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Nova Scotia South Shore Beaches
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July and August are not the best months for book sales – at least not compared to November and December. Quite a few authors are feeling the summer slump. Author Marla Madison wrote a great blog post about it and gave seven useful tips, how you can overcome the Dog Days of summer.
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Starting with “Take a break without guilt.” to “Try something new to market your writing.” and five more ideas, how you can improve your writing and develop plans for fall. Read the whole article and all the comments here.
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Today I received an email from a client who worried about dwindling book sales and lower rankings on Amazon. My suggestion: “Don’t stress yourself with rankings and sales – what is needed first, is a wide and strong basis in terms of establishing quality connections with readers and – very important – potential reviewers. It is much easier to receive reviews from someone you “know”, such as “real” people – or through solid Social Media connections.
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Social Networks
Authors need more followers, especially READERS (not fellow writers) on all Social Media sites. I am talking about at least 2,000 on each of these sites! Those who do not follow, even when you re-tweet them, un-follow after one month. Un-following 25 people per days is free. See Just Unfollow.
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On Goodreads for example, it’s even more easy: you can load Facebook, Twitter and Google+ followers over to Goodreads with one click. No matter which campaign you create – Book Giveaways on Goodreads or free KDP days on Amazon – it is crucial to have lots of followers first, who know you and will help you to let your message go viral.
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I just read recently an article by a publicist “Are you ready for publicity?” who does not accept any customer who has not at least 5,000 followers on all Social Media sites.
Do you use Hootsuite.com? Or any other site to automate part of scheduling tweets, thank you notes, welcome new followers etc.? This frees up time to interact personally with more of your followers.
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Reader Communities / Groups
There are quite a few communities / groups on Google+ and on Goodreads, where you can make connections and later! offer reviews of THEIR books – you might get the favor later reciprocated.
Let’s assume you are the author of children books, you could join these GOOGLE+ Communities:
- Children’s book lovers – Google+ http://bit.ly/17NMxho
- Books for EDUCATIONAL learning – Google+ http://bit.ly/13pUC7w
- Readers Meet Authors And Bloggers – Google+ http://bit.ly/13S37g1
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How to find Goodreads Groups:
Click on the link Groups, on top of the site.
Type into the search function: children or young readers for example, and there are hundreds of pages!!! with groups to join, such as these:
- http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/188-children-s-books
- http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/109753-matching-kids-to-books
- http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/71883-great-middle-grade-reads
Write and then copy/paste a friendly introduction and even include a link to your website or blog. You don’t need to spend so much time on these groups, just a nice introduction and from time to time peaking in, or exchange some thoughts and see what people are talking about.
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To invite more friends on Goodreads:
click on Explore (top right), you will see “People”, click on it, then you will see:
“Meet People”
top users
top readers
top reviewers
most popular reviewers
best reviews
online now
most followed
Invite from these sections people to follow or friend.
You can send out 25 invitations a day according to Goodreads, which means per month 750 invitations! And each one is just a click! If only half of them follow, this means more than 300 new reader friends per month. However, usually 95% become followers/friends on Goodreads, when you invite them.
Once you have more than 1000 followers/friends you can relax and just sit back, as people come to YOU! I get about 20-30 friend-offers from Goodreads every week, sometimes lots more and don’t have to look for new followers anymore. You can just choose and pick : )
Being busy during the slow summer months, working on your author platform gives you an advantage for your higher book sales in fall and winter. That’s happening for sure, when days are getting shorter and people are more at home, reading. and the holidays are rolling in.
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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only $ 159 for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/ Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.
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