from a wide variety of people, the more we are able to decide which approach to marketing works for us.

The Only Thing You Need to Know about Marketing Online

In the 1950s and before, “marketing” was a term that more accurately described bringing a product to a market, rather than bringing people to a product.

The distinction is subtle, but it’s everything.

As Seth Godin wrote in Permission Marketing and Purple Cow, it’s now “pull,” not “push.”

 

Hitting the Amazon #1 Spot : The Marketing Plan

Killer Plan or Lady Luck Part III – The Marketing Plan

The next post in this series was supposed to be on formatting. However, I have been persuaded to skip that bit for now, because there are lots of books and bits of advice out there that are probably much more detailed. What people want to know, I guess, is how I got to number one – not how I formatted the book!

However, I will say this. The formatting of your book is seriously important. You need to look like a professional. A badly formatted book automatically shouts INDIE, and not in a good way. If you don’t know how to do this, I have already written a couple of posts here and here that will get you to the point where you are almost ready for Amazon, and you will at least have tidied your book in preparation for upload.

The other thing that I was going to talk about was the cover. Again – there is a lot of advice available in that respect. Sometimes people say the cover doesn’t matter. Don’t listen to them. Whilst people may not ultimately choose to buy your book because of the cover, it needs to attract their attention when there are twenty other books on the screen. So go the extra mile.

Now – back to what people seem to want. Marketing tips.

Review: Letters to my Mother by Rebecca Heath

A TOUCHING STORY, AND BEAUTIFULLY TOLD

I have to say that I thought this book was wonderful. It is the gentle tale of two people who shouldn’t be together by the normal rules of morality and the times. Kate is a young, extremely bright college student who has never had much time for boys. David is a professor at the college she attends. Brilliant but somewhat aloof, he is trapped in a loveless marriage where nobody – not even his children – can see any worth in him.  But this is Seattle in the 1950s, and nineteen year olds don’t have affairs with married men in their late forties. Nobody would find that acceptable. And yet, these two find a rare love for each other.

Authors : how to get the right reviews

Reviews – the good, the bad and the scams!

I recently wrote a guest post called Indie Authors—Getting Those All-Important Reviews for Mystery Writing is Murder. Reviews are important for both readers and authors, but it is so very important that they are genuine – which is why I devoted a whole post to how to get those all important real ones and I’ve decided to bring it forward in my schedule on this blog, as it is a topic that is quite hot at the moment due to the number of scams that are sadly around. If you’ve read it on Mystery Writing is Murder this is a similar post, but with maybe a few extra angles.

Guest post : A Free Tool for Writers—the Writer’s Knowledge Base

I came across this amazing resource for writers a couple of weeks ago, and I contacted Elizabeth S Craig to see if she would be kind enough to pay a visit and tell us all about the Writer’s Knowledge Base. If you don’t know about this, you need to visit the site and bookmark it, because it is crammed with really useful information. We agreed to swap posts this week. I have written one on her site for Indie Authors : Getting those All-Important Reviews and you might want to check that out too.

Here’s what Elizabeth has to tell us.

A Free Tool for Writers—the Writer’s Knowledge Base—by Elizabeth S. Craig

The Writer’s Knowledge Base, or WKB, is a free search engine that’s specifically for writers. For years, I got frustrated with Google when I was trying to find articles on the writing craft. There were tons of writing blogs out there, but these individual blogs, frequently with fantastic tips for writers, were getting buried by other, non-relevant sites.

If I were trying to find an article on POV, internal conflict, scene structure, or dialogue? The highest ranking posts in Google for any given writing search were frequently either an assignment that a college professor has posted (an assignment on the topic, not a resource), or a vague article by a content mill site that didn’t address the topic in any kind of depth.

Guest post : Scott Hunter on Marketing your eBook

As promised when I started the series of “Killer Plan or Lady Luck?” I have asked other authors for their input and to let us know what they did to become a best seller. Today’s guest is Scott Hunter who writes thrillers – historical and contemporary. His eBook, ‘The Trespass’ is an Amazon bestseller. His website is at http://www.scott-hunter.net

It’s very interesting to me to check out the commonality between his comments and mine. And, of course, where we differ. Both are important, and I hope you pick up some good tips reading his thoughts. Bear in mind that some of Scott’s comments refer to a printed version of the book, not an ebook, and he is clearly British – so some of the store references relate to the UK only. But the vast majority of his thoughts are appropriate to any format and any country.

So, you want to be an Indie Author. Where do you begin?

The Beginning

• Write a great book in a genre that people want to read

Review: The Viper Contract by Chris Broyhill

EXCELLENT STORY WITH FAST PACED ACTION

Overview

The Viper Contract tells the story of an ex US Air  Force fighter pilot, Colin Pearce, who has been forced to take up a career as a contract pilot, ferrying businessmen and the like around. The money’s good, but it doesn’t excite him the way his former profession did.

And then something happens to change all that. He is approached by the CIA to act as an undercover agent in a daring and deadly airstrike which could have disastrous consequences reverberating around the world.

A Killer Plan or Lady Luck? Part II – It’s all about the book!

This post is the second in the series Hitting the Amazon #1 spot – A Killer Plan or Lady Luck?

It goes without saying that the most important aspect of getting to #1 on any best seller list is having a book that people actually want to read. If you choose to write in a genre that is less popular, you have to set your expectations accordingly. Choosing to write a thriller – a very popular genre – wasn’t part of my Killer Plan. It really is simply Lady Luck that I love thrillers.

Taking advice on some aspects of my writing and trying to do better, however, was definitely part of my plan, and so this section aims to share some of the hints that were passed on to me.  Once again, I am definitely not trying to set myself up as any sort of expert. I still have so much to learn, and there are so many ways that I can improve my writing. But maybe this post will help others who are on the same journey.  These are a few of the things that I have been guilty of, and some things that I have noticed when reviewing indie authored books (naming no names, of course!).