How to Advertise on Facebook for $1 a Day: 9 Tips

YouTube science channel Veritasium made a video that shows that buying Facebook ads based on likes doesn't work.  Click farms will like your page without really liking your page, and that means you're paying for likes you don't want. That's true.

But as I explained to my Facebook friends, there’s another way to advertise on Facebook that will let you circumvent click farm tactics, a way that can target thousands of potential customers and that costs less than a dollar a day.

My friends asked, “How?” I made this video to explain.

There are four basic steps:

1. Be human. Have a Facebook profile, and try to develop a good relationship with your customers, your potential customers, and anyone who is likely to like you or whatever it is you do. Granted, this probably isn't going to work for some ginormous company, but some ginormous company probably isn't going to worry about click farms biting into their advertising budget.

2. Don't advertise for likes. Duh! Facebook gives you other options, so choose one of the other options.

3. Limit your reach. I limit advertising so it only goes to the friends of people who like my page. Now you're probably thinking, “But that includes friends of people from click farms.” Yeah… People from click farms don't have friends, so that’s not something I'd worry about. If you like your own page, your ads will go to your Facebook friends. And if they like your page, it will go to their friends. If you have a small business in a small town, you can do something similar by limiting advertising to your small town and its neighbors.

4. Put something in the Interests field. One book reviewer said that anyone who likes The Big Bang Theory is sure to like my funny, geeky sci-fi novel, Why My Love Life Sucks, so I put that in Interests. Even if a click farm guy has a friend, that friend isn’t going to see my ad unless he or she has also liked The Big Bang Theory, and what are the odds of that?

Screen grab from my Facebook page's Ad Manager showing how I've limited the reach of my ads to the people most likely to be interested in them

So that’s it. You've circumvented those click farm tactics.

Now here are five more tips:

1. Base Facebook ads on your "latest post." This keeps things fresh and lets you try out different things.

2. Don't sell. Inform, help, entertain, ask fun or interesting questions, provide worthwhile content, but don't sell. Okay, maybe once every ten posts or so, but 90% of your posts shouldn’t involve selling.

3. Post visual stuff, and post often. people on Facebook love to see videos, photos, drawings, and that sort of thing, particularly if they relate to real people like themselves--and like you! Posting often means you're less likely to bore your friends and your friends’ friends. I try to post at least once a day, but I really should post more often. Eight times a day would be better. Also, when it comes to words, remember brevity is…

 

A few words, a nerdalicious face (Gilbert Garfinkle, the geeky hero of Why My Love Life Sucks), some humor, and good targeting make for a promising ad.

4. Ask your friends for likes. Make friends on Facebook and ask them nicely to like your page. This will expand your reach to your friends’ and your friends’ friends. I'm shy, so it took me a while to get around to doing this. When I finally did, I was surprised to see the likes on my page go up from 305 to almost 500. Yes! They like me, they really like me!

5. Like yourself first. Use your Facebook profile to like, comment, and share the posts on your page. The more people interact with your posts, the more the ad connected with that post will get seen. So be one of the people who interacts with your posts.

As for how to keep your budget under $1 a day, set your ad to “bid for impressions.” 

Click farms can manipulate clicks and likes, but they can’t manipulate impressions. 

Facebook will suggest a bid. Mine are usually around 10 cents for a thousand impressions, so setting my budget for a $1 a day gets me up to 10,000 impressions. And it only costs me $1! 

Even with a limited reach, this ad was clicked on six times--and it only cost $0.89.

If that sounds like a good deal, give it a try. And good luck!

Download the first chapters of RIDE OF YOUR LIFE for free!

You can now download the first chapters of Ride of Your Life for free!


Yes, Ride of Your Life is a part of an exciting new teen fiction sampler put together by the amazing, super-creative Alicia Kat Dillman: Beautiful Dangerous Love.   

Here's the blurb:


"Do you crave the dangerously beautiful worlds of paranormal suspense, ghostly romances, and otherworldly adventures? The you’ll be swept up in this sampling of six fantastic indie reads including Daemons in the Mist by Alicia Kat Dillman, Destined by Jessie Harrell, The Pack -Retribution- LM Preston, The Magic Crystal by Lorna Suzuki, Ride of Your Life by Shevi Arnold, Whisper by Chelsea M. Cameron."


So what are you waiting for? Start the summer off right by downloading this wonderful mix of teen fantasy, science fiction, paranormal and romance from Smashwords today.  

7 STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER (AND 3 REASONS WHY I WON’T TAKE THEM)

Anyone can be an Amazon Kindle bestseller by playing the numbers, and I'll tell you how in a moment.  

First I want to explain why I would never do it.

