Create If Writing

I've been talking about Facebook groups since episode 16 of the podcast, but here on episode 125 I'm sharing how to create a Facebook group with the latest tools!

With all the recent hoopla with the updated Facebook algorithm, there has never been a better time to learn how to create a Facebook group! I love email lists because it can create a really direct line from you to your fans. But when you create a Facebook group, you are fostering the ability for your fans to talk with each other.

You can check out my previous resources on Facebook groups:

• How to Leverage a Facebook Group for Your Biz with Katie Krimitsos
• How to NOT Be Smarmy in Facebook Groups
• Why You Still Need a Facebook Page in 2018

 

WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE A FACEBOOK GROUP

First of all, a Facebook group is NOT for every person, brand, blog, or business. Not sure if a Facebook group is right for you? Consider whether you have the time to manage a community and if you want to be more engaged with your audience. If you don't have the time, definitely don't create a Facebook group! This is not the kind of thing that you can set and forget.

But if you don't have the time and think you should start a group, here are some reasons you rearrange your time and priorities!

Facebook Groups Tend to Have More Engagement Than Pages

This doesn't HAVE to be true, as one of my group members shared her page, Amish Country in Ohio 101, which has over 8,000 likes. Lue told me she runs it LIKE a group, encouraging and taking part in conversations. It also isn't a means to an end for her--the page IS the thing.

For most people, sparking conversation on a page can be difficult. Groups allow a more safe space (especially if it's a closed group) and conversations happen more naturally there.

Facebook Groups Tend to Be More Visible in the Algorithm

Though you won't see EVERY post from a group you're in, being active in a group means that you will see that group's posts WAY more in your feed.

For now. Facebook says that it's interested in Facebook groups now, so I suspect a lot of changes will take place in the coming months or years. (Read more about Facebook changes HERE.) Get going while it's working! Build community with your fans that will last beyond algorithm shifts or whatever else Facebook tosses at you!

Facebook Groups Build Powerful Community

I love the way that my group has created a sense of community. I've heard people say that their email list is their community. In a way that's true. As in, those are your people. But the real community doesn't happen until you get all those people in the same room where they can meet each other.

TOOLS YOU CAN USE TO BUILD YOUR FACEBOOK GROUP

• link your page and your group
• post as your page or your profile (I've personally seen less interaction on posts from my page)
• you can ask questions as people join the group
• insights about your group
• can welcome new members- Facebook will suggest it on the right sidebar in your group when you have new members & it will tag them and you can edit the message
• one group has topics to organize posts - some people use hashtags to organize things, but this is better (not available in all groups yet)
• header size for groups has changed - update when I have it (link talking about the different sizes)

TIPS FOR STARTING A FACEBOOK GROUP

• don't "invite" people -- it's actually automatically adding them to the group without permission
• turn off setting where others can add people (get notifications about people wanting to join)
• keep showing up. treate people well. Be valuable and personable and present.
• ask the questions - pain points, let them know about your podcast
• pin post with who you are
• don't focus on fast growth or numbers, but people. the whole point

HOW TO BEHAVE IN A FACEBOOK GROUP

• always check the group rules -- usually in the About section, in a pinned post, or even in the header image
• don't use other people's groups as a springboard. Make connections, but don't piggyback on what someone else built.
• don't teach -- create long posts sharing biz lessons
• don't drop your affiliate links
• don't ask people to pm you so you can give affiliate links
• know that groups have an owner- some more central than others
• be in fewer groups and really invest
• don't overly cross post or say you're crossposting
• don't like for like
• be wary of share groups and what it's REALLY getting you
• find promo threads that work and do those
• DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT ask for market research in a group (ex: "Would you be interested in an Instagram course on creating branded images? Comment below!") and then private message all those people or get their emails and tell them.
• overall: connect with people. let it happen naturally. don't be a vulture, circling the group waiting to get some value and money and people from it.

If you haven't created a Facebook group, consider if this might be a great way to connect your community with each other and to up your engagement. 

• Find the show notes and more resources at http://createifwriting.com/124 
• Join the fabulous Facebook community here: http://createifwriting.com/community 
• And get email updates every Friday: http://createifwriting.com/quickfix 

"Forget Facebook pages. I'm just going to create a Facebook group."

"I'm not using a Facebook business page. My personal profile gets way more interaction."

"My Facebook page drives most of my traffic. I'm scared my income will dry up along with my pageviews."

These are the kinds of things I've been hearing since Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement about the new Facebook update and what this would mean for seeing posts from a Facebook business page in the newsfeed.

People are panicking. Many people are peddling specific advice about what you should do. Rumors are rampant.

So how DO you handle the new Facebook update and make a Facebook business page work?  Let's dive in!

Read the Facebook newsroom announcement HERE and Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook post HERE. 

HOW FACEBOOK UPDATES MAY IMPACT YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

The big Facebook update in 2018 is all about engagement. According to Mark Zuckerberg, engagement is the holy grail and passive scrolling needs to stop. (I really hate people telling me what to do, first of all, so you can read more about my thoughts on this aspect HERE.) No one knows exactly what this means. We can take some clues from the announcements, but realize that we are all making inferences from a pretty vague statement.

What we KNOW:

• Facebook will prioritizing friends and family over posts from pages and brands.
• If you aren't creating engaging content on your page, you will most affected.
• If you are creating engagement content, you shouldn't see as much of an effect.
• Paid promotions (ads) will still take place.

