 All Indie authors know how important their book cover is when it comes to selling their book (if you didn’t, you do now). But images in general are vital when it comes to promoting books. It’s no good having a great cover if you can’t get people to go and look at the book’s product page. Many authors use social media to direct people to product pages, but over recent years the effectiveness of this approach has declined. And there is a very good reason for that. The key words I want you to remember from this blog are “Stop The Scroll”. Did you know that the average social media user scrolls the equivalent to the height of the Eiffel Tower on their social media every day?  Just to put that in context, that’s the equivalent to 1,083 ft give or take the odd inch (330 metres to the tip of the radio mast). That is a lot of scrolling. Social media users are continually scrolling, scrolling and scrolling as they search for the next thing to catch their attention. Even when they stop scrolling they often don’t pay attention to a post for more than a few seconds. The average attention span for a post on social media is only 1.5 seconds according to research carried out by Linkedin. When it comes to selling books, social media is what is called a “secondary source”. That means people don’t go onto it specifically to find books, the way they would on Amazon or one of the other book selling websites. They go on social media for different reasons. Which means that the challenge for the Indie author is even greater.  The challenge is to stop the social media user from scrolling past their post for long enough to read the content and take an interest in the book, even though they aren’t looking for books to buy.. And it is a considerable challenge. They are in competition with cute kittens, people falling into rivers hilariously and pouting celebrities with big bottoms, for goodness sake. Which means the imagery used in promotional posts has to be equally eye catching, if not more so. It literally has to make people say “Wow, I wonder what that’s all about?”. So they have to stop scrolling for long enough to find out. Did you know, you don’t actually have to put your book cover in your promotional imagery? In fact, it might even be counterproductive to do so.  When people see a book cover in a post, they automatically think “Oh, just another author promoting their book” and they scroll past – even if they might actually enjoy reading the book. Because they’ve only looked at it for a fraction of a second they have no idea if it’s even in a genre they like to read. But if they see an intriguing image that doesn’t feature a book cover, they may stop scrolling for just long enough to start reading the text that goes with it. And once they start reading the text they might just find out about a book they might be interested in. For example:  If they see an image featuring a book cover with a dragon on it, they might think “Oh, just another fantasy author promoting their fantasy book” and scroll past because they’ve got a shelf full of fantasy books already. But if they see an image of a dragon without a book cover, they might say “Oh, a dragon. I like dragons. I wonder why someone has posted an image of a dragon?” Do you see how the psychology of that works? Instead of saying “Here’s my fantasy book, please buy it.” the author is saying “Look here, I’ve got something interesting to say about dragons.”  As a social media user, which approach would stop you from scrolling past? Now, I’m not saying it will turn zero sales into millions of sales by itself. But if it gets you a few more clicks to the sales page of the book, then the sales page may do the rest of the work for you. But if someone scrolls past your post because they think they don’t need another book, you get nothing. So, what sorts of images will stop the scroll? Two things mainly. One, they will be eye catching, making the viewer want to ask questions about them. Two, they will relate directly to the genre of the book.  People are always looking for memes they can share, so putting some text with an image can also stop them from scrolling because they think the post may be a meme. Not the book title, but something related to the book. An extract from a review works well, especially if accompanied by a star rating*. Make sure you say “Reader Review” or “Amazon Review” etc. Other short text, eg “Jaw dropping adventure” also works. Making different versions of the image and posting them on different days will attract the attention of different potential readers, so don’t be scared to try out different ideas. If you use the site’s metrics you’ll soon learn what works for your genre from the way people react to the posts.  Try using variations of your images. You can actually use elements from the book cover if they can stand by themselves, or you can create a scene that incorporates the cover image (minus the title, author name etc). Photoshop, Canva, Bookbrush et al have tools to help you create interesting images. Just because you normally turn them into a book cover doesn’t mean you can’t also use them as a picture by themselves.  This is one area where I have no qualms about suggesting that you use AI. It is the ideal tool to allow you to create genre specific images that result in professional quality pictures. I’ve played around with it and the image alongside this was created using AI.
Would you scroll past that? . Well, to answer our own question, we posted two versions of it on a social media page. Version 1 included a book cover and version 2 didn’t. Both versions were accompanied by the same text, which was taken from the blurb for the book, plus a link to click on. Version 2 got almost double the number of link clicks compared to version 1. So, dear reader, what are you going to do to “Stop The Scroll” past your book promotions? * Please don’t make up review extracts or fake star ratings. Readers may check them out and if they do they may make adverse comments on the original post, which will undo all your good work. I know you would never do that, but I thought I’d better say it anyway. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
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We are turning this week's blog over to one of our authors, Robin Saint, posting on the subject of Robin Hood. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.  Actor Richard Greene as Robin Hood. As a youngster I was brought up on stories of Robin Hood. There were the movies of course, with Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn, that used to pop up on Sunday afternoon TV. Even Disney gave us a cartoon version. But the big influence was the ITV series starring Richard Greene that ran between 1955 and 1959 (though it seemed to run for much longer). There were other series that came later, some better, some worse, but the 1950s version was the one that shaped my memories. Once I started to read for entertainment, rather than just to learn to read, Robin Hood books were high on my reading list. There were many written for children, and I probably read them all. As a naïve child I loved the idea that someone would exercise justice on behalf of the “little people” and right the wrongs that the rich and powerful perpetrated. How the persecuted sub-postmasters of the UK could have done with a Robin Hood to fight their corner for the last 20 odd years. But then I grew up and realised that while we would love people like Robin Hood to have existed, they probably didn’t. At least not in the form the stories say they did.  The Kray Twins, scourge of London's East End Many criminals have been compared to Robin Hood in their actions. I can remember the notorious London gangsters the Kray Twins* being given a favourable comparison in some quarters because they “loved their mum” and also because no crime was allowed to be committed in their “manor” without their permission, which made it a “safe place to live”. There are two things wrong with that comparison. Firstly, just because someone loves their mother it doesn’t make them a good person. All criminals have mothers and on the basis of statistical probability alone, some of them will love their mothers. The second thing is that if the Krays stopped other criminals from operating in their neighbourhood, it was only so that they could keep it all to themselves. They operated protection rackets and other criminal enterprises that preyed on their neighbours and if anyone crossed them, they would soon find out how unsafe the East End of London could become. It was, perhaps, the arrest and prosecution of the Kray Twins in the late 1960s that made me start to re-think the story of Robin Hood.  