I want people to buy my book because they want to read it. And I want people to be happy that they bought my book after they've read it because something in it moved, inspired, or entertained them. I want readers to love my books. If I didn't, I wouldn't spend a year or more carefully writing and polishing each one. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have spent over a decade honing my craft.

In Toren the Teller'sTale, there's a wizard who says he will not accept payment until he knows the customer is fully satisfied. That's how I feel about my books. I don't want to trick readers into buying something they don't want or need. I want them to feel that their money was well spent, that my book was worth every penny and more.

So far the reviews I’m getting are telling me that I am succeeding by my own definition of success, even if I’m not selling millions of copies or making bestseller lists. I am doing what I set out to do: I’m getting my books into the hands of people who enjoy reading them.

A lot of people would say that I'm naïve, and they may be right.

They would say that even the major publishers play the numbers to get on bestseller lists, and have been doing so for years. They would say that major publishers have huge advertising budgets, and little indie publishers have to play the numbers in order to compete. I don't know if that's true. I hope it's not. In any case, I'm not going to stoop to that level. Of course I want to win the game, but only because I’ve earned it.

Okay, now let me tell you how someone can turn almost any book into an Amazon bestseller. It has something to do with Amazon’s new program: Kindle Direct Publishing Select (KDP Select).

To understand KDP Select, you must first know what KDP is.

KDP is the Amazon program authors can use to get their e-books into Amazon's Kindle store. The regular KDP program lets publishers keep 70% of the retail price of their e-books (provided they’re priced between $2.99 and $9.99).

KDP Select, on the other hand, lets publishers make money based on the number of times Amazon Prime customers “borrow” a book for free.

Amazon Prime customers can borrow any book in the KDP Select program. To help authors encourage customers to choose their books, each author is allowed to give away his or her books for free for up to five days while that author is in the 90-day KDP Select program. The amount of money authors can make in the KDP Select program fluctuates and is based on the size of the pot every KDP Select author earns a portion of, and on the relative number of free borrows each author’s books have seen in relation to the number of free borrows other KDP Select books have seen. In other words, if 500 copies of your books are borrowed for free and everyone else in the program averages 1,000 free borrows, you’ll earn much less than everyone else. Contrary-wise, if you book is borrowed 1,000 times for free and everyone else's books are borrowed 500 times for frees, you’ll make a lot more.


The main way to draw attention to your book so people will consider borrowing it is by giving your book away for free for five days. Amazon will promote your free book at that time, and you can promote it too. You can't sell your book through BN.com, the Apple iBookstore, or any other online retailer when you're in the KDP Select program. It becomes your only way to make money. There is, therefore, a huge incentive to sell a lot of free books while you’re in the KDP Select program.

Every day, Amazon customers have the option of choosing from over 100 free books. So why would a Kindle owner choose your free book above another? What’s in it for them?

Now it’s entirely possible that what’s in it for them is a great book, but that’s not why Amazon customers trawl the freebie bestseller lists. People are willing to pay for great books--but they’re also willing to take a chance on something that may or may not be good if they don’t have to pay for it.

So what incentive are you going to give Amazon’s customers to get them to choose your book over someone else’s?  

7 EASY STEPS TO BECOMING AN AMAZON BESTSELLER

STEP ONE: write a book.

You don’t need to know how to write, and it doesn’t have to be a great book. Don’t even think of it as a book. Think of it as a product. Based on their reviews, many of the writers on the Amazon Kindle freebie bestseller list don’t really know how to write, and many of those who do are giving away a single short story or essay, not an entire novel or nonfiction book. You don’t have to write a masterpiece, just something you can slap a title and cover on and call an e-book.

STEP TWO: give it an enticing title and a nice cover.

You don’t really have to know anything about book design. There are places you can buy premade covers for $50 or less. Here’s one that has a clearance section with lovely book covers for just $18: http://mycoverart.wordpress.com/clearance/

STEP THREE: ask friends and relatives to post 5-star reviews for you.

I recently got into an argument with a writer on Amazon because I said her suggestion to write reviews for your own book is unethical.  She argued that it is common practice. As a former consumer columnist, I consider any attempt to mislead consumers unethical, and I think putting your words into someone else’s review is misleading consumers. However, there are apparently people who have no problem with it, and that’s the competition those who join the KDP Select program are up against. Remember, you're all getting a portion of the same pot, so if someone has better sales, it's at your expense. 

STEP FOUR: get a Twitter account.

The longer you’ve been on Twitter and the bigger following you have there the better.

STEP FIVE: sign up for KDP Select.

Mark the five days you’ll be giving your book away for free on your calendar.

STEP SIX: buy some Amazon gift cards.