 

 

WHY YOU NEED TO MAKE A FACEBOOK PAGE IN 2018

More than any other question I've heard in the last few weeks (and even years, since Facebook pages stopped having great organic reach in 2013) is: Do I even NEED a Facebook page if no one will see my posts?

• People still expect you to have a public presence on Facebook and will look for you there.

Whether you are an author or a blogger or a more traditional brand, the Facebook business page is similar to a blog in that it is the public face for you. (To be clear, a Facebook profile is what you create first on Facebook, where you can friend people. A business page is an optional add-on where people can like your page.)

Even if you just create a page as a sort of bookmark with basic info, photos, and a pinned post sharing that you primarily hang out on Instagram, you should have a page. How much it figures into your strategy is up to you! (To create a strategy for your social media, check out my free planner!) 

• Facebook prefers that you have a business page for business reasons.

In the Facebook Terms of Service, your personal profile is not to be used primarily for commercial reasons. Your Facebook page is precisely for commercial reasons. The key word is "primarily."

Facebook can decide what is too much selling and promotion. This means you should be careful! Facebook could, at any time, kick you off from violating this. Then you cannot have a page (you have to have a profile to have a page). You cannot create a new profile under their Terms of Service. You're done.

Use your profile for business with great caution. That said, the line between business and personal is much fainter than it ever was before. There are so many more bloggers who blog about their personal lives and entrepreneurs living a different lifestyle where business and personal are not so clearly separated. People in your personal life may want to read your blog and know what you are up to professionally.

You can also follow people's personal profile. This means that you can choose to see someone in your newsfeed that you aren't friends with when they post public things to their timeline. I know some large people (Mark Zuckerberg included) who have big followings on their personal profile, even if they don't have pages. I have a hard time thinking Facebook would allow this or have this feature without some business or promotion.

• Facebook business pages have great ecommerce tools that profiles don't have.

You can much more easily sell and promote yourself. The Facebook page is also where you can run ads. For ads, it doesn't even matter that your page has a small number of likes. You can target anyone on Facebook, not just people on your page.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE WORK IN 2018

Here are some of my tips for getting interaction and engagement on your Facebook page. Keep in mind that these are GENERAL principles for engagement on Facebook pages. To reiterate: these are not new ideas with this latest Facebook update since we don't know specifics.

• Stop like-for-like Facebook threads. 

If you don't know what these are, these are posts in Facebook groups where someone says, "Hey! Here's my Facebook page. If you like my page, I'll like yours. Leave it in the comments!" Or: "This is a Facebook page like thread. Leave your page link below and go like every other page in the thread!"

This sounds really attractive because numbers are so shiny. They are social proof. Likes are evidence that we are, after all, LIKED.

Except they aren't. This practice, while super easy, is a shortcut that hurts you in the end. Remember that we are about ENGAGEMENT. Those people liking your page in those threads probably don't actually LIKE you. They just Facebook-liked you. This means that you have dead weight on your page that won't engage with your content. When people don't engage with your content, Facebook shows it to less people in the feed.

ONLY use these kinds of threads if it's a like-pages-you-actually-like thread. Not a like-everyone thread.

• Stop sharing me, me, me posts.

I hear so many people complaining about the lack of reach on their Facebook page. No one sees their posts and no one engages when they do. But so many people simply use their page to promote their blog, books, or business. They are not CREATING engaging content, yet expect people to engage with it anyway.

While this is a Facebook BUSINESS page, we don't engage with faceless companies. We engage with PEOPLE. You need to think like your audience and think about what serves them (and also meets your goals). If you want engagement, you need to think about what causes people to engage.

Simple, right? But it's much harder in practice. This involves creating a content strategy (again- my free planner would help with that!) and posting more times. It means maybe pulling back on promoting our own blog posts and books. It requires more work.

• Don't use engagement bait.

Just before this announcement, Faceook gave a very specific update to say that they will squash engagement baiting posts. These are the kind of spammy posts from pages just trying to game the system, asking you to vote with comments or likes or the different reactions you can use.

The problem is that some of those same things were used by great pages and people creating real interaction! I love the "Share how you feel today in a gif" posts! They are super fun. Now you have a bot that Facebook has fed trigger words to keep those kinds of posts hidden in the feed. Which means even if you are trying to create engagement in a meaningful way, you could get caught in the bot.

 

HOW TO SPARK ENGAGEMENT ON FACEBOOK (OR ANYWHERE ELSE)

Work on your calls to action - Itchy copy where you frame links, ask for things in ways that won't trigger the engagement bait bot

Create a copy bank of great Facebook posts - Start keeping a folder of screenshots or a list of great Facebook posts you love so you can get ideas for what you can do. Study what you see that has great engagement. Craft your own kind of content that is similar.

Pay attention to what's working - Go into analytics and keep track of what is working and what has been working. What kind of posts inspire comments and shares? What posts have a lot of likes? You need to be much more intentional now than ever.

 

CREATE A FACEBOOK PAGE STRATEGY

The biggest thing you can do to make your Facebook business page work in 2018 is to be STRATEGIC. You need to be intentional if you want to see your page succeed in the face of Facebook updates.

What are your goals? You need to map out your overall goals, then how Facebook fits into that. Then you can plan a content strategy for what you'll post when. For more on planning a strategy, see my post on Planning in Reverse!

 

 

When is the last time you thought about the writing process? Or, more specifically, YOUR writing process?

The older I get, the more I know myself and understand how to tweak the writing process to fit what works for me. The writing process could really be called a system, the way we think of systems in business. Systems are simply the process, method, or course of action to get a desired result, especially consistently over time.

When we get to know ourselves better and how we work, we can tweak our writing process to work better for us. We write more, better, faster.

