Press releases seem to have gone the way of the dodo bird with most press releasing services focusing on search engine optimization rather than connecting with the media.

What new book announcement strategies have you employed with success?

The new social media environment surely affords a lot of opportunities for authors to connect with audiences around the world and Twitter is a primary tool at your disposal. I’ve got some advice for the group and some questions for my fellow tweeters too.

First the advice:

Everyone knows you need an author website (you do know that, right?) but there are other Internet assets that can connect you to potential book buyers before they come looking for you. First on the list is Twitter and I’ve got a few tips that will make your first tweeting experience an enjoyable one:

1. Twitter Username: when you register yourself on Twitter you’ll be prompted to choose a username to identify yourself when you tweet (e.g. post a message). Choose a name that fits your brand because your followers (those that subscribe to read your tweats) are going to be looking at that name next to each of your messages. So avoid names like Bill384 and choose something that can be associated with your pen name, characters in your book, etc.

2. Dress Up Your Twitter Page – although a lot of people access Twitter via a software client, a lot more people will hit your Twitter page directly. So just like you wanted your website to look professional, do the same thing with your Twitter page. You’ll find instructions on Twitter.com.

3. List Your Website – the goal of the game is to build and audience and to get them back to your website (Did I mention you need a website?). So in your Twitter profile make sure you list your author website.

4. Tweet Using Keywords – people will find you based on what you say on Twitter. So when you’re crafting your tweets use words that are linked to your writing. That way when someone searches for “cowboy romance” they’ll find your post on Cowboy Romance.

Here are My Questions

Building a Relevant Audience
1. What techniques or audience building sites have you found effective for reaching a wider Twitter audience. No desire to build a giant audience on dis-interested followers, just seeking methods for connecting with potential buyers.

2. What have you gained by connecting with your audience via Twitter. Share your stories here so others can learn.

Self-publishers need to decide whether to do their own book design, both for the book cover and the interior. What makes you decide to DIY, and are there times that might be the wrong choice?

Darwin,
Great topic. I’ve found the Twitter list function really useful for finding others in the niches I follow on Twitter. I haven’t created any lists yet, but by scanning the lists put together by others with similar interests, I’ve found many people to follow, and been followed back. This has really saved a lot of time hunting people down.
And I’m getting a fair amount of traffic from my Tweets to my blog, increasing as my followers increase. That’s a pretty big benefit for the amount of time invested!

I know you’re a typographer, but I think interior needs to come third in line behind the cover and editing. If you’re on a budget and need to cut a corner, that’s probably where it will happen.

How much does interior design run generally compared to a cover? I’ve designed the interior on my two s-p books – not perfectly by any means.

Novels are the easiest to deal with if they are simply running narrative with chapters and text breaks but no other formatting. The last novel I did cost the client $650 for a 200 page book and looked absolutely gorgeous. He got three samples unique to his book and a chance to influence the design at that point. I also did his cover ($600). Because he had a tie-in with a non-profit, he sold over 500 books in the first couple of weeks and went into the black upon publication, although I don’t know how much he paid for editing.

I agree that the absolute requirement is competent editing, first and foremost. If you can only afford editing, don’t even hesitate. It’s much more important than what the book looks like as long as it’s readable!

[cross posted from the Ning site]

There are a lot of misconceptions around the ideas of “new media” vs “social media.” It’s understandable, given that they’re coming up at about the same time and some forms of new media are social and some forms of social media are new.

Twitter is a classic example. Twitter is social but not new. Oh, sure the service is relatively new, but it’s really a form of microblogging that’s been around for a long time. The length limit is extreme, but that’s what makes it interesting. It’s kind of a “bulk text message for the web” idea. The key to understanding twitter – in my opinion – is that you have to follow a lot of people in order to get a feel for the flow, and you have to think of Twitter as a kind of permanent cocktail party in progress. It’s not an information flow. It’s a conversation flow, with all that implies. I’ve found it immensely valuable as a tool to reach out to my fans, and for my fans to talk with me about my work, what’s holding up the next book, or whatever is the topic du jour.

Podcasting is new media, but isn’t inherently social. A podcast is a serialized release of digitized media that’s distributed via RSS feed. It could be anything that’s in a digital format — audio, video, pdf, even word processing documents. The serialized context is important because if you’ve only got ONE thing to send out, then you don’t need the affordances of RSS to deliver it. You’re better off just putting a link on a web page and calling it good.

Blogging can be both. Frequently it’s new media as people use blogs to distribute new kinds of stories. See PixelVixen707 as an example of blog used as new media. In order to avoid spoilering the story, I’ll leave it to you to discover what connectiont that blog has to new media. Frequently it’s social as people use blogs to foster conversation.

This idea of social media is important for those of us engaged in activities that are intended to promote our work. If you listen to SEO experts and some of the social media marketing mavens, you’ll begin to believe that there’s a magic bullet that will let you go viral and instantly have a ba-zillion people from around teh interwebz who are anxious to meet you, read your work, and give you money.