You can start with just one $10 card and then build up from there. If things pan out, you might give away up to six $25 gift cards, which is one for every two weeks you’ll be in the KDP Select program.

STEP SEVEN: go on Twitter to announce you’ll be giving away a free Amazon gift card, and repeat this step over and over.

 Make the giveaway conditional. For example, you’ll give away a gift card to someone who re-tweets about the contest when you reach 1,000 borrows or 5,000 free downloads. You can even give away some of the cards when you get a certain number of Twitter or blog followers, 5-star Amazon reviews, or Facebook fans. Use the correct hashtags so that people looking for Kindle freebies or contests can find your tweet easily. Your tweet would look something like “#Win a $25 #Amazon gift card when my #Kindle #ebook reaches 2,000 #free downloads! Buy here (link) and RT to enter #giveaway”.

Notice how that tweet says nothing about the book itself? That’s because with this method, you’re not selling a book—you’re selling an opportunity to win a free Amazon gift card. You’re essentially selling free raffle tickets to get people to do what you want!

If you don’t think people are doing this, go to Twitter and see just how fast the #free or #giveaway hashtag flies there. It’s dizzying.

There are thousands of people on Twitter who are looking for free stuff, and they’ll be more than willing to download your free e-book to get it.

So writers are posting tweets like the one I wrote above, and those tweets are getting people to download their books in droves. They might download your book and never read it, but what difference does it make? Your book will be a bestseller. It’ll appear on the Amazon bestseller list along with all the other bestsellers. You can even put “Amazon bestseller” on your book jacket. And that will help you get a bigger share of the KDP Select pot, because all that attention and the bestseller status will help you get your book borrowed more times than the next guy’s book.

I’m not saying there isn’t a time and a place for giveaways. They can be great if you’re trying to get Twitter or blog followers or Facebook fans. They can also be great for rewarding the fans you already have. What I am saying, though, is that if you’re using giveaways to sell books, you aren’t really selling books.

3 REASONS WHY I WON’T BE JOINING AMAZON’S KDP SELECT

NUMBER ONE: I know how to play the numbers game—and I don’t want to play it.

I want people to buy or borrow my books because they want to read my books, not because they want to win some sort of giveaway.

NUMBER TWO: I don’t want to compete with writers who are willing to play the numbers game.

I’m a writer, not a salesperson, and in the KDP Select program, salespeople have a distinct advantage over writers. That would make my book look bad, because it would be lower down in the bestseller list, and other books—many of them poorly written—would be above it. How would that look if my free book didn’t sell as well as someone else’s book an Amazon customer tried and hated?

NUMBER THREE: giving your book away for free once devalues all of your work forever.

They do say, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?”

Someone once did a psychological study to see if people enjoyed a piece of cake more if it was served on a fancy dish. It turns out they do. They also discovered that a $100 bottle of wine actually tastes better if you know it costs $100. In fact, a $9 bottle of wine tastes better if you think it costs $150.

So what happens when you give your book away for free?

Those who are in the KDP Select program find they sell the most copies when their book is free and within the few days after those free days, which is when your book is riding the bestseller list high from all those free downloads. The sales and free borrows for that particular book often stay high for a while and then gradually drop off. 

However, the increased sales rarely carry over to the author’s other books—and a few writers have noted that some readers who picked up that one book for free have expressed that they expect to get the writer’s other books for free too. Instead of enticing readers with a free book, these writers are actually losing potential sales on their other books.

WHAT DOES THIS PROVE?

In the end, the Amazon sales rankings and bestseller lists, which both writers and readers tend to focus on, say virtually nothing--when it comes to free books, or books that were free at one time--about the quality of a book and everything about the writer’s ability and willingness to do anything to sell that book.

This isn’t to say that all the writers that sell a lot of free books play the numbers or manipulate reviews. Many of them don’t. But beware the company you keep, because many other writers on the free bestseller Amazon Kindle list do. 

And as a reader, do your best to read between the lines when it comes to the bestseller rankings and the reviews on those books. Maybe you’ll luck out and find a diamond in the rough, but don’t be surprised if it turns out to be rock salt in disguise.

So as you can see, the numbers can be played. The only question left for writers to ask themselves is if they want to play them. I don’t, so I fold. Now that I know the rules, I am sitting this game out.

Want to turn your picture book into a multi-media iBook?

Like many writer-illustrators, I've long been fascinated by picture-book apps, and I've been wondering how I can take advantage of this new technology. David Fox (along with Carisa Kluver) co-hosts a weekly Twitter chat with Brooks Jones on this topic. It's called #storyappchat, and it takes place every Sunday at 9pm EST. David is also the producer of a new picture iBook, entitled Are You My Friend? He agreed to answer my questions on how a picture iBook is made.

