Category: Business of Writing

Communicating Indirectly With Readers

Business of Writing, Promo Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigsw_BacklitKeyboard_FFP10036

At the very start of this blog back in 2008, I tried to figure out who I was writing for.  I’d read a lot of advice at the time that blogging was a good way to connect to readers.

Instead, I decided to stay in my comfort zone and make my blog writer-focused.

I took a class on building a social media platform.  It recommended interfacing with readers instead of writers.

Instead, I decided to stay in my comfort zone and focus on connecting with writers on social media.

Despite my complete disregard of all the excellent advice that I’d gone searching for, this reader avoidance on my part worked really well. I built a large platform online.  Readers could easily find me because of good SEO. They’d message me on Facebook or email me if they wanted to connect and  communicated directly with me. I care a lot about my readers and I answer their messages promptly.  But I was very shy about seeking them out.

It’s been a couple of years now that I finally started thinking about ways to connect with my readers.

I originally went about it the wrong way.   I asked “where are my readers?” and then set out to join them.Continue reading

Curating Links and Scheduling Them

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigfile5951239550691

I’ve seen several articles and post comments online recently where writers have stated they’ve used services like Buffer to schedule tweets because it’s very cumbersome to mass schedule on Hootsuite.

Buffer is a popular scheduler.  It just didn’t work for my purposes because I like more control over when I’m scheduling tweets and I wanted to schedule more than 10 updates per day, which would require a paid Buffer subscription. I also needed to be able to download weekly lists of all of my updates for my weekly Twitterific link roundup.  I’m on Hootsuite Pro : a paid subscription that allows me to download reports/lists of my updates.

You can mass schedule on Hootsuite Pro with limited trouble.  These how-to posts can be really dull if you’re not interested in the topic explained, I know.  But I do think that scheduling our social media updates saves us a lot of time. Continue reading

Demographics on Wattpad

Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve had a profile and books available on Wattpad for over a year.  Wattpad is an online reading platform.  It’s a social way to share stories, with readers commenting on chapters as we release them.  I’ve written about getting on Wattpad and my thoughts on the platform.

Wattpad is free for readers.  I have enough books available for sale that offering something for free for exposure isn’t a concern.  And it is all about exposure: there are over 40 million users.

Wattpad Post 1

To access this feature, you’d go to your book page and click on the graph icon right next to “edit story.”Continue reading

Marketing and Publishing Updates

Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigD2D

A few odds and ends and updates: 

Draft2Digital:  I’ve used Smashwords since I started self-publishing.  It’s been convenient for me to upload one file there for distribution to multiple retailers.  But I’ve experimented lately with Draft2Digital, a similar distributor (these distributors are paid a percentage of our book sales for our convenience).  I really like its user interface: it’s a nice, clean look and the site is fairly easy to navigate.

I’ve found I especially like the email updates they send that let me know when my book has gone live on the different retailers or when my price changes go through on the various sites.  It’s also nice that I can make my book free on Nook through Draft2Digital…that seemed to make Amazon move very quickly to price match when my book was free on the Barnes & Noble site.

I’m also paid more frequently with Draft2Digital than I am with Smashwords (payment is quarterly at Smashwords). ebook - JPG format - Race to refuge - Liz Craig

Pen name tidbit: Apparently, my readers got an email from Amazon about Race to Refuge, which I wrote as Liz Craig.  I did list myself as the publisher, but didn’t put myself as a contributor in the author section on the KDP dashboard.  I’m thinking the reason readers received emails is because I linked to the book on my Amazon Author Central.  I guess, since Liz is a nickname, there was no trouble claiming it.  I never had such luck with my Riley Adams series for Penguin, which has a different Amazon Author Central page. Continue reading

Reader Expectations for Genre

Business of Writing

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraigWoman With a Secret

I just finished  reading Woman With a Secret  (released as The Telling Error in the UK) by Sophie Hannah.  I’ve read a fair number of unreliable narrator books lately.  This one definitely caught my attention and sustained my interest.

One thing bothered me, as a reader and a writer.  There were several points at the end where different police investigators of the murder (and it was a murder mystery, although it could also be called a psychological thriller…more on that later), clearly knew who the killer was.  They stated they knew who the killer was, but didn’t let the reader in on it.  It’s a quibble.  But I’m a mystery writer.

This technique is still, technically, fair play in a mystery.  The great Agatha Christie kept her readers on pins and needles as Poirot gathered everyone together in a room to disclose the killer’s identity.Continue reading

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