Tag Archive | swag

I am an Idiot. I Admit it Freely.

So far, going to signing events has not been profitable. I don’t sell a lot of books. However, I learn things and I am the Founder, Dean, Provost, Sergeant At Arms, and Faculty Chair of the School of Learning Things the Hard Way.

For example, how to market one’s books. I screw up. I screw up a lot.

I figured, “Write a story. Get it edited. You’re done! You’ve created the book!”

Not so much.

I’m a solo act which means I am the one responsible for marketing aka convincing people to buy the book. I can persuade people to buy stuff, just get squeamish when selling MY stuff. That doesn’t work well when you are a solo act.

Authors create swag: small pieces of merchandise that reference you and your works. Things like bookmarks, cards, business cards, tiny versions of your book cover made into magnets, bookmarks, other chotchkes. The idea is that people will have your stuff and think of you, think of your books, maybe persuade someone to buy the books.

Go ahead, ask me if I had contact information on my stuff.

Nope.

image

Didn’t even have a good email address on my business cards (it used to work, but I forgot the password and Gmail wouldn’t let me get it going again. For all I know, it’s how the Russians hacked the election).

I’ve spent more than a couple hundred dollars on swag. My bookmarks didn’t have MY contact info, but they had the Twitter handle of the Etsy artisan who made them. Not smart.

I’ve come up with a couple of images for branding purposes. It’s a start. I’ve come up with a new Gmail address for the business stuff (and for my pen name). Another step forward.

I’ve invested in some actual advertising in “Affaire de Coeur” magazine. Will it lead to sales? Don’t know. Pam Ackerson, who knows her way around advertising, a) explained how exposure works and it’s essentially a funnel that narrows down the field of possible buyers faster than the NCAA tourney clears out teams, and b) she came up with some excellent taglines. It’s like dating: you have to get out there (and the Amazon Kindle One-Click is kind of a Tindr app for buying books. Far too many people not swiping right on my stuff).

So, I need to redesign, including contact info. I need eye-catching. I need an elevator pitch for all of my stuff. I can do these things.

I may be an idiot, but that can be overcome with education. It’s just expensive, annoying and time consuming doing it my way.

But, I’m learning.

What They Don’t Tell You About Being an Author

“Wow, you wrote a book? Cool! I could never do that!”

You get the rock star moments of people asking for your autograph and posing for pictures with you. And getting a glowing review online is an ego boost. (You want to frame them) the pans are not as much fun, but you hope there’s a nugget of wisdom i there to help you become a better write rather than just, “This book sucked balls” or “Why is a fat woman writing about skinny people? She should stick to what she knows.”  (So help me God, this is a paraphrase of an actual review that another author got. Kind of makes me want to slap the reviewer into a PET scan machine and see what’s in her brain pan, if anything)

You get to do things like this:

 

Or you get a moment like this:

(I don’t know if Mrs. Obama read them, but I sent copies to the White House)

Cool, right?

Listen, I wrote my book(s. I took one and divided it) back in 2001. Zuckerberg hadn’t dropped out of Harvard. Or even been accepted. Twitter hadn’t hatched. E books were not a thing. At that point, you got an agent and/or a publisher. Self publishing was through companies like Xlibris and pretty expensive. Books coming through vanity presses like Xlibris got no respect. Reviews were only available through newspapers and magazines by established critics.

The world has changed. One can self-publish for free through Createspace (Amazon. Jeff Bezos doesn’t miss a trick). Self-published authors are making New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon best seller lists. Readers, rather than a small group of critics, post reviews through Amazon, Goodreads, the online sites for Barnes & Noble and other booksellers.

Sounds like one just pushes a button and sits back, sort of like the Jetsons, right?

WRONG!

The ease of publication has made it possible for anyone to publish. And they do. Millions of titles, including dinosaur bestiality porn (I kid you not).

Getting your works noticed is like. Horton Hears a Who.”

You’ve got to make yourself heard.

So far, I’ve done signing events, a blog tour (you pay someone to line up book review blogs to feature you and your babies for a day), sales, learning how to make teasers to post on Twitter, like this:

 

Yeah,  I’ve got a sale going on. Go buy e books. And leave a review.

I’ve even learned how to make shortened links on bit.ly so they’ll fit on Twitter.

There is Authorgraph?, where you can get a personalized message from me on your Kindle! (Or Nook! Kobo! You get the idea) (go make a request)

I have learned terms like “ARC (Advanced Reading Copy)”, “street team,” “beta reader,” and “fucking pirate sites.” (Now we have algorithms pulling titles and books from Amazon to offer for free or just as a tease to download malware onto greedy and unsuspecting computers). I’ve also heard of software like Scrivenr (it’s writing software. If you let it, it posts your word count on Facebook) and promotional items are called swag.

I don’t have any of those things (except the swag. I have some swag). I have a beta reader in my editor, who’s a friend from college. I am my street team. As for ARCs, given the Facebook posts about getting watermarks and trying to secure the copies to prevent them being up,order to pirate sites (or getting the watermark so one can identify the fucker who uploads it), ain’t nobody getting advanced copies except the editor. It’s her job.

The fact that writing the book isn’t the end of the process has been a huge wake up call. Is writing novels (and other material for publication) how I want to support myself? Absolutely.

It’s still a learning process.

And just a reminder: WE ARE HERE! An author’s an author, no matter how small (the sales).

Reading By The Sea Part Deux

Hey! You in the Los Angeles/Orange County (and Ventura and San Diego if you get ambitious) area with nothing to do Saturday June 21 (it’s a specific demographic).

You like books, right? Sure you do or you wouldn’t be reading this blog.

Reading on the Beach

Come to Reading By the Beach

101 Pacific Ave

Long Beach, CA

11 AM – 4:30 PM

Authors! Swag!

mugs and bookmarks

This is swag. It’s mugs (two of them sold already) and bookmarks. We’ve got bracelets, too. And a couple of raffles.

And there are other authors and we’re going to have to get up and READ from our books and answer questions…

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Bracelets

I’ll sign copies…I’ll pose for pictures…

COME ON DOWN!!!