  

David, please tell us a bit about this project. Who wrote it? How did you find an illustrator? The drawings are delightful, by the way. And what about the voice talent? Who is she? She’s really good. Where did you find her?

Wow, that’s a lot of questions you snuck into the first one :-)

Annie Fox, internationally known children’s author and anti-bullying activist, wrote the book. She also happens to be my wife, which is how I lucked into the opportunity to turn it into an iBook. Annie has written books for Free Spirit Publishing, mostly for tweens and teens, including the Middle School Confidential™ series. More about Annie and her work at http://www.AnnieFox.com

Annie and David Fox

We first met Eli Noyes, our illustrator, about 18 years ago. At the time he was a director at Colossal Pictures. We told him about Annie’s Raymond and Sheila book series, and he offered to create a drawing for us, to help Annie show the book around.

Interestingly, this wasn’t Are You My Friend? but a different Raymond and Sheila story (which we can now publish as an iBook at some point in the future). Anyway, in 2003 we reconnected with Eli and asked if he might be interested in doing some drawings for Are You My Friend? Eli, wanting to expand his already very impressive skill set, happened to be taking a class on children’s book creation/illustration, so he saw this as a great opportunity. He helped us lay out the entire book, did sketches for each page, and did some beautiful watercolor illustrations for some of his sketches. But despite our attempts, even with an agent, we weren’t able to find a publisher then.

A year ago, we realized we didn’t have to wait to find a publisher... we had all the skills to publish it ourselves on an iPad! So we reconnected with Eli yet again, and this time he completed all the illustrations in color.

A few pages from Are You My Friend? on the iPad

Illustrations by Eli Noyes

For the narration and character voices, we knew we wanted to go the professional route. I contacted an old friend and LucasArts alum, Julian Kwasneski, and told him about our project. He loved the story and Eli’s art and wanted to make sure we had a great actor to play the parts. We worked with the Stars Agency and got back auditions from 10 voice-over actors. While they were all really good, Melissa Hutchison was perfect. She was able to nail all the voices in the audition. And Julian had already worked with her on other projects, so they had an established working relationship. Jory Prum was our sound engineer (another LucasArts alum), and Julian our sound director. Julian also helped with the sound effects we added to the iBook’s soundtrack.

Voice-over actor Melissa Hutchison, really getting into character

Why did you and your wife decide to turn this story into an iBook?

Our original plan was to turn it into an app. Having gone through that process once already, I knew how long it would probably take (about 2-3 months). And then I learned about Apple’s update to their iBooks bookshelf app that enabled background audio and synchronized word highlighting with the narration. That seemed like a perfect vehicle for our story, since we already had the art and narration. With the help of a beta version of RedJumper.net’s Book Creator app, I was able to lay out the book and text in iBooks format. Then I added the sound coding by hand.

What special features does Are You My Friend? have?

In addition to the read-it-to-me narration and soundtrack I mentioned above, and of course, the whimsical illustrations and fantastic narration, we’re using high resolution images so you can pinch-zoom in to see more details. There’s also a unique friendship skills/social and emotional learning guide for parents and teachers at the back of the iBook.

How did you add those features? Was it a lot of work? Did you have to do any coding? Do you think anyone could do it?

Adding the narration with synchronized word highlighting was a lot of work. I used the open source Audacity software on my Mac and imported the narration for each page spread. Then I selected each word and bookmarked it, naming the bookmark to match the spoken word. Audacity then let me export these bookmarks into a text file that contained each word and the start and end point of the sound (in seconds). I converted that data into the format that the iBook required, using an Excel spreadsheet to help.

I then exported from Excel into the pages of the iBook. Yes, there’s “coding”, very similar to the HTML coding of a website. But no programming. There’s no logic code (if-then-else statements), just XHTML statements.

I don’t know if anyone could do it. If you’ve ever built a website (even a small one) and did some hand-tweaking of the underlying HTML code, then yes, you could do this. If that sounds daunting, then hold on a bit... I’m sure that some tools will appear that will make this all much easier, without ever having to touch the code.

Tell me about Book Creator. Where do you get it? What do you need to run it? What does it do? How much does it cost? Is it hard to get the words to light up when they’re read? Did you encounter any problems along the way? How did you solve them?

I was fortunate to be accepted as a beta test for Book Creator. It’s made by RedJumper.net, and was just approved by Apple to go live. You can buy it starting September 15th in the iTunes App Store for $6.99. That’s an amazing deal!

Book Creator does not handle any of the sound features I added to our iBook. It does a great job of letting you position your art assets (jpeg or png files) on the pages, and add/position/resize the text. You can see a video demo of it on their website. http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/

How long did each step in the process take? What were the costs involved?