Check out Derek's video where he shares a small box with big ideas, plus some of the secrets of his writing process! (Then come on back for more on process.)

For more great, daily content, I would highly recommend subscribing to Derek's channel! He's really ramping it up this year and sharing a lot of behind-the-scenes looks at life as an entrepreneur.  LOOSE STEPS OF THE WRITING PROCESS

You could break down the writing process in any number of ways, but I'm going to put it into four very loose steps:

1. Collect ideas
2. Write judgment-free drafts
3. Edit ruthlessly
4. Rest and then perfect

For the first two, you need to be really kind and generous to yourself, but in the last two, you must be ruthless. Let's break that down!

COLLECT IDEAS

The enemy of the writer is the blank page. This very common saying speaks to the fact that writers often struggle with the start.

It makes me think of the law of inertia, which states that an object at rest will remain there. Objects in motion will continue in motion. That start can take a lot out of you.

BUT WHY?

Often the start is difficult because we don't have ideas. Or we aren't sure where to begin with the ideas we have. This is when we can fall prey to distraction or what Stephen Pressfield calls the Resistance in his book, The War of Art.

You can help your start along if you have ideas. The page may still be blank, but your BRAIN isn't. The problem is that we aren't always as observant as we should be and we don't think about collecting ideas like we should.

Derek shared a few ways that he collects ideas on the run in his video. Here are some things that you can try!

You could: 

• Keep a box for notecards with quotes
• Have a notebook handy at all times
• Download an app that's easy to use for notes like Evernote or the notes app

If you are constantly observing and stockpiling ideas, you can avoid so much trouble at the start! Once you have an idea, it's time to move onto stage two.

WRITE JUDGMENT-FREE DRAFTS

I feel strongly that in the drafting process, you need to get out of your own way. You don't judge your ideas but let them flow. At least (and especially) in the first drafts.

• Create a vomit version
• Write drafts by hand (which slows you down and may help clarify)
• Write down the page (kind of like making a list of ideas, scenes, descriptions, bits of dialogue)
• Don't have judgment in your drafts

When you edit during your drafts and restrict the flow of your free-flowing thoughts, we may miss out on something that is in the back of consciousness. Connect with the page. No judgment.

If you're still struggling with this, two thoughts. The first? Do what works for you. But...the second: don't write this off too quickly. If you haven't tried letting it all out and are used to editing as you go, just TRY this.

Consider Upworthy. You know, the site with all the viral posts that were all over your Facebook feed a year or two ago. They write 25 potential headlines per post. Check out this Slideshare from Upworthy, particularly slides 33 & 34.

Without letting out your bad drafts, you're missing something.

Oh, and according to editor and author of the Story Grid, Shawn Coyne, you shouldn't edit this at all until you COMPLETELY FINISH.

(I don't always agree with that, but I'll save why for another day.) 

Now you've got some content on the page. It may or may not be good, but it's THERE. Time for stage three.

EDIT RUTHLESSLY

Now that you have words on a page, you're going to do the hard work. You will be critical and judgmental. You are going to go back to those words and cut things and rearrange things and find what doesn't work and fix it. You need to be ruthless.

I really loved how Derek put this in his video. He talked about how we all assume people care about us and our story. BUT THEY DON'T. It's our job to make them care, especially right at the beginning of our content. 

Personally, I do something weird. I'm SUPER MEAN to myself in edits. I write mean and awful notes to myself. If someone else wrote these things to me, I wouldn't want to write again, but I can do this to ME and it oddly inspires and empowers me.

Being ruthless doesn't have to look like actually being mean to yourself. But it does mean being hard on your words.

You will: 

• Take out unnecessary things
• Check that the flow works
• Have a goal and ask if your writing accomplishes this
• Listen to other people's common criticisms
• Be ruthless - IF you are writing for other people

As for that last one, your WHY matters as you edit. If you are writing a diary or a passion project, you can be self-indulgent. You may not edit at ALL. If you are writing at all for an audience, you MUST be willing to die a little.

You need to find the balance of writing what you love, but still serving your people well.

You're almost done. Next up: the final touches.

REST AND THEN PERFECT

This final step of editing is where you go back and really make everything perfect. I should point out that these four steps are not a literal four-step process. I go through many rounds of editing in the editing process. I may also go through several rounds of polishing. Here's what polishing might include:

• Let it rest before you polish
• Find GOOD readers
• Listen to advice, but filter it

Polishing is when you will find the genius and the magic. You still might hit that point when you hate it (or is that just me?), but you'll find that this is when you move into a work you're pleased with and ready to publish.

I want to stress that I don't spend a lot of time for EVERY kind of content. I spend the most time going through this process in my longer-form content like novels. Some blog posts get more editing and attention than others. I also tend to write more cleanly in the first draft of a blog post, so that my first drafts are pretty publishable.

With a blog post, I collect the ideas, potentially outline (usually on paper), and then write a pretty clean first draft that I will edit through once or twice.

Do you know YOUR process?

 

"You're doing it backwards."

Does that sound like a good thing...or a bad thing? Usually when someone says that to you, what they mean is that you're doing it wrong. You are going about a task in the wrong order.

But when it comes to making goals and accomplishing them, the best way is to work backwards on purpose. You need to look at your big goal as Point B. You are currently at Point A. Then work backwards to think about the steps in between to bridge the gap. If you look at your Yearly Content Guide and the daily planner printable sheets, this will make much more sense! Let's walk through the process.

1 / How do YOU Work?