Um. Yea. About the magic bullet idea?

We have lots of magic bullets. What we don’t have is magic guns to shoot them in.

Part of what I hope to accomplish here in this group is to raise awareness among the members of this community about the value and proper use of new media and social media, to wade through some of the hype, and to offer some ideas that can help us all raise the visibility of self-published authors.

So? What questions do you need answers to? What tools do you need help with? Ask away and I’ll try to find answers.

Some great advice here re: twitter.

My advice on building relevant audience is to knit together your community with participation. Find the people who you expect will be interested in your work. Follow them. Listen to what they say and talk WITH them, not to them.

The typical NMDB approach is to push, push, push your messages. Avoid that. Yes, you want them to be aware of and enthusiastic of your work, but low key works better than hard sell. Participate, be interested, and people will look back at you to see who’s listening.

Use the tools like #followfriday to recommend people that you admire and think deserve to be followed. Avoid the cattle calls and make the #followfriday ONE person and why they’re worthy of followage.

Look for a hashtag that matches YOUR niche and find people who are posting in it. Genre? look for #SciFi or #Horror or #Western … or … you get the idea.

The absolute key element here is that if your tweet stream is a regular laundry list of messages about YOU, you’re missing an important and valuable connection with the people who might become your fans.

What have I gained?

A huge and vocal following who support my work in ways I couldn’t buy with all the money in the world.

Membership in a community of content producers that is complementary — and often complimentary — to my own. We promote each others’ work within our own community and, through twitter in particular, merge and meld our various followings.

Build the audience first. Then tell them directly.

Kinda brute force, but when you have a mailing list of fans, it’s pretty easy to drop them a line to give them heads up on an early release and reward them for their loyalty, as an example.

Not only that, but if they’re really rabid fans, they’ll take up the early release and blurb your new work all over teh interwebz so that the buzz is out there before the book is.

Key is having a few thousand people to prim the pump with.

I’m a firm believer in DIY, but I’ve seen the horrible results of that decision, too.

One of the requirements for my podcast novels is a “cover art” image and I think most people make a few common mistakes.

1. Too much detail. For our covers, they *must* be 144 x 212px. That’s a *tiny* picture. When you put a highly detailed image and a subtitle, plus your name, what’s left is mud.

2. Badly drawn people. You’ve seen ‘em. You know what I mean.

3. Too little attention to design. Picture-Text-Publish is a recipe for disaster.

For most of my covers, I use a high resolution Hubble photo (they’re space opera. space is good.) and then layer a simple title/author message on the top. My simple covers stand out in the mass and you can actually read the titles. Moreover, the government document photos are in the public domain, so free.

A couple of my covers use a combination of hand drawn and photo samples from my own work. There’s probably better choices but I like them.

Internal book design is something I haven’t had to deal with, but I expect to soon as the works go onto paper later this year. Color, white space, font, and layout are all subjects that are near and dear to me, and I confess a certain giddy anticipation.

Since I was publishing my first book and didn’t have a previously established fan base, I did a similar thing on a smaller scale with Facebook. I spent a few months leading up to the book release cultivating my friends list (going through other friends’ lists and reconnecting with anyone I knew even tangentially), and posted regular updates on the publishing process. By the time the book came out, many of them were excited to buy it, and pimped it to their friends as well. One guy I hadn’t seen since high school bought twenty copies wholesale to sell at events he puts on in SF.

Obviously, selling to family and friends is a pretty limited market, but it can be a nice little kickstart.

I didn’t have a fanbase when I started either, but podcasting it as a serialized audiobook gave me entree to a fanbase within a couple of months. It cost next to nothing to produce, served an underserved market niche (hungry mp3 players), and was part of an established community so that I had a starting point beyond my living room.

Three years later. A lot has changed, but if you’re looking for an audience, I still recommend this. write your book. podcast it first. see if anybody likes it. If you have an audience after 3 months, they’ll be asking for it in dead tree mode.

Very interesting Nathan. Are these podcasts that are shown/sold through the iTunes Store? I’m not familiar with the 144 x 212 px standard.

Perhaps it’s asking a lot to imagine that prospective self-publishers will be able to decide whether they have the “chops” to do their own design, or should hire a professional for their book interiors and covers. What do you think?

I certainly know that feeling of “giddy anticipation” that strikes the heart of the typophile when contemplating a new project. Have fun!

Reading the endless threads on Lulu and CreateSpace concerning the mishaps that occur when people try to understand the technical formatting of a book (never mind the design) I have to say that sometimes it’s cheaper to pay with money.

Cathi, there was a long thread recently on one of the listservs about an author simply trying to get a type sample before he ordered his book from CreateSpace, and how in the end they were simply unable to supply him with any samples at all. It seemed both sad and amazing.