After having all the art assets and text, it took me a few days to resize the art to the best size for an iBook, drop it in, and add the text. But it took me a few weeks to do all the narration and word sync code, music, sound effects, and ambient sound for each page. Part of that was a learning curve for me. I could probably do it all in about 2 weeks now that I know what I’m doing.

Left to right: Sound director Julian Kwasneski, author Annie Fox, sound engineer Jory Prum

Using iPads to hold the database of each sentence the actor was to say

Costs for this last stage were minimal... really just my time, plus about $50 for the royalty free music we used, and some more for sound effects from Julian.

The biggest cost by far was the actual recording session. Of course, this depends on how much text there is to record (we recorded a lot of extra text for a future interactive app version of our book), how much the talent charges, the sound studio, sound effects, etc. Figure a few thousand dollars to do it all at a professional level. Maybe less if you want to cut some corners.

Author Annie Fox adding vocalizations for the last scene in the book

How do you get a picture-book iBook into the iBookstore?

First step is to set up an iBook publisher account. You do it through iTunes Connect:

https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply

If you’re already an app developer, you need to register under a different account. There is no fee for this, but you do need a US bank account. You also need an ISBN number for your book. It should be a new one, not one already used for a paper version of your book (if it’s been published already). But it could be the same as an ebook version of your book.

If you don’t have one, you can buy them through Bowker at https://www.myidentifiers.com where the price is $150 for 1, $250 for 10, or $1000 for 100. But there’s a non-profit that bought a block of 1000 ISBN numbers and is reselling them for $5 each. http://www.epubbud.com/isbn.php - only downside is that in the Bowker database, epubbud is listed as the publisher. But you still have control over the meta data you send to Apple, so you can control who the publisher is there.

Once you’re accepted into Apple’s iBook developer program, you can download sample iBook files and their PDF guides on how to do it, like their assets guide. You also download a Mac program called iTunes Producer that walks you through the process of adding all the meta data (title, description, author and illustrator names, pricing, cover) and attaching your epub file. It then checks the syntax to make sure there are no errors, and uploads it all to Apple. It’s then live in the iTunes iBookstore within an hour or two!

Any advice to writers or writer-illustrators who are considering turning their stories into iBooks or apps?

Go for it! If you have any technical skills at all, work with Photoshop, and have an iPad, you can at least do a silent version using the Book Creator app.

If you have HTML skills, and want to invest in recording the narration, then you could go the next step and turn it into an enhanced iBook with sound. Or wait a bit until the tools catch up and it won’t be as difficult to add the sound.

Going the book app route only makes sense if you plan to add some animation and interactivity. Doing a book app is definitely more challenging, though there are several tools that make this easier as well. We list several in the right margin of the http://storyappchat.wordpress.com/ site.

There’s a huge range here, with some taking a percentage of the royalties and publishing the final app themselves, and others, like Kwiksher.com’s tool, where you also need to license the Corona SDK, have an Apple App developer’s license, and submit the final app yourself (but they don’t take a cut of the royalties).

So, unless you plan to do animation and really need a lot of interactivity to make your story work, I’d say stick with the iBook format. Much easier to create. You could always do an app as well.

Are you considering hiring out your services to other writers or writer-illustrators?

Yes, we have considered that. We do have more of our own content to produce, but we’re happy to consider taking on other projects, if they match the types of books we want to work on. The unifying feature of all our iBooks and apps are that they have to be entertaining as well as empowering for kids.

I’m also a consultant for app and iBook developers, and am happy to hand-hold someone through the process. I’ve always enjoyed helping people learn a new tech skill after I’ve successfully completed a project myself.

Anything else you would like to tell us about Are You My Friend?

I’ll let Annie answer that one:

I've been answering email from kids around the world since 1997. For children of any age, nothing matters more than having friends they can trust. Parents do a great job of teaching toddlers to "be nice." But as friendship conflicts become more complex, kids are left to figure things out on their own. The results don't often lead to constructive learning. By telling an engaging story about kids being kids, complete with a set of positive messages, readers can learn what it takes to have a friend and to be a real friend to yourself and others.

Thanks, David and Annie! And here's wishing you both the best of luck with the book.

Thank you for the chance to share this all with you and your readers! If anyone wants to contact us, you can do so through our website, http://www.ElectricEggplant.com

And for those who would like to learn more  from David and others about making picture iBooks or apps, check out #storyappchat on Twitter on Sundays at 9pm Eastern time.

Photos provided by David Fox

How to Blog Like a Funny, Children’s Book, YA, Fantasy, Science Fiction Writer

If anyone should have a blog, it’s a writer. Words are our livelihood, and a blog is like free advertising for what we do. Who wouldn’t want to advertise his or her business to possible clients all over the world for free? And, from the point of view of a reader, I'd much rather read a blog written by someone who can write than by someone who can't. Wouldn't you agree?

