Warm up your Cold Calling

Many times, when authors schedule events, they have to reach out and do some cold calling, and it can be stressful to pitch something to someone you don’t know. Here are some ideas to help make your call not just another random request.

The best thing I ever did to build my contact list was to volunteer to schedule the programming for one of my writers’ groups. This gave me the opportunity to reach out to all kinds of venues and speakers and to build relationships with local book sellers, libraries, and other professionals. (I was scheduling writing, marketing, and law-enforcement-related presentations for my Sisters in Crime chapter. Among hundreds of local contacts, I now have two bailbondsmen in my contact list who did a fabulous presentation on what it’s like to seek bond.)

Here are some ideas to help you when you reach out to plan an event:

• Contacts and relationships are important. It is much easier to call or email someone you have a relationship with than it is a complete stranger.

• When you meet new people, make sure to add them to your contacts immediately. Make sure to include a note of where you met them.

• Visit your local bookstores and libraries regularly (not just when you want to do a book signing). Be part of the community. Make sure you introduce yourself.

• When you participate in a book festival, make sure to introduce yourself to the event coordinators and planners.

• Be willing to volunteer.

• Join a writers’ group and volunteer. These groups help authors build their networks.

• If you have a skill to share, volunteer to teach a class. Even if you can’t sell books there, you can still promote your newsletter and offer bookmarks.

• Contact your local library or bookseller and proposal a panel for a program that they could offer. Many groups are looking for interesting speakers.

• Do your homework. Learn about the group, organization, or business before you reach out to them. Look at their event calendars. Make sure that what you’re offering matches.

Who's Your Audience?

Who is your reader? When I ask new authors that, many says that it’s “everyone who reads.” Not quite. You need to determine who is reading your books or who would be interested in reading what you write. Here are some things you can do:

• Look at your social media analytics. Many offer information on your audience’s demographics (e.g. age, country of origin, gender, etc.). This helps you see who is paying attention to your posts.

• Look at your website’s analytics. This tells you who is visiting your site and when. Many of the dashboards show detailed information about your audience.

• Make a list of several authors who have books that are similar to yours. Look on major book seller sites and skim the reviews. What can you glean from those who have read these books?

• Find Facebook sites or groups for your genre. Look at the members or the “top fans” of the page. Who is commenting the most about your style of writing? I write cozy mysteries, so I look for groups, sites, and book reviewers/bloggers who specialize in my genre.

• When you create posts or ads for your books, make sure that you target your readers. Think about what appeals to that demographic. Do they prefer content, lots of pictures, videos?

• Build your social media platform on sites where your readers are. Search for social media platform demographics online. There are lots of articles that define all kinds of statistics about who is using what site. This gives you an idea where to focus more of your promotion time.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to narrow down your readers. It takes a little work, and as you build your website and social media audiences, you’ll have more data on your analytics pages.

Recent Writing Gems

I’ve attended a bunch of classes and seminars lately, and here are some of the gems that I picked up that can help writers…

Writing Dialog with Andrea Johnson:

• Johnson reminded writers that dialog is more than just a conversation. It advances the plot and establishes the tone.

• Dialog is faster for readers to process than narrative, and it’s a way to show the point of view and personalities of your characters.

• She suggested that authors avoid long physical descriptions of characters in dialog.

• Johnson also suggested that writers avoid having characters having long philosophical discussions with themselves.

Podcasts to Add to Your Favorites’ List:

• Pick Your Poison

• Dark Predators

• Murder in the Hollywood Hills

• Missing in America

• Check out Sarah E. Burr’s post on Writers Who Kill about her favorite true crime podcasts.

Book Marketing:

• Book Funnel is a way that authors can distribute their ARCs (Advance Reader/Review Copies) and book giveaways to readers.

• It does require a subscription, and several tiered options are available. Make sure you review the features available with each plan.

• Some plans have options for authors to join newsletter swaps, email builders, and book sales with other authors. This is a way to expand your audience and add followers to your email list.

I'm a New Author - What Should I Work on First?

New authors often ask what part of their platform they should work on and when? Here’s what has worked for me.

Website: Purchase your domain name for your site and start creating the pages. This is the hub of all of your marketing efforts. I would create it first. If you don’t have a book to highlight yet, start with a blog and build a following. Blog about things in your book, your research, your hobbies, what you read/watch, or anything that catches your fancy. Try to have a regular schedule if possible.

Link to your social media accounts to your webpage and have a place where visitors can sign up for your newsletter. You can add pages and update the look as you add new books.