By now I knew that there had probably never been a real Robin Hood. There may have been a few real people (petty criminals in the main) who provided the basis for the stories, but the man himself never existed. One such story originated in Barnsdale Forest in Yorkshire, where a Robin Hood type figure used to stop travellers on the road and demand they pay a “tax” to continue their travels unmolested. Another way of describing that is as a protection racket, aka extortion. But what changed for me was the idea that just because a person loves their mum or looks after their neighbours, it doesn’t mean they can’t be a violent criminal as well. For example, if you need an alibi, then it helps to have a friendly neighbour who can provide it. If someone has knowledge of your actions or whereabouts, then it is probably a good idea to make sure that they are looked after. A small favour here, a bribe there and they’ll keep your secrets. And if they don’t, an underlying threat of violence will keep flapping lips closed.  Robin Hood (if he existed) robbed from the rich, because that’s what criminals do, but he didn’t give to the poor – he bribed them. The poor peasants of Sherwood Forest would keep his whereabouts a secret so long as he was paying them more than the measly reward being offered by the Sheriff of Nottingham. And if the Sheriff of Nottingham increased the reward money, there was always the threat of violence to ensure the peasants’ continued silence. At the time these thoughts started to form I didn’t have much time to do anything with them. I had a full and busy life (I still have) and the idea of writing a book just didn’t seem feasible at the time. It was many years later when I started to write the odd paragraph that laid out my thoughts on the subject. The thoughts turned into characters and once I had those I could create the conflicts that would turn into a plot. So, what of the other characters? I won’t bother with the other outlaws. Criminals often work in gangs so we can assume that if Robin Hood is a bad guy, then his pals will be bad guys too. I gave some of them back stories, but ones that would lead them into a life of crime.  King John We have Prince John (as he was at that time). Well, he was the fourth son of a King and in those days the sons of kings pretty much took what they wanted. Historically, John didn’t have any land to draw an income from. His father had granted him rule over Ireland, but first he had to conquer it and that didn’t work out too well. When his big brother Richard became King he gave John the rights to the taxes from Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire so that he would have some form of income. John gave orders to squeeze aa much in taxes from those counties as was possible, but that was the Sheriff’s job regardless of whether the taxes went to Richard or to John. John wasn’t a great Prince or King, but history tends to paint him as being worse than he really was for the period. Trust me when I say we have had worse kings (and queens) than John. The Sheriff of Nottingham was just doing his job, really. His job was to keep the peace and to collect the taxes on behalf of the King (or in this case, Prince John). Nobody likes tax collectors and if you were a criminal in Nottinghamshire you had other reasons not to like the Sheriff very much. In modern terms many people don’t like or trust the police, but they are the first ones to call 999 when their houses are burgled. So, I decided that the Sheriff of Nottingham was probably nothing out of the ordinary for the period, but he did have a boss that wanted more money, so he was probably a bit zealous when it came to collecting the taxes.  Maid Marion, a really foxy lady. Maid Marion was probably the hardest character for me to create. At first I made her a “bad girl” who was attracted to Robin because of his nasty character (according to my version of him). It is a familiar trope and one that exists in real life (Bonnie and Clyde, Rose and Fred West, Myra Hindley and Liam Brady et al). But I realised I needed a nice character to contrast all the bad ones, so that became part of her role in the story. She’s a bit of a “goody two shoes” but that just helps to contrast with Robin’s darkness. Robin himself was easy to create.  I followed some of the mythology and had him serving with King Richard’s crusaders, but rather than being a heroic figure coming home to reclaim his land and titles, I decided that he had used his time the Middle East to line his own pockets (the real purpose of the crusades was to grab land and wealth anyway. The re-conquering of Jerusalem for Christianity just provided an excuse.) and that had led to him crossing the wrong person. He fled King Richard’s army and returned to England. As he had been declared an outlaw for what he had done he had to live by his wits which, in those days, meant robbing and stealing. But even if Robin hadn’t been declared an outlaw, he would probably have followed a criminal path, because he wasn’t the type to earn an honest living. At least, my version of him wasn’t. That left me needing a hero, so I used a popular trope, which is the wrongly accused man. My hero, Erlich, is falsely accused of killing his own father and has to go on the run or face a noose. He finds a relatively safe haven with Robin Hood and his gang but hates the life they lead. All he really wants to do is clear his name and go back to his old life..  So, with a cast of characters all I needed was a plot to carry them and there were plenty of tropes to call on for that. Readers may recognise some of them. That is how I created Robin Hood the bad guy and turned him into my novel “Outlaw”. If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comments section below and I’ll be happy to answer them. To find out more about “Outlaw” by Robin Saint, click this link. * Editor's note: Little known fact: The Kray Twins were the last prisoners to be held in the Tower of London. Ask in the comments section if you want to know why. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
 One of the problems that Indie authors have is trying to work out whether their social media marketing strategy is working for them. How does the author know if a sale has resulted from a random search on Amazon, what we call “organic traffic”, or if it has come from someone clicking on a link in a social media post or even from an advert posted somewhere like Google Ads?. This information is important for Indie authors. They spend a lot of time on social media, finding followers, building relationships, creating posts etc. They need to know if they are wasting their time, or if they need to invest more time on Platform A and less on Platform B.  The inbuilt metrics may tell them how many link clicks they are getting, but they won’t tell them how many of those clicks are being converted into sales and that conversion tells an important story. Some Indies go as far as paying for advertising on social media, or on sites such as Google Ads or on book promotions sites. How do they know if those adverts are actually resulting in sales? They may know how many clicks they are getting, but are those clicks earning them money – or just costing them money? This is vital information, because if clicks aren’t converting to sales, it means that there is something wrong with the sales page. It may be the cover image, it may be the blurb, it may be the free sample, or it may be the reviews – or lack of reviews. (BTW – this blog won’t help with diagnosing problems that are on the sales page. That is a whole different blog. Probably several blogs.) The KDP reports tell you how many sales or page reads you have had, but they don’t tell you where they came from. Connecting the different bits of information together to give you the whole picture isn't possible. So, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a way of tracking sales back to the place where the reader found out about your book?  Well, there is. It’s called “Amazon attribution.” It’s FREE and it’s provided by Amazon itself, through Amazon Ads. Basically, what you do is create a unique link which allows Amazon to track the click back to its source. So, if the link is posted into Facebook and someone clicks on it there, then buys the book, the sale will be attributed to the Facebook post. Not only will this help you to identify where your sales originated, it will also tell you where you are getting your best results.  