But it seems that many writers don’t blog, and those that do rarely blog effectively.

I get it. Making up stories about made up people is fun. But blogging can seem kind of scary. What do you write about? How will you make it interesting? Will people read it? And sometimes it feels as if you’ve been blogging for what seems like forever, you’ve spent hours writing dozens of posts, and no one cares.  Isn't blogging a waste of time that you could be spending writing your next book?

Well, no. It’s hard work, and it can take several years to see results, but it does eventually pay off if you do it right. If you're unpublished, blogging can impress agents and editors by showing you have a platform, as in thousands of people who are interested in what you have to say. And if you're published--whether traditionally or as an indie publisher--it can help you connect with readers, which can help you sell books. So how exactly do you do it right?

Here is a list of some questions many writers have about blogging and some answers to these questions:

How do I attract readers to my blog?

Start by writing 10-15 pillar articles. According to ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chriss Garrett, a pillar article is an article that attracts readers to your blog by giving them something they’re looking for. Pillar articles need to be focused on the core topic of your blog. They need to be useful or entertaining. The best pillar articles are 500-1,000-words long, have short paragraphs, headers, sub-headers, and at least one graphic. Lists and step-by-step guides make great pillar articles.

So how does this work for a writer?

 

According to We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Mediaby Kristen Lamb, if you’re writing nonfiction, your pillar articles should be authoritative. Readers will come to you looking for answers, and your blog will give them those answers.

If you’re a fiction writer, though, readers will probably look to you more for entertainment than information. A fiction writer’s best pillar articles should encourage comments and discussion. They should offer readers a way to connect with the writer, because that connection sells books. One of the best ways to encourage feedback is by starting with a title that asks a question. For example, “Who has the last word when it comes to children’s books: writers, publishers, parents or kids?” Of course, a writer should be prepared for some lively debate, because not everyone will agree with what the writer has to say.

How do pillar articles attract readers?

Search engines look for keywords in your tags (or labels), title, and your content. That’s why it’s important to have a list of keywords that fit the topic of your blog and to use them in these areas, particularly in your titles and in the first few words of your articles.

How do I get readers to come back to my blog?

Entertaining or useful content keeps readers coming back, so make sure there’s always fresh, entertaining or useful content. Try to blog between once a day and once a week (three to five times a week is good), but don’t say something just to say something. Good content once a week is better than good content once a week along with bad content three times a week.  Be consistent, and stay on topic, so readers know what to expect. For example, I regularly check out Dave Barry's blog, because I know it's going to be funny.

It usually takes years for a good blog to get up to speed, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results right away. Stick with it. Stay positive, and be nice to your readers. People usually like to hang around other people who make them feel good. Don’t polarize your readers, unless that’s a part of your brand and your marketing strategy.

How do I choose the general topic for my blog?

That depends on the image you want to create. Fill in the blank, “I want to be the writer readers turn to when they’re looking for________________.”

What would you put at the end of that sentence? Excitement? Something to make them laugh? Romance? Fantasy? Science Fiction? Inspiration? A best friend who understands them? A story they can share with their kids? All of the above?

Use your posts to give visitor a taste of what you have to offer. If you write humor (like I do), your blog posts should have some humor. If you write romance, you might want to spice things up a bit. It couldn’t hurt. Write about your books, but not just your books. Always write in a way that serves your visitor first, not your own ends.

How do I come up with specific topics?

Keywords help search engines find articles on a certain topic, so start by making a list. You want 20 core keywords that you’ll use over and over in your blog posts, words a reader might type into a search engine to look for a writer like you, words that define who you are as a writer. Start by writing down as many as you can think of, and then highlight the top 20. Why 20? This is the maximum number of keywords that Blogger (or Blogspot) allows on a blog post. While you might use a different platform, it’s still a good number to stick to, because it will keep your blog more focused.

Here’s my list of keywords to give you an idea of what yours might look like:

Shevi Arnold, novelist, writer, author, teen, YA fiction, children’s books, funny, humor, comedy, geek, ebooks, fantasy, science fiction, stories, storyteller, magic, dreamer, publisher, imagination.

This doesn’t mean that all my blog posts will have all these tags or they won’t sometimes have very different tags, but these are the tags I want to use most often to help search engines (and potential readers) find my blog. Combine these keywords, and you’ll get an idea of who I am (writer, author, storyteller), what I write (children’s books, YA fiction, humor, fantasy and science fiction), and my general style and attitude (funny, geek, dreamer).

How do I turn my keywords into 10-15 pillar articles?