Before you can really start planning effectively, you need to take some time to figure out how YOU work. You don't want to waste time on methods that don't work for you. I'll give an example to make this more clear.

When I was in college, I wrote a ton of papers! I can't begin to think about the hundreds of pages I wrote and the all-nighters that I pulled. But it took me 'til my senior year to realize that I wrote papers BEST when I finished them a day or so in advance.

Giving myself that cushion of time meant that I wrote in a leisurely, focused way. I had no frantic, stressful moments. I didn't pull all nighters, fueling up on Mountain Dew and Twizzlers. I wrote faster and I wrote BETTER when I made my own personal deadline ahead of the imposed deadline.

That doesn't mean I cannot work well under pressure. In December I started writing under a pen name, Emma St. Clair, and wrote two short stories in the sweet romance genre. (You can check those out here if you like light and fluffy non-steamy romance.) I cranked out two stories and published them within the space of two weeks.

And the effort was a success! I garnered 26 five-star reviews for Four Days of Christmas and have a new email list of over 100 people and am still making sales and money now in January.

What I've learned about myself is that I work better with self-imposed goals and deadlines, not ones that someone else forces me into.

Questions to Ask:

• What time of day do you work best?
• What work space works well?
• What stresses you out?
• What circumstances make the work easy and fun?
• How do you like to write-- pen & paper, computer, typewriter?

Before you can plan well, you need to know yourself well. This isn't as easy as you'd think and it may change according to the season or circumstances. Ask yourself questions about the ways you work and make note whenever something stresses you out OR has great results.

2 / Working Backwards

My whole Yearly Content Planner shows you how to work backwards. It starts with looking at your goals, your stats and analytics from the past year (I keep this simple, so don't freak out if you don't like numbers), and then moves into weekly and daily planner printable sheets to give you laser focus.

As an example of what this looks like, say I want to write 8-10 books this year. (Which I do.) This means that I need to write a book every month or so (if I'm working in a 10-month year, which is my plan).

I can then get super specific and think about how much time I need to give my cover designer, how much time I need to format, how much time I need to give my editor, and how much time to write the book itself. When I take that backwards, I can plan out just when I need to do what based on the tasks involved and how long each one takes.

If you want to increase your pageviews from 5k a month to 50k a month, you'll have to look at what current traffic sources you have and how many posts you write per week. Then you have to create a strategy for creating content and for promotion that would scale up your pageviews that much. When you're trying to grow, typically you can do two different things (or a combination).

How to Scale Up

1. Deepen the content you already have - make what you have do more for you.
2. Widen how much content you create - do a lot more of what you're already doing

Chances are you'll do a little of both, but it's worth thinking about this to pick a focus. Would it help you to get more pageviews if you wrote five times a week? Or repurposed content and promoted the heck out of fewer posts and the ones you already have?

With books, I could spend more on AMS ads or Facebook ads or increase the price of my current books. Or I could write more books quickly and promote them to up my income through having lots of books for sale.

If you aren't sure, try things to see! But once you see what's working, double down on that! Look at the end goal and then ask yourself if all of your actions and investments of time and money move you toward your goal...or not. Cut what doesn't. Do more of what does.

3 / Asking for Feedback

It's always a good idea to ask people you respect and trust for feedback. This might be other people in your industry who are knowledgeable or it might be people who like that content. As in, you could ask other indie authors your questions about a book and you could also ask indie readers who are not authors. Both are helpful.

But when people give you feedback, you need to be willing to TAKE IT. Sometimes we don't want to hear the truth or we are unwilling to give something a shot. We hold on tightly to what we love, even if it doesn't work.

Don't. If fifty people tell you that your book cover sucks, you should trust them. Get a new cover.

Feedback may not work in every step of your planning, but is an important part of finding what works. You need to get out of your own head and let other people share their experience and understanding.

Should you re-launch your book? What about launching within a specific time frame? How do you deal with FOMO when it comes to buying courses? I'm answering three community questions!

Are you in the community?? http://createifwriting.com/community

Or join the paid community- FREE in December 2017! (Join the $4 level to get access to the private community.) http://createifwriting.com/patreon 

This week's blog post and podcast shares how to throw a book launch party. I'm sharing experiences from my own recent party and giving you tips and questions to help you decide if throwing a book launch party is right for YOU!

When my latest book, Creative Collaborations, was nearing completion, I decided to throw a local book launch party. For myself. I've NEVER done anything like this before and typically am not the party-throwing (or going) type. Hellooooooo, introvert!

Still, this party seemed perfect for the launch of this book and I'm so glad that I did this! Keep reading or listen using the player below (or on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app) to find out what I learned and if a book launch party is right for you!

Listen to Episode 120: How to Throw a Book Launch Party

It would be amazing if you'd subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Even if you listen through an app, this is what determines my discoverability in the search rankings on Apple Podcasts and in iTunes.

Disclosure: This posts contains affiliate links! That means if you purchase something after clicking through a link, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you!

How to Throw a Book Launch Party

Why I Threw Myself a Book Launch Party

There are a lot of reasons you could consider having a book launch party. For me? It started when I saw a really amazing space on Airbnb while researching for a retreat that I am considering in 2018.

When I saw it, I thought: I WANT TO DO SOMETHING THERE.

My book release date was approaching and happened to fall on the same week as my 40th birthday. Why not rent the space and have a book launch/birthday party? It simply sounded fun!

There were other more intentional reasons as well. The book is all about networking and working with others. It seemed fitting to have a party where I could invite friends, family, and the local social media and blogging community.