Did your best sales come from a Google Ad? Or did they come from a Facebook post? If it’s from a Facebook post then you might be better off not advertising on Google, but advertising on Facebook instead. Or on X, or Instagram or wherever you are getting your best results. This may also save you money, because you can now compare different platforms directly from which ones are selling your books. If you advertise on Amazon you will know if you get sales because the Amazon Ads data will show you. But what about Google Ads? From their metrics you will know if you got clicks, but you won’t know if those clicks turned into sales. With “Amazon attribution” that doubt is removed. Now, if you use a lot of sites for your marketing you will have to create a lot of attribution links. There is no point in using the same link on several sites because that doesn’t tell you which site is working best for you. You will need one link for Facebook, one for X, one for Instagram, one for Google etc. You can even use attribution links on your own website if you have one, to track sales that originate there, or to email shots and newsletters.  If you are running ads targeted at one particular country, say the USA, then you will need to make your link unique to Amazon.com sales. If you are targeting the UK as well, you will need a link for Amazon.co.uk. Etc. If you are selling on both, but you don’t know where your best sales are coming from, you may want to track sales in the two countries individually. So, you may have one link for Facebook post trying to get sales in the USA and a different link for Facebook posts aimed at the UK, even though you are using identical images and text to try to reach both countries. This could mean you creating a dozen or more links – but the information each link gives you will save you a lot of time and possibly a lot of money in the future as you will be able to make better decisions about your marketing strategy. Just to set your mind at rest, if you already have an Amazon Ads account then creating a link takes about a minute. If you haven’t got an account, it will take a bit longer because you have to set up the account first.  So, how do you get an “Amazon Attribution” link? The following instructions are aimed at use with a PC or laptop. I don’t suggest doing this on a phone or tablet because the screens will look different. I have created a short video (posted after the written instructions) which takes you through the process.. First of all, you need an Amazon Ads account. If you haven’t got one already, then you can create one direct from your KDP account. On your Bookshelf look to the right where it says “action”, click on the three dots. Find “promote and advertise” and click on it. Find “Run an ad campaign” and then locate the button marked “choose” and click on it. You will get a drop down list of all the Amazon marketplaces where you can advertise. If you are running campaigns aimed at different marketplaces and want to track each marketplace individually (recommended), you will need an ad account for each marketplace, though Amazon are planning to merge marketplaces for advertising in the near future, so by the time you read this that information may be out of date. I suggest you start with the country where you are based, or where you sell most of your books. For us that’s Amazon.co.uk but for you it may be somewhere different. Once you have selected your marketplace, you will get a new button displayed which says “Create an ad”. Click on that. You will then be taken through the usual pages needed to create an account if you don’t already have one, before you finally get to the “Ads Dashboard”. There is no need to create an actual Amazon Ad. They cost money. If you want to run Amazon ads that, again, is a whole different blog (which we have already published - look in our archive under “advertising”). On the left of your screen, you will see a vertical column of symbols which allow you to do various things. The only one you are interested in is the one that looks like a tiny bar chart. Click on that. You will get a new menu and you need to click on “Amazon Attribution.” This will open up a page which is headed “Measure Your non-Amazon Marketing Activities.” Below that is a button marked “Create Campaign”. You guessed it, click on that. This gives you two graphics, one of which says “Create manually” and the other doesn’t. Select the “Create manually” graphic by clicking on it and some boxes will appear below.. The first box asks you to name your campaign. Choose this name with care, because once you have created half a dozen of these campaigns you need to be able to tell which is which, eg which is Facebook and which is Google Ads, or whatever. Below that you will get a list of your books displayed. Scroll through the list and click on “add” to add that book to the attribution results. If you are marketing a stand-alone book, you need only select that book. If you are marketing a series, however, a customer may buy book 1 only, but they may buy other books in the series at the same time (whoop-whoop!). Or they may see the post for book 1, which reminds them that they read it and enjoyed it, and they may use that link to then go to your Amazon page and select Book 2 etc. So, for a series you probably want to select all the books in that series (and the box set if there is one). But, as a minimum, always track Book 1 because that is the series starter. If you have ebook, paperback and hardback formats you can select them all, or you may prefer to create an individual link for each format. That is your choice. We include all formats in the same campaign. Next you create your ad group. This basically provides Amazon Ads with all the information it needs to identify the source of the link when it is used, eg so it knows that it is coming from Facebook and not from Google. So, give the ad a unique name so that you can distinguish it later, when you come to analyse the results. In the “publisher” box select the platform you are using (Facebook, X, Google etc) from the drop down list provided. It is an extensive list and covers most social media and advertising platforms and some etail sites that allow links to be redirected to Amazon. You can also type in new publishers (sites) if the one you are using isn’t listed, eg your own website. If the platform you have chosen is social media, there is no deed to complete the next box. If it is something else, then there are other selections you may need to make. The “Click through URL” box is where you paste the link to the Amazon sales page for your book, in the version you wish to track. The quickest way to get to that is to go back to your KDP Bookshelf and click on “”View on Amazon” (make sure you select the version you wish to track) and then copy and paste the URL when you get to the Amazon page. Note: “View on Amazon” allows you to select any marketplace (territory) where the book is sold. So, make sure you select the marketplace you want to track. All you have to do now is look up to the top right hand corner of the page where you will see a button marked “create” and click on it. It takes a few moments for Amazon to create all the magic that is needed, but eventually you will be given a summary of your entry, along with an attribution URL. That URL is very long, but it is the one you then copy and paste into whatever activity you want to monitor. For example, if you want to monitor a Facebook post, you paste it into the Facebook post instead of the link you would normally use. Here's the video demonstration we promised. Using Facebook as an example, if anyone clicks on the link to go to your Amazon page the click will be recorded by Amazon and if they then buy your book the sale or download KENP (KindleUnlimited pages) this will also be recorded. From the name you gave the attribution link, you then know which post got you your sale. You view your results using the same “Amazon Attribution” selection in Amazon Ads, by clicking on the “Ad Groups” option instead of “Campaigns”. You can also track different channels (Facebook, Google etc) by clicking on the “Channels/Publishers” option, and you can access your links on the “Attribution tags” option if you want to copy them again for use in a new post.  When it comes to reviewing the results, Amazon are providing you with a free service, so they don’t rush to collate them. It can take several days for some results to appear.