Email/Newsletter List: Start collecting names as soon as you start doing events or appearances. Have a sign-up sheet where people can register. Decide how often you want your newsletter to go out and what kind of content you want to include. I do mine quarterly with some kind of contest. I include announcements, events, photos, and interviews of other authors.

There are all kinds of free and paid email services that you can use to build your newsletter from templates and to house/maintain your list of followers. Remember, you can be banned from social media platforms, or the site can shut down. When this happens, you have no way of contacting those followers. You own your email list, and that’s why it’s important to have and cultivate.

Social Media Sites: I would also start to build a following on these as soon as you can. Agents, editors, and publishers often look at your website and social media sites to see your content and what kind of following you have. I started out years ago with three Twitter followers. It takes time to build an audience. Choose the one or two sites that you want to focus on and follow at least 10 people a day.

I write cozy mysteries. Most of my readers are on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, so that’s where I focus most of my time, but I do have a presence on a variety of other sites. Make sure your readers can easily find you. Make the look and feel of each site (photograph and banners) similar. To build (and keep) an audience, you need to be social. You need to interact with those who comment, post interesting content (that’s not all “buy my book”), and share other’s celebrations.

A business page on Facebook and Instagram gives you access to metrics and insights about your page and activity and access to the business tools. I can see when my followers are most active, and I can schedule posts during those times. Some authors use their personal Facebook accounts. There is a limit to the number of friends you can have on a personal account, and once you hit that number, you can’t expand your reach. The business page isn’t limited.

I would focus on these three key parts of your author platform as soon as you decide to start your writing journey. There is a lot of waiting when you query agents or publishers or while you wait for publication. I would use this time to work on your website, newsletter, and social media sites.

What else would you add to my list?

Some Strategic Planning Tips That Can Help Your Writing

I recently completed a Strategic Training course for the day gig. A lot of the concepts, designed for planning and prioritizing IT work also translate to the writing world. Here’s what I learned.

You need to know who your customers are: Writers need to know who their readers are, and it’s not everyone who likes books. Authors need to look at their followers, their web and social media metrics, and their reviews to see if they can categorize who is buying and reading your book. Sometimes, it’s hard. If you don’t have data to look at, look at other authors who write books that are similar to yours. Look at their reviews and see which book bloggers and bookstagrammers are reading their work.

This helps you target your advertising and marketing to the groups who would be likely to be interested in your work. For example, from my metrics and demographics data, I can see that my readers are usually females between 20 and 60 who like animals, cozy mysteries, and humorous mysteries. I can create events, give-aways, and other promotions that would appeal to folks who have similar interests.

Wave your own flag: Sometimes, authors have trouble with promoting themselves because it feels like bragging, or they don’t feel comfortable being in the spotlight. Marketing, promotions, and building your author platform often force writers to step out of their comfort zones. It’s important to celebrate your wins and news. Try to keep your posts balanced. Your news/marketing items on social media should be 10 to 20% of your overall posts. And don’t forget to celebrate the successes of others!

Spend the time you have to on necessary tasks, but no more: This one is important for your time management. There are thousands of tasky things we have to do that don’t relate to your writing. The rule is to spend the time you have to on these things, but keep it limited. Remember that your job is to write your next book and to promote your work.

Plan for crisis situations to minimize risks: Always have a backup plan for emergencies. Make sure that you can get to your contact lists if your phone or email go down. Make sure that you backup your files. Your writing is precious, and there is nothing that will make a writer cry faster than to lose something you’ve been working on. Make sure that you keep your computer and phones updated regularly. These patches and updates contain security fixes. If you don’t apply them, your device is vulnerable.

Scan the environment and know your competition: Authors need to know what is going on in the industry and their genre. Read everything you can get your hands on. Peruse online or physical bookstores and see what is on the shelves and how books are categorized. Join writing groups for knowledge shares and training.

Apply lessons learned: Some critiques, rejections, and bad reviews don’t feel good. After you calm down, take the time to understand what the person was telling you. If there is something valuable in the feedback, take it as a lesson learned and find ways to incorporate it. Continuous improvement is a key part of your growth.

I know these concepts are for technology projects, but the concepts apply to writers and the work we do.

What Have You Done Lately for Your Author Journey?

Every year, I help my team write their annual goals, and a big component of this is their developmental work. I work in IT, and technology and best practices are constantly changing. As an author, you need to continue your learning experiences to stay current with trends and to hone your skills. Here are some ideas:

• Take a class. Many libraries, writing organizations, and other organizations sponsor courses that appeal to writers. There are also thousands of YouTube videos that will show you how to do all kinds of things.