In a recent interview with Joanna Penn on the Creative Penn Podcast, Ryan Holiday (author of Perennial Seller) said that the marketing plan should fit the message or content. When I heard that, I KNEW that this was the right plan for this particular book.

WHAT TO CONSIDER IF YOU ARE THROWING YOURSELF A BOOK LAUNCH PARTY

1/ Consider your WHY

There are a lot of reasons you may want to throw a book launch party. Before you get to ANY planning, you'll want to think about the goals. I love talking about WHY. My whole course, the Foundation Series (now a part of my bigger course, Blog Growth Boost), is all about applying your WHY to everything. It brings clarity and makes all the other details more clear.

Here are some reasons you might want to throw a book launch party:

• Sell books
• Gain authority & influence
• Discoverability
• Have fun
• Celebrate with your people

To shed some light on these, don't have high expectations on many of these! A book launch party isn't necessarily going to sell tons of books (unless you have a big group that's interested and a lot of copies to sell). It can help people to see you as an authority, especially if you can do some PR outreach and get the event covered in local papers or magazines.

If you list the event publicly, like on Meetup or another site, this might increase discoverability. It also opens the door to people you don't know showing up, which might pose challenges like upping the cost if you have a lot of people simply show up.

You can definitely have fun (even if you're an extreme introvert like me!) and it's something special to celebrate with your audience.

2/ Consider the ROI

As I touched on before, you may not make tons of money throwing a book launch party. You're more likely to lose it. Depending on the sales price for your book (mine was $.99), you may not make tons of money. You COULD find that it helps you reach bestseller in some categories, which mine did.

Selling print copies could make more money, but if you're buying author copies from something like CreateSpace or Kindle Print on Demand, you won't see that affect your rankings.

Before you toss a lot of money at something, consider what you get back.

3/ Consider your finances

Throwing a book launch party may not be a smart financial choice. My party ran about $1000 for 40-50 people. You could absolutely do it cheaper than that, but I made a few choices (like location) that made the price jump. You can totally use a room in a restaurant or a free space for your party and make other cuts to do this on a budget.

But I was also able to secure sponsors (more on that in a sec) to completely cover the costs of the book launch party. Before you toss a bunch of money at a party, consider whether you'd make more money running Facebook ads or investing in another kind of marketing.

TIPS FOR THROWING AN AMAZING BOOK LAUNCH PARTY

Still want to throw a book launch party? I feel you. Clearly. I won't hold you back! Here are some tips to get the best results for the least amount of work and money.

• Set Your Goals

Yep, circling back to this. It will REALLY help with the next few decisions if you know your goals and are clear!

• Set the Location, Date, and Budget.

You'll want these set up before you hit the next one, which is about sponsors. Keeping the goals of the event in mind, pick a location that fits what you want to accomplish. That will likely help set the date, because of availability, or if you want a specific date, that will cut out some locations. I would highly recommend looking at Airbnb and VRBO for some cheaper, out of the box options! Knowing the spot will help you plan for your budget.

• Reach Out to Sponsors. 

This was huge in making my party possible! Start with the brands you use and love. I reached out to Convertkit and Mediavine, which are two companies I love and use. It helps if you already have a relationship and contact there and can actually get a person's email rather than the straight up info @ company name email. I also connected with the local rum distillery, Grateful Dane, and they were able to come out to the event. Kroger, a national brand, sponsored the food for the party. I had worked with them before as well and attended local blogging events, so had an actual contact.

Put together a sponsorship package, being very clear about what you can offer. This doesn't have to be in person! Grateful Dane came out to the party, but the other sponsors were digital. I linked to them in posts, talked about them on the podcast and social media, made cards with their logos for the party itself, and sent emails to my list talking about the sponsors. Give them the dates and your social numbers and be as specific as possible about the benefit to THEM.

If you want to learn more about sponsorships, you can read a lot more about this and pitching and follow up in Creative Collaborations! 

• Hire Help.

You may want to pay a coordinator or ask a friend to help. I did EVERYTHING from the buying of supplies and food to the cleaning up and sweeping the floor after the party. It was hard. I knew it would be. Realize that if you don't hire someone, this will all be YOU.

• Make It Valuable to Your Online Community. 

I streamed the event live to my Facebook page and group. Well, not the WHOLE event, but the part where I had Madalyn Sklar from Twitter Smarter give my intro and then when I read from the book. That way the people who couldn't be there live could still take part. 

IS A BOOK LAUNCH PARTY THE BEST WAY TO LAUNCH A BOOK?

In short, a book launch party is probably not the best way to launch in terms of ROI. It can be super fun and a great way to meet your fans and present your book, but if you want straight up ROI and sales, you'll want to follow more tried and true methods for making sales. (I'll have a few links below.)

I love innovation, so if you want to be creative and try something that may not work, just count the cost first! Can you afford it to fail? What can you gain and how can you leverage the event even if it doesn't result in tons of book sales?

I would not change a THING about my party (other than having the printed books arrive on time) and felt like it was the perfect thing to launch this particular book. Will I have another for my next book? Doubtful. But I would totally go back in time and do this one again.

I hope this has help you learn how to throw a book launch party AND if you actually should. Tips or ideas?? Leave them in the comments!!

Helpful Links for Making Book Sales:

• Increase Your Sales Rank on Amazon - Interview with Kevin Tumlinson
• Sell More Books with Copywriting- Interview with Bryan Cohen
• 20Books to 50K Facebook Group
• How I Sold 80,000 Books: Book Marketing for Authors

In this interview with Kevin Tumlinson, we are talking about what will help you increase your sales rank on Amazon. In other words, sell more ebooks on Kindle. If you are interested in self publishing your books, this is a MUST listen (or read) to see how you can boost your Amazon sales!