You will start to see your link clicks and KENP (Kindle page reads) the day after you post the link. However, in most cases the sales results may not be visible until around Day 7 or even later, An enhancement of the use of attribution links is if you want to try out different posts on the same platform. For example, if you want to see which images work best for your posts, which text attracts more clicks etc, you can create a unique attribution link for each version and then view your results to decide which is getting you the best results. That means you are working less in the dark and taking a lot of the “error” out of trial and error. So, if you are getting sales on Amazon but have no idea where they are coming from, you now know how to track them using “Amazon Attribution”. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  I read a post in a writer’s group on Facebook recently that bemoaned the fact that so much of the advice that was posted there was contradictory. It was ironic that this post was being made on social media, because all human life is there in its multitudinous forms. Advice spans the gamut from barking mad to the blatantly obvious (or is it that obvious?). Some of the “advice” being offered may in fact be mischievous in its nature, deliberately trying to mislead in order to provide some form of amusement for the person posting it. But the bottom line is that most of the advice offered on social media is actually opinion and is therefore subjective in its nature. While people try to turn it into a truism, it often doesn’t work for everyone.  The first point I must make is that what works for one author doesn’t necessarily work for another. We, for example, have had considerable success selling books using Amazon Ads. However, we know of many authors and small publishers who have been far less successful. There will be underlying reasons for that. A good book is a good book and advertising should be able to sell it. But there may be reasons why buyers aren’t buying the book that have nothing to do with its quality. But the simple fact is that where we find success with advertising, some authors don’t, so any advice we offer relating to our use of advertising is going to be coloured by our experiences, as is theirs.  Similar lessons apply to the writing advice offered to authors on the same group. It is quite common for authors to post extracts of their WIP and ask for comments. Some authors respond like cheerleaders, whooping with encouragement for the work. That’s fine. We all need encouragement from time to time. But it’s only fine up to a point. Other authors are more critical. Very often their comments get attacked by the cheerleaders for failing to be encouraging. But if someone is making obvious blunders in their writing, isn’t it better for them to be told so that they can correct the mistakes before it’s too late? We here at Selfishgenie Publishing are great believers in supporting writers, especially Indies. But gaining quality feedback is an essential part of the growth of a writer.  “Life long learning” and professional development are well established processes in many companies, because most employers understand that it is better to develop the skills of existing employees than it is to sack them and recruit someone new. But many authors don’t have anyone to help them to develop, except for other authors and the channel by which many authors are provided with that development help is social media. If we just act as cheerleaders, then it may boost the spirits of the author who asked for the critique, but it won’t do a thing for their development as a writer. OK, perhaps we have to be careful how we word things. “You suck” may be an accurate reflection of the quality of the writing but it doesn’t help the author any more than the cheerleading helps them. But to get back to my original point that most opinions or advice are subjective. So how does the author know which advice to listen to and which to ignore?  You can’t. If you could, you probably wouldn’t need to seek the advice anyway, because what is being offered is so blindingly obvious. But in writing we always have an escape route. Nothing that is done can’t be undone. We are not building the Titanic, so the mistakes involved in design and construction won’t result in the ship sinking. If we make a mistake, we can go back and rectify it. Even if we get as far as publishing a book, we can always “unpublish” if we only get negative reviews. It should always be remembered that we learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. Even if the only thing we learn is not to ask for advice about writing on social media!  But I do think that social media is a valuable resource for writers who want support and advice. So, what if the advice is contradictory? What can we do about it? We can exercise judgement. For a start, what is the majority view? I’m not going to suggest that majorities are always right (just look at election results), but it is more likely that a majority view will reflect what people have found to be successful rather than unsuccessful. Secondly, you can put the bits of contradictory advice side by side and weigh them in the balance. Intuitively, which sounds as though it might be right? We can go back to the person who offered the advice and ask them to give us a real life example of the advice working. What they provide (if anything) should tip the scales one way or the other.  Thirdly, what are the consequences of making the wrong choice? Will you just be wasting a bit of time to put things back as they were? Or will it involve a loss of money because a bad decision was made? I would worry far more about decisions involving money than I would about decisions that only involved time – and I regard my time as being precious. Finally, you can actually ignore all the advice that has been offered and go with your gut instincts. Let’s face it, we make far more decisions based on that during our lives than we ever do after taking advice and look how well that turns out. When it comes to writing there are actually very few rules. When it comes to marketing the finished book there are things that work and things that don’t, and you can learn which work the best. There is definitely no substitute for learning when it comes to marketing, so don’t seek marketing advice on social media, seek it from a recognised training provider.  A lot of marketing advice is genre specific. If you write for YA audiences, you need to be thinking in terms of where young people are most likely to see your marketing messages. If your books are aimed at older audiences, you need to think about where they are going to see your marketing messages. The two places are likely to be very different. So, when you see advice that says “Doing this (whatever “this” is) really helped my book sales” you have to consider why it was successful for them and make an objective judgement about whether it will also be successful for you.  And if you want to learn how to market properly there are lots of blogs and tutorials available on-line on a wide range of subjects, but you have to do a bit of research to find them and then spend time reading/watching them.
Social media may provide you with a short cut, but it is never an adequate substitute for proper research. But research takes time. But so does correcting mistakes. When I worked in business I was always amazed by how many people never had time to do the job right first time, but they always had the time to do it again when it went wrong. You can do things once correctly or you can waste time by having to re-do them. Which do you think following advice on social media is most likely to result in? If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. Disclaimer: No financial incentives were sought or offered for this book review. The reviewer purchased their copy of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.   It occurred to me over the Christmas period that I had rather neglected my reading of Nick Spalding’s books.
Nick Spalding is the sort of author you read when you just want to relax and forget about the cares of the world. Instead, you become immersed in someone else’s problems for a while. These aren’t the great problems of the world. There are no epic quests, no fights against dragons, whether real or metaphorical. There may be some fights against metaphorical demons, but they threaten the individual, not the world as a whole. In other words, you don’t need to keep looking out of the window to assess how close the world’s problems are getting. The problems Spalding’s characters face are the sorts of things we may all face in our lives at some point. Sometimes they are 21st century issues, created by our modern world and modern lifestyles, but often they are timeless. So it is with “Old Boys” which is the book I review here. As with all Nick Spalding books, it is written in a light-hearted style. Because this book deals with quite deep emotions, there are darker moments, but generally speaking it is what you might call a gentle comedy. It isn’t meant to keep you either laughing out loud or wide awake at night for fear of what might lurk beneath the bed. But it may make you stop and think a little bit about your own life and the choices you have made. And there is nothing wrong with that. The story is a familiar one. Will Fairweather is feeling depressed after the loss of his mother. It may have been 4 years earlier, but it is still hurting him deeply and affecting the way he lives his life. Frustrated by this his younger wife, Audrey, asks that they separate for a while to give Will a chance to sort himself out. It felt a little heartless to me, which is why I have only given this book 4 stars. I’m not sure that extreme action like that would be the first thing a loving spouse would suggest when their marriage is in trouble, but I guess it was necessary for the rest of the plot to work. There is another reason for only giving the book 4 stars and it is that at several points I felt like giving Will a good slap, because his wallowing in his grief is self-indulgent in the extreme. Perhaps that was why Audrey asked him to move out, as a way of giving him a metaphorical slap. Anyway, needing somewhere to go, Will ends up moving in with his estranged father, who has had no contact with Will for more than 3 decades. Will’s father, Red Fairweather, is the drummer with a prog rock band by the name of Holy Moly who were big in the 70s and 80s, though they are pretty much retired at the time of this story. Those readers who remember the likes of Keith Moon and John Bonham will be familiar with the stereotype drummer that Nick Spalding creates for Red. Spalding even points out the similarities. Several well known rock bands of that era and later are given name checks in the book, though they play only a peripheral part in the actual plot. I suspect that Nick Spalding may be a fan. I think it is safe to say that Red Fairweather doesn’t so much need a family as a combined nanny and psychiatric nurse. He takes it upon himself to try to help Will mend his marriage by “bringing him out of himself” through a series of bizarre adventures. As Red is now in his 70s the scale and danger of these activities is limited, but they are still enough to scare the highly risk averse Will before he has even tried them out. The book progresses along this amiable path, but things take a much more emotional turn in the second half. Here the home truths start to emerge, the family history, the cause of Red’s break up with Will’s mother and a whole lot more. Keep a box of tissues handy because you will need them. There is an underlying message in the book if you care to listen to it. I won’t reveal what it said to me, but it is a strong one and one which, perhaps, we should all remind ourselves of from time to time. If you have planned your summer holidays for this year this is exactly the sort of book you might like to take along to read by the swimming pool. It may not be high drama, but it will leave you with things to think about. You can find out more about “Old Boys” by Nick Spalding by clicking this link or the book’s cover image. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. This week we hand our blog over to our most prolific author, Robert Cubitt. Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are those of the blog's author and are not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.  Author Robert Cubitt Authors get asked a lot of questions. Some of them sensible and others not so. Having been given the freedom of this blog I’d like to answer some of the sensible ones from my own perspective. One of the most common questions an author gets is “How did you get into writing?”. Well, it goes back all the way to my childhood. I loved reading. My local library, when I was about 13, would only allow me to take out one book at a time, but on at least one occasion I visited 3 times in one day because I read my single book so quickly. It was a 4 mile roundtrip and I had to walk, which says a lot about my reading addiction. It was only later that I worked out that it would have been a lot more efficient for me to sit in the library to read my book, which says a lot about my ability to think logically at the age of 13.  At the same time, I loved essay writing at school. “What I did on my holidays” (and other such topics) gave me the opportunity to create all sorts of adventures. I was once punished for writing a less than true account of whatever the teacher had asked us to write about that day and my mother went to the school and protested on the grounds that they were stifling my creativity. The objective, she pointed out, was to produce a piece of well written work, not to provide evidence for use at a trial. My mother’s intervention made no difference. For future assignments I was warned not to stray from the truth. What I actually did was tone down the drama in my fiction to make it more believable. Perhaps my first lesson in plot creation! I made my first attempt to write an actual book when I was about 14. I had no idea what I was doing, of course. My characters were shallow, and the plot made no sense. But everything we do provides us with lessons and the lesson I learnt from that was that writing a novel wasn’t as easy as I had imagined. But it didn’t put me off writing.  An apprenticeship in some arcane craft. The school I went to when I was between the ages of 14 and 16 wasn’t the sort of school that produced writers. Pupils were expected to “learn a trade”. It was an all-boys school which meant apprenticeships in some arcane craft, motor mechanics, the building trade and so on. I assume that at the girls’ school across the road they were being taught to type, to cook and to raise babies. Our horizons weren’t even stretched as far as working in an office, at least, not without staying on for 6th form, which the families of most of the boys couldn’t afford for them to do. Regardless of academic ability. the vast majority left school at 16 to start earning a living so they could contribute financially at home.  So that’s what I did. However, having been raised on the works of Captain W. E. Johns, author of the “Biggles” books, I decided to learn my trade in the RAF. But I didn’t stop writing. Almost every RAF station I served on had a station magazine and they were always looking for “content”, as we would call it today. I was happy to oblige them, though not everything I wrote was published. Apparently, parodying the domestic lives of the senior officers is frowned upon. Who knew? At the end of my 23 year stint, I suddenly found myself unemployed. I threw my efforts into finding a job, of course, but we were in a recession at the time and job hunting was an uphill struggle. To preserve my sanity in that dark time I decided to have another go at writing a book.  Learn from the best. Having, to a certain extent, honed my skills in writing for magazines, what I produced was far better. I won’t go as far as to say it was good, as evidenced by the fact that I have never attempted to get the book published. But it was a start. It also served its purpose in keeping my mind occupied. More than that, it was a learning exercise. The most important lesson I learnt was that it is the characters who must take centre stage. A plot without good actors will never work. Instead of reading for pleasure, I started to read to learn how to write. Firstly, I read the books of successful novelists and analysed them to discover why they were so good. It always came down to the characters. The plots could be laughable in the way they were contrived, but having good characters, ones I came to care about, meant that the clunky plot was ignored, and I enjoyed what I was reading because of my emotional engagement with the characters. It was probably the most valuable lesson in writing I have ever learnt.  I eventually got another job and 17 years later switched jobs again. That final job was actually 20 hours of work squeezed into a 35 hour week, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I used the extra time to start writing again. I spent so much time writing that on one of my performance reviews my boss commented on how busy I always was, constantly beavering away. Little did he know! (BTW, I always did my real job first and to the best of my ability and was commended for my achievements). But the writing spark had turned into a forest fire, and I wasn’t dishonest enough to keep allowing my employers to continue paying me to be writer, so I took early retirement and started writing full time. Here I am, 12 years later and with 31 books published (including non-fiction) and I’m still writing like there’s no tomorrow.  The next question I would like to answer is “where do you get your ideas from?” Well, they are all around us, all the time. Let’s start with world news. Every bulletin has the potential to produce ideas that can be turned into a book. All human life is there, in graphic detail. The politics, the hardship, the heartache, the trauma, the drama and blessedly, sometimes, the humour. Turn on the TV or radio news, pick up a printed newspaper or go onto the internet and there are myriad news stories just waiting to be fictionalised. Real authors can spot those and turn them into a full length novel.  History is a great source of ideas for stories. So many kings, queens, politicians, rogues, heroes, vagabonds, explorers, adventurers etc. Each has their own story and those can be borrowed and turned into fiction. I’m a great fan of this genre myself. Then there is everyday life. Some people call it “people watching”, but the world around us can provide the author with a thousand stories if they have the imagination. A young woman running for a bus, almost losing a shoe, can provide a hundred questions as to how she came to be there and what may become of her. If the author can imagine good answers, they can turn them into a book. Finally, there are our own “lived” experiences. Life rarely runs smoothly for anyone, and the speed bumps and car crashes all provide us with stories we can tell. In reality we do tell them, to friends and family, or maybe to our therapists. All an author does is write the same stories down and pad them out to a length that will make them a book rather than an anecdote. Of course, they have to be amplified to make them more dramatic/romantic/funny but that comes down, once again, to imagination.  What about sci-fi and fantasy? They don’t come from day to day life. Wrong. For the most part, sci-fi and fantasy novels are made up of the same plots as the stories we set on Earth. They just have bits added on to make them appear different. Star Wars, for example, is just the story of good vs evil transported to a galaxy far, far away. All the author does is to use their imagination to create worlds where the stories can be told, as they do with fantasy. “Luke, I am your father” is a trope that can be found in many an Earthbound story, as can the twins separated at birth. Shakespeare’s “Comedy Of Errors” and “Twelfth Night” both use the basic separated twins trope. The final question I want to answer is “Is it difficult to become a writer?”  If writing is ever this boring, you aren't a writer. My answer would be “no”. But there are many caveats to that. Anything you enjoy doing is never a chore. I enjoy writing, so I don’t find it difficult. If someone sits down and starts to write and they have become bored after a couple of thousand words, they will never become a writer. Not because they can’t write well, but because they clearly don’t enjoy writing. The more you study and practice a subject, the easier it gets. That is what I have done as a writer. But I find chess hard. Chess Grandmasters will tell you that playing chess is easy and for them it is. Because they have practiced for thousands of hours playing hundreds of thousands of games to get to where they are. Of course it’s easy for them. I play one game every ten years, so for me it’s always going to be hard. So it is with writing. The more you learn and the more you practice what you have learnt, the easier it gets. If your idea of writing is doing the weekly shopping list, you will struggle if you start to write a book.  Finally, you have to believe you can write. Like many other creative professions, authors are plagued by insecurities.
