5 Ways to Increase your Author Reputation
If you’re reading this, you might be an indie author who wants to make a living selling your books, or you might just be a hobbyist who wants to find more readers for your stories. However, marketing isn’t necessarily your forte. It can be extremely difficult for an author to advertise their story. But with the right techniques, you can increase your author reputation and get your book out there. Here’s 5 marketing tips that can help you promote yourself and your story.
#1 — Get Involved with Online Niche Communities
Odds are, your story fits into a specific genre. In addition, people with common interests tend to flock together on the internet, whether it be Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, or less known forums. This includes fans of a particular genre, whether it be sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc.
The first step is to find out which communities would like your story. Next, you need to find out where the community hangs out. Then, get involved. Instead of posting content to attract attention, your focus should mainly be creating conversation with others. A simple way of doing this is by commenting on someone’s Tweet to give them helpful insights, or simply compliment them about something they do well. Odds are, you are part of this niche and you’ll fit right in. If not, it’s okay to do some research and listen to what the community is talking about so you can have better conversations and avoid embarrassments.
When engaging online communities, build relationships first. You have to win people over first before they are willing to check out your book. The topic of marketing through communities requires its own blog post, but these tips should help you get started.
#2 —Samples: Give Before you Get, but Don’t give it All Away
Some food vendors will give free samples, hoping to get people to tastetheir food, enjoy it, and then buy a full serving. In a similar way, you can give snippets of your story to build trust with your audience. People are less likely to give your book a chance if it’s not free and if they haven’t read it, but they are much more willing to buy your book and follow you if they’ve read everything except the final chapters, especially if your plot and character development are superb. One way to do this is by blogging your book. Yes, I literally mean putting your book on a blog and serially releasing everything except the last chapters. When you advertise your book, make sure you use the word FREE (without sounding like a salesman). Everyone likes free. In this way, you build trust in your storytelling skills, and readers will more likely share your story with their niche communities, causing others to read it too. And when the times comes: people will be willing to buy the final chapters and follow you when you write your next book.
#3 — Create an Email List and Update your Audience
Many experts recommend building an email list. The purpose of this is to regularly update your audience more effectively. People won’t always see your updates on your Facebook or Twitter page because of all the other content flooding their newsfeed. So if you update them via social media and email, the chances of them seeing your updates increase. This is a tactic used by big companies, but there’s nothing stopping you from using it.
The trick with email marketing is that you have to have something worth emailing. Not all updates work for this; some work better as Tweets. We at Upliterate recommend you blog your book, keep a routine schedule, and release it serially via email. That way, you have content worthy of your audience’s inbox. You can find free or low cost email marketing applications by searching Google or Bing. Upltierate.com uses a service called Mail Chimp.
#4 — Have Confidence and a Positive Attitude
This might sound cliche and cheesy, but the truth is that marketing and/or selling is hard, even for business people. Getting followers and closing a sale takes a lot of work. That’s why you as an author have to build confidence in yourself and your will to succeed. You can learn all the social media and marketing techniques in the world, but you still need confidence in yourself to apply them and get results.
As a writer of fiction, you probably look up to some strong-willed characters who never gave up. You might not be fighting aliens or orcs, but everyone needs confidence. Don’t read about willful characters and leave their virtues in the books. You have to be brave too. Drive away self-doubt. You never know if you try.
#5 — Have an Open Mind and Keep being Creative
The best social media practitioners are are always finding new ways to engage audiences. Social media isn’t math; there isn’t always a set formula. It’s a creative discipline, almost like storytelling. You need to be constanly learning more so that you improve your social media intuition and engage users. There’s more to learn about marketing, just as there is more to learn about story. It can’t all fit in this blog post. With confidence and an open mind, you can take what you learn and apply your artistic creativity to marketing your book and increasing your author reputation. To learn more about marketing and self-publishing, feel free to subscribe to Upliterate’s email newsletter by clicking the form below. We hope you enjoyed this article.
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About Upliterate.com
Upliterate is a start-up self-publishing website dedicated to bringing new stories to fresh readers. We do intend to this by making distributing and selling eBooks possible with only a few clicks, building online communities of authors and readers around their niche, and providing tips on marketing and self-publishing.
The CEO, Ben Wurth, is himself an avid reader of books. To receive updates, sign up now to our email newsletter.