See the show notes on Create if Writing for images and more!

Why isn't my book selling?

I've spent the time to write it. I got a great cover. I told my launch team. And...barely a blip on the radar. This is all too common! You're not alone if you have experience this!

Today author and podcaster Kevin Tumlinson joined me to give feedback on three of my community members' books on Amazon. We talk about what they're doing right and what they could improve to better their sales rank on Amazon.

Connect with Kevin Tumlinson on his site, listen to the Wordslinger Podcast, or check out Draft2Digital! (<- this is my affiliate link, which gives me a commission if you move past the free tools into paying for distribution)

Note: This post contains affiliate links, which will give me a commission for referring you if you make any purchases after clicking. 

INCREASE YOUR SALES RANK AND SELL MORE BOOKS ON AMAZON

Keep reading because at the end of the post I'll share the common threads that we saw in all three of the books and some takeaways for you as you are writing and publishing your ebook.

BOOK 1: ALL ABOUT DOGS by R.V. Bowman

 

The author noted that the cover is different from others in the category. This shows that Bowman has done her research! You should know what other covers in your genre look like. Use a tool like Yasiv to see visuals on this. You may not always WANT the cover to look the same, but you also set the reader expectations with the cover, so this choice matters.

We both liked how the cover stood out, but (and this is a hilarious thing to say!) the dog kind of looks SAD. Which, just from the cover, made this look like one of those memoirs where the dog died. This is a little thing and not necessarily something to fix, but just something we both noticed.

The book says it's an "interactive" book, but without looking inside, it was hard to know what that meant. For me, I wouldn't buy because I'm not sure. The Look Inside! feature on Amazon is important here, but the author said the formatting looked weird on Kindle.  Kevin suggested creating an introduction that would be fitting for the Look Inside! features so people could look inside and read a bit more to give them more of an idea. I wondered if a quiz book might not be the best fit for a Kindle format, especially for people like me who have the pretty simple Kindle with no bells and whistles. Without getting a sample, it's hard to know!

Chances are that the author may not want to do a huge overhaul, but considering the problems an interactive book may cause on different devices, the author COULD consider creating a more basic book for Kindle and a free companion course that would work on a website AND get email addresses.

Kevin suggested that this book might not be the best choice for KDP Select, because interactive works well on iBooks, so going wide might be a better choice. Part of KDP Select is the inclusion in Kindle Unlimited, which pays by page read and this might

Done right: 

• Readable title
• Striking image
• Description starts with testimonials

Tips to increase sales rank:

• Change the main font to be sans serifs (this one called sports to mind)
• Have something people can see with Look Inside! and maybe even put a note in the description about what Kindle this would work best with if it's interactive
• Consider going wide (iBooks, Nook, etc) rather than just KDP, since this book might look better on other devices
• Write more for the description with formatting and also focus on the benefits

 

BOOK 2: HOMESTEAD COOKING WITH CAROL by Carol J. Alexander

 

Kevin loved the cover right off the bat and felt like it struck just the right note paired with the subject matter and the title. (Well done!) I suggested taking out the "Cooking with Carol" part because I personally wasn't familiar with just-first-name-Carol the way I am with Martha. Or Ree. Or the Food Network Stars.

I didn't research how powerful Carol's platform is, but for me, I'd take that part off the title and then put the author name in bigger letters. I would also expect more Carol in terms of stories and more from Carol specifically with her name in the title. It seems more how-to inside, where it could be anyone writing, not just Carol.

Kevin said that the flip side is that keeping the first name on there would give a sort of social proof, where people thing Carol must have a platform deserving of having a single first name. He also said that it also helps humanize and make connections.

If you're trying to build a brand around a name, this can be a great strategy. Kevin agreed that this makes it feel more personal and home-town, so Carol would want to amp up the CAROL in the description and in the book as well. That way we see the reason for her first name.

Done Right:

• Beautiful cover that does just what it should
• Title is great
• Description is a great length
• "Busy, homemade homesteader" in the beginning of the description is perfect

Tips to increase sales rank: 

• Make the author's name larger so it's looks more like a book, not catalogue cover
• Work on formatting in description- big bold tagline and bullet points
• Add bio in the description

 

BOOK 3: FORTY DAYS OF FAITH AND FITNESS by Marsha Apsley

 

The book sales (based on the info we have from the author) are great, so well done!

Kevin loved the title, thinking it was a sort of Christian alternative to yoga-- a book about physical fitness and health. The tagline about the devotional journal stopped him because it was different from the expectation the title set. Then he's not sure what to expect and what this means. His recommendation: take out the tagline. Maybe beef up the description to fully explain the book and what gets taken away from the tagline.

My suggested fix would be to change the title to something like 40 Days of Faith: A Companion Devotional for Your Fitness Journey. The current title leads you to think that the book may include devotionals and fitness suggestions, rather than being a sort of journal that goes along with whatever fitness you are currently doing outside of the book.

The image on the cover is fantastic, but the font might need a little play. As it comes across, it looks a little more self-made instead of professional. Not always a bad thing and readers in the christian sphere are a bit more forgiving.

Because this is a journal, but is on Kindle (which doesn't work for journaling), a great idea might be to not just mention the print version, but to have a free workbook or journal pages that people can get in exchange for their email. This is how I have my non-fiction books optimized and it's been really helpful for list growth!

Pro tip: Use a bitly or pretty link so that if you ever change the destination for where the signup will be, so if you change it, you don't have to reformat and upload a new book to Amazon.

