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One Important Element for Your Newsletter

April 6, 2018March 23, 2018Promo Tips, Uncategorized

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?

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How To Develop Creative Receptivity

April 2, 2018March 23, 2018Motivation and the Writing Life, Uncategorized

by Nicky Blue, @itsnickyblue ‏

‘The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.’ — Sigmund Freud

When I lapse in dedicating time to developing creativity in my life, I end up becoming very driven by reactive thinking. What I mean by this is, my thinking process seems to get governed by existing ideas, prejudices and familiar anecdotes. It feels as though I am mainly operating at the level of the conscious mind. An assumption arises that ‘I’ am in control of the creative process. I have these ideas in my head, which I manically splurge onto a page. This can be productive in getting things done but I find it can produce quite mediocre work. Aspiration for creativity is that it taps into something much deeper. When I give time to my developing my creative process, I realise this is very possible.

There are of course, days when creativity flows through me and there seem to be no limits to my productivity. I kid myself life will always be like this. Then one fateful morning, I wake up and sit in front of the computer and nothing, diddly squat. It feels as if I don’t have a creative bone in my body. It took many cycles of this to admit to myself an obvious truth. The creative process takes work, dedication and time. It is an investment I have to make in order reap the rewards later down the line.

‘Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being. Creativity requires passion and commitment. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness: ecstasy.’ — Rollo May.

A lotus will not produce flowers without the right amount of light, water and nutrients. Similarly, we need the right conditions for our creativity to bloom. Where I wanted to focus my attention, is the place that lies at the basis of all artistic endeavours, creative receptivity. I spent a long time experimenting with different creative exercises and spiritual techniques. After a while it became apparent to me there were some common themes to building creative receptivity. I have grouped these themes into three stages:Continue reading

Other Things to Back Up (Besides Our Writing)

March 30, 2018March 15, 2018Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

It’s now time for my regularly scheduled reminder to back up your work.

This time I’ll make my post a little different by urging you to back up other files, too. Although we’d likely be hardest hit by losing our manuscripts, there are other important writing-related things, too.

I’ll start with our newsletter subscriber list since I know folks who have inadvertently deleted portions of theirs (and, in one case, the entire list). I use MailChimp and it’s fairly easy to back up. In fact, you can back up all of your account data (including templates, campaigns, subscriber lists, campaign reports, etc.) in one fell swoop. Step by step guidance can be found here.

If you’re like me and rely on your Google calendar for everything, you’ll want to back it up, too. My calendar has everything from guest posts scheduled on my blog to cover design meetings to podcasts. Backup Google calendar means exporting the calendar (then I usually will copy it to an external device of some kind, too). Instructions can be found here.

Book-related files are also important things to back up. You may think that backing up your current work in progress should be the main focus. But there are many other types of book files that you’ll want to keep track of:

Cover files. I back up my ebook, print, and audio book covers several different places.

Published book files. You never know when a new retailer or format will come along. It wouldn’t be fun to lose these old files.

Back matter. To speed up the publishing process, I keep my back matter (including list of published books, where to find me online, etc.) in a document that I can update and quickly copy and past into the back of the next book.

List of ISBNs. I keep track of all of the ISBNs for my different books (in all the different formats). It would be time consuming to recreate.

Last, but certainly not least, our current manuscript. If you don’t create backups because it’s a pain, think of other, easier ways to save your data. Email yourself a copy, copy to a small thumb drive that you carry on a keychain, use a cloud service like Carbonite.

What kinds of files do you back up? How often do you do it? Is it automated or manual?

Helping International Readers Find Your Book

March 19, 2018March 14, 2018Business of Writing, Promo Tips, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Recently, I went through and updated all of my individual book pages on my website… a very tedious process, but it was a rainy day and a worthwhile endeavor.

I’ve known for some time about Draft2Digital‘s Universal Links, but for some reason hadn’t put it to use on my website.

Sometimes I’ll get emails or messages on Facebook asking how to order one of my books on Apple iBookstore or Amazon…in another country. This means that I spend some time trying to locate it myself (even though I’m automatically redirected to the US site in many instances).

I especially want to get my individual book pages on my website right, because I link to the pages in each book’s back matter and on Facebook when I have a release. Plus, if you look up any of my book titles, my website usually comes in first for results (occasionally Amazon does).

One thing about Draft2Digital’s approach is that it’s one universal link and the reader is automatically directed to their home country’s retail site. Another is that you could simply use this one link instead of linking to all the stores (domestic and international) where your book is for sale. I know that my book is listed in at least twenty stores, counting all the retailers that my aggregators are distributing to. Some of these online stores go out of business, but if you click the ‘rescan’ button at D2D, it automatically repopulates and removes expired links. In fact, I recommend clicking ‘rescan’ a couple of times, anyway, to make sure all of the links are populated.

Even if you are a Kindle Unlimited (KU) author who exclusively distributes through Amazon, this is useful. As D2D explains: “But lest you think UBLs aren’t for you—as a KU author the advantage you get from using UBLs is globalization—which is a fancy way of saying that we’ll find your book in every Amazon marketplace, worldwide! So you can paste the URL from, say, your product page at Amazon.com, and Books2Read will find all instances of the book on Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.everywhere-else-you-can-think-of! This allows readers to go to the Amazon store that matches their region, without the need to create a separate link.”

You don’t even have to be a Draft2Digital author to use the service. As they put it: “In fact, you don’t even have to be a Draft2Digital author to use it (though we’d really love to have you). All you have to do is visit Books2Read.com and paste your link to get started. If you want to edit your link, you can create a B2R account, or log in with an existing Draft2Digital account.”

For the UBL button on my website, I chose the text to read “international” since I had the US links and retailers listed on my page already.

Do you use UBLs? How do you help international readers find your books?

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Small Presses: 7 Questions to Ask While Researching Them

March 16, 2018March 16, 2018Business of Writing, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig (with content from @JaneFriedman)

I receive one or two emails a month from new writers asking for information and help in either publishing or promoting their book.

It’s happened enough that I have a detailed ‘canned response’ email that I’ve written to give details and resources to these writers. The main resource that I reference is Jane Friedman’s blog, in particular her collection of articles titled “Start Here.” One is Start Here: How to Self-Publish Your Book and another is Start Here: How to Get Your Book Published.

So when I was offered a complimentary ARC of Jane’s new book (publishing today, March 16), The Business of Being a Writer, I eagerly accepted it. As expected, it’s jam-packed with savvy information for writers. One common issue I notice in writers is a certain amount of business insecurity, a fear of making a mistake. This is a reference to help keep writers of all levels of experience from making a mistake.Continue reading