• Learn a new technology that will help you with your marketing (editing videos, creating memes, putting together a newsletter…).

• Learn how to use a social media platform that you haven’t joined yet.

• Attend a workshop or an author panel. There are so many available in-person and online.

• Attend a conference.

• Find the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) online. Many have websites, tutorials, podcasts, and newsletters.

• Check out your local library’s website and look at all the programming and opportunities they offer.

• Many alumni associations, neighborhood associations, and civic groups offer programs for their members.

• Visit your local bookstores and check out their program calendars.

What else would you add to my list?

You've Written a Book. Now What?

All the tasks that go into writing, revising, and marketing a book can be overwhelming. I’ve broken down some of the key tasks with some ideas for new (or seasoned) writers.

What You Need to Get Started

• A Professional Headshot – Selfies won’t give you the quality you need for these to appear correctly in print or digitally.

• Your Biography (For your website, you may want to have a short one and a longer one.)

• A Short Description of Your Book (Back cover text)

• A URL and a Site to Host Your Website

• A Newsletter/Email Marketing Service

• Digital Images of Your Book Covers

While You’re Writing/Revising Your Manuscript

• Make your work the best it can be.

• Create a list of book promotion ideas (e.g. blog tours, blogs to guest on, Facebook reader sites, etc.).

• Start collecting email addresses for your newsletter list.

• Build your social media following. This takes time.

• Build or update your website/blog.

• Find your crew. Writing is solitary, buy you need collaboration from time to time. Find a writers’ group, critique group, or writing partner for feedback and networking.

Remember the Social Part of Social Media

• Update your key sites regularly. If possible, schedule your posts to ensure that you have fresh content.

• Be Social/Be Active. Celebrate with others. Make sure to like and comment. Respond to comments on your page.

• It takes time to build a following.

• Be genuine.

• Remember the 80/20 rule. Only 20% (or less) of your posts should be about “buy my book.”

• Don’t let your social media time take over your writing time.

While You’re Querying

• There is a lot of waiting while you query agents or publishers.

• Work on your next book.

• Build your social media platforms and followers.

• Collect email addresses.

• Update your website.

• Start your blog. You don’t have to have a book published to start this, and it’s a way to drive traffic to your website.

• Work on your newsletter.

• Build your connections.

Before Your Book Launch

• Create a calendar with all your due dates.

• Contact book reviewers when you have your ARCs (Advance Reader Copies).

• Schedule blog tours.

• Schedule Facebook takeovers/parties online.

• Reach out to libraries and bookstores.

• Write press releases and target media outlets to send them to.

• Create a list of newsletters that have member news sections and make sure to announce your new book (e.g. alumni, neighborhood groups, and places of worship).

• Tell everyone you know

• Plan your launch on social media.

• Update all your bios.

• Add book cover to your sites.

• Make bookmarks and other swag.

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to write AND market a book. Figure out your schedule and your budget and find a way to keep the myriad of tasks and due dates organized. What would you add to my list?

What To Do With My Website...

Many authors only update or overhaul their websites when they have a new book release, and this isn’t always frequent enough to keep readers coming back. Here some ideas for ways to generate visits to your site.

Blogs are good ways to have fresh content on your site and to encourage repeat visitors. I do guest author interviews on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and I post my new content each Friday. The guest interviews are a win-win for the author and me. They get the exposure to my readers, and they share my site with their fans.

Try to think of topics that appeal to your readers. Most of my Friday posts relate to writing or books. Do you have hobbies or job skills that your readers are interested in? Most blogs will let you embed videos for more interaction. The video content can be reused on Instagram or TikTok.

Add the links to your blog posts on your social media sites to drive traffic to your site. Twitter/X and Instagram are hashtag friendly, and this lets you highlight topics that appeal to a variety of readers. If your blog posts appeal to professionals, don’t forget to the share the links on LinkedIn.

I send out a quarterly newsletter with contests and updates. Inside, I also feature six or eight of the recent author interviews. This lets me recycle some content, and it provides more coverage for my guest authors.

Sometimes, it’s a good idea to spot check your webpages to ensure everything is current and working correctly. Here’s a quick check list of areas that may need updating:

• Make sure your latest author photo is posted.

• If you list events, verify that they are up to date.

• Ensure that all your latest books appear on your site. If you have book club questions, make sure you have a set for each book.

• Check all of your links to make sure they are working.

• Review your biography and press kit.

Websites take some time to maintain, but it a valuable and the central part of your author platform.