Imposter Syndrome stalks us like a hungry tiger. It sucks all the enjoyment out of writing which, as previously mentioned, is an essential part of being a writer. Overcoming that barrier of lack of self-belief has curtailed many a potentially successful writing career. So, when the whispers of self-doubt start to be heard in your brain, you have to shout back very loudly “I am a writer!” I shout it out loud, which is very disturbing for my wife. But if I didn’t, I would have given up 31 books ago. So don’t give up. Most authors take years to become an overnight success. Some never will become a success, but that doesn’t spoil their enjoyment of writing. To find out more about my books, see the "Books" page of this website. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Is the game up for traditional publishers? I’m not talking about today or tomorrow. What I’m talking about may take years to come to fruition, but the publishing world is changing, and the trad publishers don’t seem to have cottoned on to the fact yet. Between themselves and agents, they have made it almost impossible to access mainstream publishing. The gate keepers are no longer just keeping the gate, they are building high walls and digging moats so deep in front of the gate that no one can get in.  Which is why not only is the publishing model changing shape, it has no choice but to change shape. But the trad publishers are sticking their fingers in their ears and singing “la, la, la”. With so many authors now taking the self-publishing route, it is becoming the norm rather than the exception. According to this article, 300 million self-published books are sold each year. That’s 30-35% of the publishing market. While the global publishing market is expected to grow by 1% per year, the self-publishing market is expected to grow by 17% per year.  Prior to 1998, the only way to self-publish was to pay a printer to print your books, then hawk them around local book shops trying to find one to stock it for you. But in 1998 Chip Wilson, a millionaire entrepreneur, created a self-publishing website called Lulu and that all changed. Now anyone could publish their book on-line and sell it through the platform. Imitators followed and, of course, the retail giant Amazon established their own platform, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which now dominates the self-publishing market. So, from almost nowhere in 1998, self-publishing now holds approximately 34% of the market – and growing. I’m not going to say that the quality of the books is 100% great, but there are plenty of good self-published authors and many make a respectable living from their writing. In fact, some make a better living than authors who are trad published. There are at least 7 self-published authors achieving 7 digit income levels and many more making 6 digit levels.  Which is one of the reasons I think there will be further shifts in the industry. A trad published author receives about 10% of the sale price of their book in royalties. From that they then have to pay their agent (actually the agent usually gets the royalty cheque, deducts their commission and then passes the rest to the author). Richard Osman’s latest best-seller is priced at £11.99 for the Kindle edition and £9.99 for the paperback at the time of writing this blog. Don’t ask me why the paperback is cheaper because I don’t know, but it probably started out being more expensive. Based on current publishing practice Richard will receive around £1.19 in royalties for the Kindle edition and around 99p for each paperback sale. If he were to self-publish and sell his book at the same price, he would make either £3.60 or £8.39 per copy, depending on whether he took the 30% or 70% royalty option. If I were Richard, I’d be starting to wonder about the wisdom of sticking with trad publishing.  As a big name author, he would have no problem setting up distribution deals with all the major retailers, without having to rely on his publisher to do that for him. The rest is down to editing, cover design and marketing and he could hire people to do that for him. I think he’d still end up with more money in his pocket than he does now. For a start, he wouldn’t have to give between 10% and 20% of his royalties to an agent. I suspect that a lot of trad published authors will do these sort of sums in future and when their existing publishing deals come to an end, they’ll self-publish the next book they write.  It is noticeable that publishers are now trying to tie authors into multi-book contracts in order to prevent that sort of desertion, though at the moment they are more worried about their authors being poached by other trad publishers than they are about their authors opting to self-publish. The more top quality authors who go down the self-publishing route, the better the reputation self-publishing will gain. I strongly suspect that the much of prejudice against self-published authors is being fuelled by trad publishers trying to protect their businesses.  Change sometimes happen at a glacial speed. But change can also function more like a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger and going faster and faster.
I may not be around for long enough to see which metaphor is more accurate, but many of you will be. But I predict that one day, when a new author announces on social media that they are about to start querying their novel, the response from other writers won’t be “Good luck”, it will be “Why on Earth are you bothering with that?" If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Measurement is the poor relation of marketing. While Indie authors may come to realise that they have to market their books, they don’t always realise the essential role that measurement plays in their decision making. Not knowing how to use measurement in marketing is like walking blindfolded through a room barefoot, with the floor covered with Lego bricks. At some point you are going to say “Ouch, that hurt.” Now, you may think that there is only one measurement that is worth looking at, and that is sales. But you would be wrong. To tell you why, I’d like to present you with a hypothetical scenario.  Let’s say that an Indie author has spent £100 on advertising in a month. They split that 50:50 between Amazon Ads and Google Ads. They have made sales and made a profit on their advertising, so they want to re-invest some of that profit into more advertising.
