Your Writer Platform

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71 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book

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ways to promote and market your book

Do you know the most powerful way to market your book?

Word of mouth recommendation.

It’s a free, highly credible, highly viral resource that helps to amplify your efforts to create interest and buzz about your work.

And all you really need for word of mouth marketing is a book worthy of sharing, and a way to get it into the hands of the people who will spread the word.

Sound simple?

Well it is simple, but not necessarily easy.

The devil is in the details, right?

Although the concept is simple, the implementation is going to require some time and effort, especially in the beginning.

However, with a good plan, you’ll soon reach a tipping point where your fans begin to market for you in numbers great enough to really impact your book sales.

How To Get Started

The best time to design and implement your marketing plan of action is before you even start writing your book. It takes time to build relationships, learn your readers wants and needs, and develop a base of rabid fans that clamour for more.

Grow your readership as you write your book, and when it’s time to launch your book, you’ll already have an invested and eager audience waiting.

Great advice, except my book is already written. Now what?

Even if you already have your book in hand, don’t panic! The process is still the same. It just may take a little longer to see the book sales come rolling in.

So, let’s skip past the year or two (or five) of blood, sweat, and tears that were required for you to write, edit, and polish your masterful novel, and assume that it is indeed worthy of personal recommendation.

The next step is to get your share-worthy work noticed and shared by the right people. Here are a few key things to remember:

  • Focus more on discoverability rather than selling. Your work is important, so help those who can benefit from it, find it.
  • Accept responsibility for the marketing and promotion of your book. Even if you choose to outsource some of the work, your book’s success depends on you taking action.

How To Target an Audience (And Avoid Book Launch Flop)

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target audience

Just launched your book (or hope to soon)?

Wondering why there is more fizzle than fan-fare?

Your target audience–or lack thereof–may be to blame.

Why Target An Audience?

One of the biggest mistakes writers make as fledgling authorpreneurs is believing that the larger the potential market, the greater the chances that their book (or freelance services) will get noticed.

In fact, the opposite is often true. The larger the market, the more competition you are likely to face and the bigger the drain on your already limited resources.

Trying to appeal to the masses instead of understanding the needs, wants and desires of a select few–the ‘right’ few–is the recipe for a book launch flop.

Finding and narrowing your niche will help you to reach–and appeal to–more of the people that will ultimately buy your book.

The key is to identify and research what your true target audience craves, recognize the unique and meaningful aspects of what you have to offer, and align the two to benefit your ideal reader in an exceptional way.

Here are some additional points to consider:

  • Don’t assume you already know your audience, or that they are just like you. It’s possible, but not always the case that your audience will think like you. So do the work to confirm what your readers actually want; not what you think they need.
  • Self-published authors aren’t the only ones who need to have a firm grasp on their target audience. Agents and traditional publishers also want you to know who your audience is, your allure to that particular group, and how you plan on connecting with them.
  • Even though it’s important to niche-down, it is equally important to ensure that you haven’t narrowed your market to the point it has become unprofitable. A bit of research will help you define your sweet spot.
  • Another mistake that many authors make, especially fiction authors, is failing to identify their target audience before writing the book. I know it messes with the creative process for some, but it certainly can’t hurt to have a picture in your mind of who you are writing for as you craft your novel. In fact, it can make things easier by helping to clarify the purpose of your book, keep you on track and even motivate you to finish. Both fiction and non-fiction writers need to write with their target audience in mind. [Read more…]

Powerful Pictures Perform: How to Create Images That Grab Attention

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image creation

Images and graphics are an incredibly important tool for capturing your audience’s interest.

Like multi-pixel eye-candy for your readers.

In fact, images rank right up there with your post’s headline for creating impact, grabbing attention and enticing your reader into giving your article a chance when the competition is fierce.

Add to that the growth of social media platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest–and the increased ease with which we can take, alter, upload and share images–and it’s impossible to avoid this new age of visual fascination.

For many writers, this may be alien territory, but since the importance of images in today’s world can not be denied–or ignored–finding simple but effective ways to source, edit and incorporate images into your platform building is essential.

Strengthen Your Content with Images

Often, seconds are all you have to make your content stand out, grab your reader’s attention and effectively convey your message.

A great photo can do most of the work for you, so it’s important to spend a little extra time to craft a visually stimulating experience that not only attracts, but engages your audience.

Adding graphical elements to your article can help highlight key points, illustrate a concept or even trigger an emotional reaction from your reader.

Remember, even the most avid book lover will tend to scan and skim online, so photos can also help to break up large, intimidating walls of text and add visual interest and aesthetic appeal to your online content.

Concerned as to how you can pull off the ‘visual storytelling’ that plays a major part in your author branding and your presence online and off? [Read more…]

101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Platform of Your Dreams

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101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Plaform of Your Dreams _ YourWriterPlatform.com

What does it really take to build a writer or author platform?

Money?

Connections?

An intimate knowledge of vampires, wizardry or erotic romance?

Actually, the most important aspect  to building an author platform is understanding that it’s about engagement; about connecting and interacting with people who are aligned with your message and affected by your story.

Your platform is a web of intertwined beliefs, values, emotions, thoughts, stories, images and ideas that stem from your own core philosophy and are ultimately shared by your fans.

The tricky part is finding ways to effectively share your message with an audience that is yet unknown to you, and you to them.

Establishing and maintaining a link to your potential ‘tribe’ is both the challenge and the reward of building your writer platform.

What can you do today to craft a powerful writer platform?

By understanding that your ultimate goals when creating a writer platform are to find, engage and cherish your audience, it makes the application of the tools much more effective.

But remember: insight is useless if you don’t take action. So, go through the list of tools and strategies below and choose those things that you can easily do today.

By starting with what you can easily accomplish you will a) be more likely to complete the tasks, and b) gain the confidence to start implementing some of the more challenging items on the list. [Read more…]

How to Market a Book and Strengthen Your Author Platform with Goodreads

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How to Market a Book and Strengthen your Author Platform with Goodreads YourWriterPlatform.comImagine a magical place that gathers together 17 million of the most passionate readers who want to talk about, review and buy your book.

A place that not only allows, but encourages, both new and established authors to promote their books.

A place that provides FREE opportunities to

  • get your book in front of thousands of buyers,
  • conduct informal research (polls),
  • participate in a highly viral environment,
  • join or create groups with like-minded people on every literary topic imaginable,
  • create an author presence, connecting your book, your blog and your social media platforms.

Now imagine if Amazon purchased this magical realm of high quality, book-buying, book-loving influencers in the spring of 2013, likely leading to big opportunities to align your Amazon marketing to this Utopia.

If such a paradise existed, would you want to be a part of it?
[Read more…]

Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

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