The purpose of your pillar articles is to give your visitors something that will make them happy they came to your blog—and a reason to come back again. Pillar articles also help visitors create an image of you, something they think of when they see your name. Look at your keywords, and ask yourself what you can give visitors. Is there something you know that visitors might not know but would love to? Are there questions you used to have that you’ve since discovered the answers to? What matters to you, and how does that relate to your readers? Do your readers feel deeply about the same things, and could that shared feeling connect you and your readers? These are the kinds of things that would make great pillar topics for your blog.

As an example, here’s a list of some of the ideas I’ve had for pillar articles, ones that fit my expertise and the image I’m trying to create:

1.       Where do you get your ideas? How you, too, can have more stories concepts than you know what to do with

2.       Me Write Funny Someday—how to add humor to your writing

3.       Let ‘em read comics! If you want to turn kids into readers, let them read what they want to read.

4.       Who let the grownups in here? Why adults are falling in love with YA and books for kids.

5.       Let the meek inherit the earth. The geeks will inherit the stars! How geeks are taking over the world (and why that’s a good thing)

6.       Ten great fantasy novels for girls

7.       If you can’t beat ‘em, study ‘em! What writers can learn from movies and other forms of storytelling

8.       The ten biggest mistakes aspiring YA novelists make (and how to avoid them)

9.       The five best books to read if you want to write fiction

10.   The one most important thing every aspiring children’s book or YA writer should know…

11.   Why fantasy is the most honest genre of all

12.   Why are there so few funny books for teens?

13.   Stories within stories: from Scheherazade to Toren

14.   Is the magic in Harry Potter real after all?

15.   The power of belief, and what this means to fiction writers

 

Is there anything else I can do to attract readers to my blog?

Lots! You can include your blog’s URL in the signature of your emails, post on other blogs or in forums and use your avatar link back to your blog, give your blog an easy to remember name and a great description, guest blog for others, link to other blogs, and so much more. We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media has a great list of ways writers can make social media work for them.

I haven't always done this blogging thing right, but I'm learning, and I'm trying to put what I've learned into practice.  It's never too late to change.

So will your blog give your readers?

Writers, how to make social media work for you

So after reading Author 101: Bestselling Secrets from Top Agents, I came to the conclusion I needed to work on my blog if I wanted to sell my books. Easier said than done.

Not knowing how to go about it, I picked up Zoe Winter's wonderfully informative Smart Self-Publishing: Becoming an Indie Author. While the book deals mostly with indie publishing--including publishing to Kindle, working with Smashwords, creating both a production and marketing schedule, and much more--it did include a brief overview of social media for writers, including the importance of having a blog to connect with readers. Zoe Winters also recommends starting a newsletter, because someone might subscribe to your blog and never look at it again, but people who subscribe to your newsletter genuinely want to read what you have to say (particularly if it involves freebies and contests, like her newsletter does).

So that led me to another wonderful book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, which has a ton of helpful information about successful blogging in general.

But I still didn't know how to apply what I had learned to my blog. I mean, I'm a fiction writer. I write books for kids and teens. Wasn't there a book that could tell me step-by-step how a fiction writer could use social media to increase his or her platform? Fortunately, there is.


The Best Social Media Guide Specifically for Writers

We Are Not Alone: The Writer's Guide to Social Media by Kristen Lamb is like having a smart, funny friend who will take you by the hand and show you exactly what you need to succeed and how to do it.

For example, about halfway through, the book has a recap with a list of the first things you will need:

• A brand name (the name that will appear on your book)
• A list of your goals divided into three categories:

1. Strategic Career Goals (where you want to be in five years) 
2. Strategic Marketing Goals (to create the image you want associated with your brand)
3. Ten Tactical Goals (the things you plan to do to achieve your publishing goals, like creating a blog and following the blogs of potential readers.)

• A collection of content material--like pictures and videos--to help support your brand
• 10-15 posts (500-1,000 words each) related to your topic to serve as strategic content
• Three bios of different lengths
• A detailed profile of your reader and consumer demographic

What each of these things are, why you need them, and how to make them work for you are covered in great detail, as is so much more.

For example, when it comes to your brand name, the author explains how important it is for it to be the same name as the one that will appear on your books--because even if you do all the right things when it comes to social media, no one will be able to find your book when they're looking for one written by @LemurLady27.

She also explains that your readers aren't your fellow writers (although you should still network with them) or people who read books like they're chewing gum. "Yup, that one's finished, now I think I'll try fruit flavored." Your readers are the people who generally don't read that much, but will read your book because you wrote it just for them. It's like the way Harry Potter made readers out of non-readers. That's your ultimate goal.