With that 3rd bullet goes supplementary questions – should they keep the split 50:50 or should they spend more on one platform than the other? The only way to make a sensible decision is to analyse the data and see what it is telling them. What the author needs to know is how many clicks each ad got, how much each click cost them and how many clicks were converted to sales.  To give you a real life example, we recently ran a Google Ad for one of our titles. According to the data we got a lot of clicks on the ad, so you might think that it was a success. However, there was no change in sales volume for the book. If the clicks had been converted into sales, there should have been a corresponding rise in sales volume. Only by putting the two sets of data side-by-side could we see that. The next month we ran an Amazon Ad for the same book. We didn’t get nearly as many clicks as we got for the Google Ad, but we did get a rise in sales. Not only did Amazon Ads tell us how many clicks got converted to sales, we could see it in our KDP sales data as well, in terms of increased sales volumes compared to the previous month. So, going back to our hypothetical example and the 4 questions (plus supplementals) we asked, we might well decide to spend all our budget on Amazon Ads and none on Google Ads. The data was telling us that, so we have no reason to doubt our decision making.  But the story doesn’t end there. If we were getting so many clicks from Google Ads, why weren’t they getting any conversions into sales? Normally we would say that it has something to do with the book’s blurb, the reviews or the free sample. Maybe they weren’t enticing enough. But if that were the case it would apply to the Amazon Ads as well, which we know wasn’t the case. So, we have to look for different answers. When we drilled down into the data, we discovered that the majority of the clicks we were getting were from outside of the UK. The book is on sale everywhere, so that shouldn’t make a difference, but perhaps it was. The book is very UK centric in its story. Perhaps that put other nationalities off buying it. We can’t be certain of that, but it is borne out by our KDP sales data. 98% of our sales for that title are made in the UK and Ireland. Again, we were putting data side by side in order to interpret it.  Above, we mentioned the need to understand how much each click cost us. That is essential information, because if we don’t know that we can’t know if our ad generated a profit. Let’s say we got 100 clicks and made 10 sales (that’s a fairly typical conversion rate for a new author). That sounds good, doesn’t it? According to Amazon Ads those sales would be worth £59.90 gross if the book sells at £5.99. Cause for celebration, perhaps? Actually no. Those 10 sales may have been valued at £59.90 gross, but may only have yielded £30 in royalties. If those 100 clicks cost us £35 (again, a typical cost based on 35p per click) then our ad campaign didn’t make a profit, even though it made sales. It made a loss of £5. And don’t forget that £35 is the pre-tax cost. If you are in the UK you have to add 20% VAT to get the final cost. Maybe we would need to re-think whether or not to spend our advertising budget with Amazon Ads too! Again, we have to put data side by side to interpret it and the data may have to come from different sources, eg both Amazon Ads and KDP.  Now, I’m not saying advertising doesn’t work, because it does. What I am saying is that we have to use all the available data to measure the effectiveness of our advertising. If you are spending £100 (after tax) on advertising and you are making £101 in royalties, then whoopee. You are in profit. But you have to know that and that means measuring what you are doing. So far we have only talked about paid advertising. What about social media?  Indie authors spend a lot of their time on social media promoting their books. It isn’t costing them anything except time, so no need to worry, is there? Actually, as the old saying goes, time is money (Benjamin Franklin). All the time you are on social media promoting your books, you aren’t writing new books which could make you more money. So, time has an associated cost. It is therefore necessary to work out if the time you spend promoting your books through social media is actually time well spent. Social media sites provide data on how many people have interacted with a post. That could mean a “like” or a reply, or it could be a click on a link. The more interactions there are, the more likely it is that they will convert into sales.  So, if your posts aren’t getting interactions, you need to know why, because to continue what you are doing is just going to waste your time. If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. This may mean asking other people what they think of your posts, so you can work out what is most likely to get an interaction. Also, you need to “benchmark” against posts that get a lot of interactions to see what it is about them that makes them so attractive.  Of course, we mean posts that promote books. Knowing that posting a video of a cute kitten playing with a ball is going to get lots of interactions, isn’t going to help you to sell any books. Lots of authors think that asking questions on social media and getting a gazillion answers is interacting. It isn't. yes, the post gets a lot of responses - but is it selling books? If it isn't selling books it is just wasting time. So, some of the data that has to be compared are interactions compared to books sales. Do they line up. If not, why not? But knowing that a video gets more interactions than a still image might also be useful to know.  But with measurement you must always ask the question “why”.
- Why aren’t my posts getting interactions?. - Why aren’t interactions on social media converting to sales? - Why aren't my video clips getting more interactions? Etc. I can’t answer those questions for you in a blog. I can’t even think up all the questions you might want to ask. But there will be answers. You just have to go looking for them. Social media sites provide all that data for free. All you have to do is use it. Measurement and data analysis isn’t very exciting stuff. But using it wisely can make your book sales very exciting. But, like all of book marketing, you have to invest time into it to get the best out of it. But it could help you avoid those Lego bricks. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Disclaimer: No financial inducement was offered or requested for this review and no payment was received. The reviewer was provided with a free review copy of the book. The views expressed in this review are those of the reviewer and are not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing.  Exiles, by Miles Watson, is a novella, but it could almost stand as a full length novel.
The book serves as an introduction to “The Magnus Chronicles”, a series of dystopian novels set in a world that could be Earth in either the past or future. That is not clear from the story. Is it an alternative history or a possible future? I think the reader must decide. There is some modern technology, but it is limited by “The Order”, the body that rules over most of Europe. However, there is also a lot of 19th century technology still in use, though that might be because so much modern technology is banned. This little book actually tells two stories in one. The first is told by Marguerite Bain, the Captain of a smuggling ship. Smuggling is an organised, if dangerous, profession with its own ruling Guild. Marguerite gained her command under the tutelage of a senior Captain who now serves as one of the Guild’s governors. While smuggling is illegal, a blind eye is turned for the most part. Bribery and corruption play a large part in that unofficial tolerance, as it does in most of life under The Order. Marguerite has had a hard life, not one to be envied by any woman. Now, as skipper of her own ship, she has to show that she is ready to kill anyone who challenges her position and the only way she has been able to prove that is to do it. Now an uneasy truce lies between her and her crew, though she knows that if she shows any sign of weakness they would kill her, after taking their pleasure first, of course. The Sea Dragon, her ship, is contracted to deliver supplies to the eponymous exile on his remote and barren island. It is a task she is unable to refuse because it has been brokered by the Guild and such a contract can’t be broken. Her orders are strict. Deliver the supplies and leave the island. Do not make any attempt to communicate with the exile. The previous contractor forgot those rules and now he is no longer alive. But Marguerite is curious and can’t resist finding out about the exile, so she secretes a notebook and pencil in the supplies, asking him to tell his story. Which is the second story in the book. Enitan Champoleon is a name that is notorious as an opponent of The Order, an organiser of the resistance. He is almost mythical, a sort of Scarlet Pimpernel figure. But if the Order captured him they would just kill him, not exile him on a barren rock. So, who has placed Champoleon in this living hell? All becomes clear by the end of the story. But through this dialogue Marguerite starts to feel a bizarre kinship with the exile. The story's point of view switches back and forth between Marguerite and Enitan but at all times it is clear who is narrating. The style of language is fitting for the ambivalent chronological setting of the book. In many ways it is Victorian, but interspersed with more modern phrases and idiom. Either of the two stories are capable of engaging the reader fully, but the two of them together become compelling and the book is a real page turner. For lovers of fantasy or sci-fi it is a very good read. This reviewer is now a convert and will soon be embarking on reading The Magnus Chronicles in full. The ebook can be purchased from Amazon for £3.95 or can be downloaded on KindleUnlimited for free. The paperback version is £4.74 (all prices correct at time of posting). I recommend “Exiles” by Miles Watson and to find out more, click here If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Up until now we haven’t posted much about using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for book marketing. It isn’t because they aren’t any good for marketing. In fact, just the opposite. Those platforms are as good, if not better, than Facebook or X for selling your books. No, the reason we haven’t posted about them before is that you have to think about how you use them in a different way from other social media. Because of that we’ve been trying out different approaches of our own to see what works – and what doesn’t. Just posting an image of your book cover isn’t going to sell your book on those 3 channels. Not even making a book trailer featuring your book is going to work.  