Category: Promo Tips

A Tip for Building Your ARC Team

Promo Tips, Uncategorized

A man reading in an elaborate library.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I have been building my ARC team (Advance Reader/Review Copy  team) organically for years. Organically as in…I didn’t do the building myself.  If a reader reached out to me and asked to be on my list (a list that I never mentioned and never promoted), then I agreed to the add.

But recently, I’ve been more interested in increasing the number of ARC readers . I do like the early reviews and social media mentions and I think they help spike interest in a new release.

Since I’m a pretty late adopter, I decided to make it very simple on myself.  Instead of putting something on my website, I reached out to my most dedicated readers–my newsletter subscribers. When my last release came out and I sent an email to my subscribers to notify them,  I included a special section in my newsletter:

Would you like the opportunity to read new Myrtle Clover and Southern Quilting mysteries before they are published (and for free)?  I have a limited number of spaces on my ARC team (that’s an advance reader copy team). Applicants must be able to read ebooks (on Kindle, epub, or PDF since there won’t be any print galleys).  I would love honest reviews submitted to Amazon, Goodreads,  or other retailers/reading communities .  ARC members receive an early copy 1-2 weeks before the book is published. ARC team members are also eligible to get signed, printed copies of my books at a reduced rate (just the cost of printing and shipping) when purchased directly from me. If you’re interested, click this link to fill out a short form for consideration. Thanks!Continue reading

Follow Buttons for Your Author Website

Promo Tips

A mother duck swims through a pond with her ducklings behind her.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I think it’s pretty easy for our readers to miss out on our releases. We all have very busy lives and all get bombarded each day by advertising and emails. I have several releases a year and know they must slip by a good number of readers.

Naturally, the first line of defense for preventing this from happening is to have readers join our email newsletter.  Even then, though, emails can get lost in the tidal wave that hits our inboxes each day.

To help keep this from happening, I have a few other ways for readers to keep up with what I’m up to.Continue reading

Goodreads Giveaways

Promo Tips

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve read a lot about writers’ disappointment with the pricing for the revised Goodreads Giveaway  feature (the changes started in January this year).

The feature had previously been free for writers, who could give away printed copies only of their books through the platform.

Goodreads opened up the giveaways to digital copies.  But now giveaways cost $119 for either digital or print copies.Continue reading

BookBub for Authors Who Don’t Run Ads

Promo Tips

Man holding cell phone in black background.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Although I haven’t run a BookBub ad, I have an author profile on BookBub.  It’s free and there are excellent reasons for having a presence there, whether or not you ever intend to run an ad.

Perhaps the biggest reason is that BookBub will update your followers when you have a new release. This is what my readers received from BB on the 23rd:

BookBub also can help us connect with new readers by emailing subscribers and suggesting authors to follow.

Tom Corson-Knowles of TCK publishing points out that linking your author profile on BookBub to your website also is a huge SEO boost for your site.

I wondered, when I set up the profile there if my readers were BookBub subscribers. But with absolutely no effort on my part, I have over two hundred followers there.  So…the answer is yes.  :)Continue reading

One Important Element for Your Newsletter

Promo Tips, Uncategorized

A man holds a smartphone with 'newsletter' showing on the screen.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A while back (far enough back that I can’t remember the source), I read an article that suggested writers should include their backlist titles in their author newsletter.

This surprised me.  I think of my newsletter as valuable real estate.  Did I really want to clutter it up with a list of 25 books?  I also figured that most of the readers who signed up for my newsletter were focused on hearing about new releases…that they’d likely read most/all of the other books.

But the argument in this blog post I read was fairly convincing.  For the newsletter that went out for my last release, I included (at the bottom of the newsletter) a full backlist of my three series, with each title linked to the specific book’s page on my website (which has complete ordering information for a variety of different retailers and formats).

To my surprise, when I read my newsletter stats, I saw that, aside from the link for the new release, the most clicks were for various books in the backlist…in particular, the first book in the Myrtle Clover series.

Since I write under several names, it occurred to me that maybe some of my readers weren’t even aware that I had other series.

Maybe some readers were clicking on book one to give it as a gift to a friend or family member to start them on a series that they enjoy.

Maybe some readers simply couldn’t remember if they’d read a particular book or not.

At any rate, it was something that took very little effort on my end (I just copy-pasted my back matter from a document I keep for that purpose) and it resulted in a nice bump in sales for my backlist.

As an extra step, you can link to a printable list of your backlist in PDF form (with ISBNs) for those readers who like to order from bookstores.

For more ideas on elements for your author newsletter, read “50 Ideas for Author Newsletter Content” by Zoe McCarthy.

Have you ever included a book list in your newsletter?   What else have you included in your newsletter that has received a good response from readers?

One important element for your newsletter: Click To Tweet

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