Done right: 

• alliteration in the title
• great cover
• good category
• great job with the question at the beginning of the description

Tips to increase sales rank: 

• change tagline to be more clear or be more clear in the description
• consider changing the font for the title
• make author name larger
• work on the formatting description

 

BOOK 4: CREATING SUCCESS AT HOME by Sharon Hines

 

Kevin suggested working on the title and the subtitle right off the bat. Because I know the author and follow her blog, the title made sense to me, but without that context, I can see how the title might need clarity. A good suggestion might be Creating a Sense of Home or A Sense of Home. You want the title to capture the feel of the book and the current title doesn't quite give a clear picture.

As far as the subtitle, it should be trimmed. Not only does this help with clarity, but it also pushes all the info down on the sales page so you don't see a description. He suggested using most of the subtitle right in the description because they are what the book helps you learn.

The cover felt a little brochure-like with the white blocks of space, the color treatment, and even the image. Kevin suggested softening the cover a lot, looking at the Homestead Cooking or even 40 Days of Faith and Fitness covers for inspiration. Both are more warm and welcoming. Consider a full-cover image without the bars of white. Shortening the subtitle takes away the need for so much space.

Done right: 

• The opener of the description is GREAT
• The description and bio are both hitting all the right notes

Tips to increase sales rank: 

• Change the title of the book
• Shorten the subtitle & use the current one in the description as bullet points somewhere
• Change the cover to have a warmer, more inviting feel in line with the book
• Work on the formatting parts of the description
• Consider changing the categories

 

BIG TAKEAWAYS TO HELP YOU INCREASE SALES RANK

The tips and suggestions for these covers fell mostly into two areas: covers and descriptions.

PROFESSIONAL COVER

• Fonts go a long way. Consider serifs and sans serif and how they affect readability and play with each other. Make sure the words are clear. Don't use too many fonts. Be sure they work well together.
• Use a quality image. If you are purchasing a cover, my favorite is Go On Write. But if you are set on designing your own, think about the rule of thirds to add dynamic energy.
• Connect with emotion. Marketing is all about emotion and experience. Connect with those readers through your image, tagline, title, or description.
• Large author name. Humans react to humans and we need to see that human name to connect and you don't need "by" with the author name.

OPTIMIZING YOUR DESCRIPTION

• Make the top six lines to their fullest. You want them to click the Read More to see the State the adventure that the reader is going to go on and use a heading or bold text to catch the eye.
• Formatting matters. Use a tool like the free description generator on Kindlepreneur to use bold and headings and more. The break tag can cause issues, so make sure you don't have big spaces between paragraphs. Check after you upload!
• Give an experience. You want the reader to understand the experience and what they will leave the book feeling or being able to do. It's more than just what the book is about. Consider the readers and what the readers will get out of the book.
• Use uneven numbers of bullet points. Bullet points help stop the eye to give quick information. Psychology says that we like things in uneven numbers like 3-5.
• Consider speed bumps. Particularly with the formatting, think about ways to stop the eye and get people to quit scrolling. White space, bold, and headings all help with this.
• Include a bio. Your author bio WILL appear on the page, but way down. Consider including a brief bio in the description as well.
• Have a CTA. Give a call to action at the end of the description (before an author bio) that tells the reader what to do. This has an impact!

Links mentioned (or otherwise related):

Kevin's earlier interview on the Create If Writing podcast :Tips for Indie Writers

Best tools for writers publishing on Kindle

Pick fu - for split testing things

Kindlepreneur free description tool

Influence - book talking about how marketers sell to us

KD Spy Tool - a paid tool to find better categories for sales

WHY USE DRAFT2DIGITAL?

Free ebook conversion. Upload a word doc and transfer to an epub or mobi, for uploading on ebook platforms and Amazon.

Free ebook templates. I used these with my latest book, Creative Collaborations! (Read more about the tools I used here.) I love love love this tool. Seriously.

Free universal book links. Create one link you can send people to that will allow them to see all the different platforms where they can reach your book. So handy!

Distribution to all the major platforms. As of last week, you can now even distribute to Amazon! This means that you can upload your book in D2D and then push it out to iBooks and Kobo and Amazon and more places. This WILL give them a cut of your profits, but saves you a fat chunk of time and streamlines the process. You can still use all the free tools WITHOUT using Draft2Digital for distribution!

Create a free account at D2D get started NOW with their great tools!

 

Were there any surprises in this episode? I'd love to hear your takeaways in the comments!!

I self published my first book in 2012 and so much has changed! This post will share the best tools for Kindle Self Publishing, from the formatting to the cover. Plus some great tools for choosing categories and keywords on Amazon!

When I dove into Kindle publishing with my first book (Make Him Room, an advent devotional), the big thing I remember was staying up 'til 4am crying, cussing, and generally wanting to kill someone over...the TABLE OF CONTENTS.

I spent hours in formatting hell. No matter what I gleaned from Amazon's instructions or tried to do in Word, I could not get my Table of Contents to be clickable. (You know, where you can click on a chapter and immediately be taken to that part of the book.) I also had weird characters in between words that I couldn't see in Word, but appeared in the Kindle reader.

Now that I have five books for sale, I've got more of a streamlined writing and self publishing process for Kindle. (See them all here!) With Creative Collaborations, I feel like I finally got into a self-publishing groove and even put up another book on Amazon for sale that same week. (I had previously just sold it as a PDF on my site.) I want to share the tools that I used to streamline the process and make more sales with my self published books.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means at no extra cost to you, purchasing products will give me a commission for referring you!