The reason why is that those 3 marketing channels work on the basis of personal interaction. What do we mean by that? After all, it is someone talking on a video. How can anyone interact with that? Well, they interact on a psychological level. The viewer sees the person in the video talking directly to them and to no one else. The video speaks to them personally. Now, there are a number of techniques that the people in the videos use and they vary according to what is being sold. I’ll illustrate what I mean with some examples.  Let’s start with the “influencers”. These people make a lot of money because they sell products on behalf of brands. But they never use the word “sell”, or “buy” or make any other reference to commercial transactions. I’ll use a stereotypical influencer to illustrate: the make-up demonstrator. They open with a line such as “I want to show you this great new lipstick (or whatever) I’ve just discovered.” Of course, their tone of voice is excited. This lipstick is so great they can’t contain their excitement about it. Which gets the viewer excited because excitement is contagious. Straight away the viewer is interested because the influencer is letting them in on their new discovery, not trying to sell them the lipstick (even though they are). They are sharing a secret with them. Those are very intimate acts, and we respond to them at an emotional level. They then demonstrate their use of the lipstick, which makes them look fabulous of course, and the viewers want to look just like the influencer, so they buy the product. The influencer may not even mention where the viewer can buy the product. They’ll show them the brand name, of course, but then they’ll leave it up to the viewer to follow-up because that way they won’t feel pressured into buying. The technique isn’t new. Product demonstrators have been around almost as long as products, but in the past they were standing in front of you rather than appearing in videos on-line.  Next we have the musicians. Their technique is different. They’ll start by saying something like “This is my latest song which I want to share with you.” Again, you are being drawn into an inner circle of intimacy. They then sing a verse and a chorus. If you like the song, you then have to either buy it to hear the rest or add it to a playlist. Either way, the musician sells their music without actually selling it.  Then we have the comedians. They post video clips of their act. They make you laugh, so when they announce their next gig or their next tour, you want to go along and see them, so you buy tickets. That is more of a delayed reaction, but it means more ticket sales than if they hadn’t posted the clip. So, three different techniques for three different types of product. There are other types, but those serve my purpose in illustrating how the channels are used in different ways.  Now, how do you adapt this to suit your product – a book? With YouTube you can adopt the same technique as a musician and read an extract from your book. You don’t have to show your face if you don’t want to but setting the scene is important; use the camera to act as the viewers' eyes, perhaps finding the book on the arm of a comfy chair and settling down to read it. The voiceover then reads the extract, which you can do yourself It will probably take you a few goes to get the sort of image you want, but it will work. Put an “end board” on the video saying where it can be bought and provide a link in the video’s description along with the blurb and some suitable hashtags. If you use Canva or BookBrush (or similar packages) you can make videos of someone reading an extract. For example, if your book is set at sea you can uses a video of a seascape with you reading the extract as the soundtrack. Then promote the heck out of the video on your other social media.  Instagram and TikTok aren’t so well suited for readings. Their users have short attention spans. Anything longer than a minute probably isn’t going to be watched to the end. And anything that isn’t eye catching isn’t going to be watched at all. The first 5 seconds of the video is crucial to grabbing the viewer’s attention. This is where you have to project your personality as an author. If you try to pitch your book, you won’t sell anything. You have to pitch the idea of books in general and then mention your own books in passing. A popular style in recent months has been “Five books I wish I could discover all over again”. You don’t have to show your face, you just have to show the book covers and maybe your hands flicking through the pages. And, of course, you have to talk about why the books mean so much to you. Then you segue into how those books inspired you to write your own book, a copy of which you also happen to have in camera shot. You can talk about your own books, but you have to put a new twist on it.  People love stories. People, especially those that read books, love stories, so use that to your advantage. One of our authors laid out his books on a table then said that not only did the books tell a story, they each had a story of their own, which was how they came to be written. He then made a separate video for each one and told the story of how he had been inspired to write it, into which he wound some of the book’s plot and characters. And it worked. Each video sold copies of the book he was talking about. But he never actually talked about the book in the way he would have in a written blurb. I would recommend going onto TikTok and Instagram and using the hashtags #Booktok and #bookstagram to see what other authors are doing on there. If your favourite authors have TikTok or Instagram accounts, see what sorts of content they post to promote their work. Remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Identify the sorts of videos that make you feel good about the author and their products, not the ones that are trying to pitch books directly to you. Emulate the former, not the latter.  Unlike X or Facebook, these channels aren’t about how many followers you have. Your videos will be shown to users based on what they like to see, so it doesn’t matter if they follow you or not. If they are using any of the hashtags that relate to books or reading, there’s a good chance your video will be shown to them if you have used related hashtags, including genre hashtags Of course, if they follow you that’s a bonus, because it means they will definitely see your videos in the future. But that isn’t as important as it would be on X or Facebook. Once again we must add a “health warning” that using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok isn’t going to turn you into a best selling author overnight. But they can add additional strings to your marketing bow. Experiment and have fun. You have nothing to lose except for a bit of time.  Just a few tips for you. Make sure that any book titles haven’t become reversed during the recording process. I recently watched some TikTok videos by an author I follow and in a couple of them her book titles appeared as “mirror images”. This is a common problem when using the camera in “selfie” mode and holding the book up in front of your face (try it if you don’t believe me). If you have friends who read your books, ask them to do video reviews for you on TikTok or Instagram, making sure they use suitable hashtags, including your author name. Vary your styles and themes. If all the videos you post look the same or sound the same, people will lose interest.  Be patient (yes, that old one again). If you are just starting out on these channels it will take time for people to find you and to share your videos. But they will if you give them long enough.
Post as frequently as possible. Yes, it’s a big time commitment to keep on making new videos, but anything worth doing is worth investing the time into doing it. Use "dead time" to make videos, eg when commuting, coffee breaks, lunchtime etc. For those of you who have never used these platforms, here are some links to helpful videos on how to use TikTok. Most of what they say can be applied to YouTube and Instagram too. TikTok Beginner’s Guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjjjlJw2cgM How to make TikTok Videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAho-cr5UxY 10 Mistake TikTok users make https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrY9HpJd6zE Hashtags https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcZHGr_xpII If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. |
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