All of this is just the tip of the iceberg, so if you're a writer who's been frustrated by social media because you don't know where to start or why it's not going as you hoped, this is the book for you.

And now it's time for me to start working on those 10-15 articles for my strategic content. I have so many ideas I can't wait. Thanks, Kristen Lamb!

The truth about ebook sales

I've seen several writers quote Bowker's figures on ebook sales, which say they only account for the smallest fraction of books sold and money made. The problem with this is that Bowker can't track Amazon Kindle sales. Only Amazon can, and Amazon
is not giving that information to Bowker. While Bowker can track sales based on ISBNs, Amazon ignores ISBNs in favor of it's own Amazon Standard Identification Number.

See this blog post by Steve Weber, author of Plug Your Book, for more information: http://www.weberbooks.com/2009/05/will-kindle-crash-nielsen-bookscan.html

Found a new Twitter chat for writers

It's called #storyappchat, and they're discussing everything about picture book apps. There's a lot of wisdom to be learned from those with experience in this area.

The Kindle with ads isn't that great, but not for the reasons you might think

I've had an Amazon Kindle with ads for about a week now, and I'm still on the fence about it. So far I only see a few pros to owning this ebook reader, and quite a few cons. Oddly, the ads are not among the cons. So here's my pros and cons list:

Pros

• The liquid paper--Compared to the back-lit iPad,iPhone or iPod Touch, the liquid paper is easier on the eyes and it means you can go a long time between charges. But do you know what's even easier on the eyes and doesn't need to be charged at all? An actual book. 
• The price--At $114, this is one of the cheapest ebook readers. 
• The Amazon Kindle store's selection and pricing for ebooks--Amazon has the greatest selection of ebooks at the lowest prices.
• The ads--The ads appear when the Kindle is shut off. When you turn the Kindle back on, a small strip at the bottom of the menu lets you click on a link to learn more about the product or offer. The ads don't bother me in the least, and when they offer something good (who wouldn't want a $10 Amazon gift certificate for buying a $5 ebook from the bestseller list?) I kind of wish there were more of them. Right now my only complaint about the ads is that they're repetitive and I can't tell the Kindle to stop showing me ads for some car and some beauty product. My guess is that in the future, the ads might be better tailored to the actual user. This would benefit both the Kindle owner and the advertiser.
• Get any book you want within seconds--It's literally like holding a bookstore in your hand, but unfortunately this isn't a bookstore you can check out easily, no bargain bin or covers to look at or anything. (See below.)

Cons

• The user interface--the placement of the buttons can be quite frustrating. There are buttons on each side of the screen to move you forward and backward. Press the top button, and you move back. Press the bottom button, and you move forward. This only applies to navigating books. To move back a page anywhere else, you need to press a tiny back button on the keyboard. Why? Why not have the same buttons take you back and forward a page no matter where you are? And why not just put one back button to the left of the screen, and one forward button to the right of the screen, which would be more intuitive? The main button you use on the keyboard (the one that lets you move up, down, left and right within a page) is tiny and difficult to manipulate. This is true of all the buttons on the keyboard, but because this one button is so important, its tiny size and the way it's situated so close to the Menu, Back, Delete, and Enter keys can be quite frustrating, making the simplest tasks take unnecessarily longer.
• The on-board Kindle store--Unless you're interested in the bestseller list only and you don't care about price, the Kindle store as you can access it from your device is pretty much useless. You can't look up books by rating or price, and very often when you look something up by topic, the first things on the list are rubbish created by writers who have created lots and lots of ebooks in order to boost their ratings in the Kindle store. Sometimes they'll add something to a public-domain work (like drawings), so they can charge for an ebook you can get for free elsewhere online. This effectively makes the on-board Kindle store a joke, and the laugh is on the person trying to use it to find a book he or she might want to buy.
• The price of some ebooks when compared to used books--If you want to read books on your Amazon Kindle, you're stuck with whatever the price is on Amazon. Sometimes that's a good thing. Many indie publishers charge $0.99-$2.99 for an ebook. However, most of the larger publishers charge $9.99, and sometimes more. So unless you have money to burn or really need to get that bestseller as soon as it comes out and you're willing to pay retail for it, you're probably better off getting a used (sometimes even new) paperback for a much lower price.
• Everything the Kindle offers beside books--While some of the apps are nice (Mahjong, for example, looks lovely), the interface makes them unbearably frustrating to use. The worst is trying to access the Kindle store through Amazon's website. Sure, it's great that the device can access the Internet, but does it have to do such a terrible job of it? Frankly, I think Amazon needs to get rid of that feature until they find a way to make using it frustration-free.

In the end, the pros win out over the cons, but the cons show that Amazon still has a long way to go if it wants to get a Kindle into every reader's hands.