The Best Tools for Kindle Self Publishing

FORMATTING

I love love LOVE to use Pages on Mac for creating PDFs and books. You can create beautiful graphic PDFs and also text-based books and export as .mobi or .epub or PDFs. I hate formatting, but Pages has really helped with a lot of projects.

For this one, I was actually able to use Word WITHOUT headaches because of Draft2Digital's total free book formatter. Draft2Digital is a company that works for authors (started BY authors) and can help you distribute your books across different sales platforms like iBooks, Kobo, etc. When you distribute with them, they will take a small percentage of the sales you make.

But if you don't want to distribute with them, you can still use their tools for formatting for free. Their new formatter lets you upload a Word doc and apply one of their templates. You can then export as a .mobi (for Kindle), .epub (for about everywhere else), or PDF.

My only beef is that right now their PDF option puts hyperlinks as footnotes right on that page. I don't want that when I self publish on CreateSpace or sell PDFs via my own site. I called and had a long talk with someone there about this and hope that it's something they'll change! But for the other files, they make your file look professional AND handle things like the Table of Contents. This is the top tool I'd recommend for formatting!

Check out Draft2Digital for free with my referral link!

COVERS

If you really want to be competitive with Kindle self publishing, you HAVE to have a great cover that fits in your category. I have found a cover designer that does custom covers AND has premade covers at great prices.

James from Go On Write has handled my last three covers, including the print versions. I LOVE them. I paid for a branding package, which means that when I order a premade book, he'll match fonts and colors that go with my other books. I love how they look TOGETHER.

You can also get some good ideas for how books look in your category by using Yasiv. This is a tool that creates a kind of cloud of covers in a category so you can see them all at once. It helps with things like color, seeing trends, and just getting an idea of what covers look like in your category. It's free and really fun to use!

KEYWORD RESEARCH

One of the biggest changes this time around was the research I did on keywords and categories. These are important because they help you sell books on autopilot with Kindle publishing. It's similar to SEO research because Amazon is a huge search engine. If you can hone in on the words that people use to search for books, you can help your book's discoverability and sales.

For keyword research, I use a paid tool called KDP Rocket from Dave over at Kindlepreneur. Rocket will let you do a few things that help with keyword choices in your description, the seven keywords in Amazon as you set up your book, and if you run Amazon AMS ads. (Check out Dave's free course on ads in my big list of free courses!)

I used the idea search to enter different keywords that might work for Creative Collaborations. I checked out words like collaborations, social media, influencer marketing, and blogging. What I found worked better than blogging was blogger. For whatever reason, THAT'S what people are searching for on Amazon. Social media strategy 2017 was a better search term than just social media.

Had I not done the research, my keywords would have looked different and may NOT have been related to what people are actually searching for. This can also help you when you write your description or blurb. 

If you don't want a paid tool, you can also go into incognito mode on your browser and search in Amazon. Pick a term like blogging, type it in the search for Kindle store, then hit space and type in A and see what populates in the search box. Then B. And so forth. You'll get an idea of popular search terms related to that one. You can check out this big post on Kindlepreneur for more tips on keywords.

Or...save time and use KDP Rocket for more data! 

CATEGORY RESEARCH

Another fun tool that I found incredibly useful is KD Spy. This is a browser extension that lets you get a breakdown of all the books and info. You'll get data like what the rank of each book in the top 20 is, what the price of each is, how much average it may be making per month, and more.

It will give you an idea of the competition (how hard it is to get to the #1 spot in the category), how profitable the category is (the average authors make in the category per month), and the popularity (how many people are searching for books in that category).

You may have different goals for different times with your book, but when you are launching, it can be great for visibility to pick categories with lower competition.

I picked my category without using KD Spy and then tested it IN Spy to see how I would do. I realized quickly that I would NEVER break into the top 10 of the category I thought of originally.

This doesn't mean you should pick weird categories that don't fit, but for any book, there are probably ten or so categories that it might fit into, so it's worth checking with Spy so you can try to get to a top spot and get that bestseller tag. Had I chosen the first category I thought of, I never would have gotten the bestseller tag, which can be a great incentive for people to buy!

Check out KD Spy here!

BOOK DELIVERY 

I have an ongoing launch team and also had fifteen contributors of the book that I wanted to send free books. Book Funnel is the best tool for this! If you aren't sending tons of books, you can get an account for $20 a year. 

This tool makes the delivery of ebooks so much smoother! Rather than just sending a PDF, you can let people choose the book format: an .epub, .mobi, or a PDF. That way they can read on the device of their choice.

This also means YOU don't have to explain how to get that .mobi file actually ON your Kindle. Book Funnel does all the heavy lifting!

Check out Book Funnel!

These are the best tools for Kindle self publishing I have used and recommend to get great results and save yourself from headaches. To summarize, here's what I use for Kindle publishing: 

• Word or Pages to write
• Draft2Digital to format
• KDP Rocket for keyword research
• KD Spy for category research
• Go On Write for covers 
• Yasiv for cover research
• Book Funnel for free book delivery

I'd love to hear what tools you use for your Kindle publishing! I'm sure there are other great options out there that I don't use or haven't heard about yet. Leave those in the comments or let me know if you've tried any of these options for self publishing on Kindle. 

Snag my new book! http://createifwriting.com/cc

Hear the introduction from my newest book, Creative Collaborations: What I learned about collaborations from playing roller derby.

Learn how to leverage one-time paid collaborations into more long-term partnerships and relationships. 

Snag my new book for more! http://createifwriting.com/cc