Is such a bold claim true? We at 42Rules don’t know for sure but it does seem like many of our colleagues and friends are toting around the Kindle’s they received for the holidays! What we do know for sure is that all of the 42Rules books come in a version for Kindle and all of the other e-readers as well. However, if you want an e-reader to read your 42Rules books and you love the Amazon.com catalog then you should consider a Kindle!
A popular phrase in marketing is “Return On Investment” or ROI. We always want to know the ROI of the marketing tactics we use and this is sometimes easy to determine. Where it gets murky is when it comes to social media. There isn’t a way to monitor social media impact at present because social media is not meant to be a marketing or sales channel. Social media is the opportunity to build relationships with present and future customers, build your brand and create a positive reputation. Most of this can’t be quantified.
In my opinion the best practices in social media include:
1. Build relationships. Tweeting a couple of times a week or posting to your Facebook profile or Fan Page once in a while isn’t going to build relationships. You need to monitor your accounts for visitor response at least twice a week if you’re just starting out and more often when you become more experienced. Answer questions, “like” responses and thank people for commenting. If you have the time check out the profile of your most vocal fans and follow them as well.
2. Don’t start a flame war. Build your reputation by responding positively and constructively to criticism. Show enthusiasm for suggestions even if they aren’t spot on. Move potentially destructive conversations off social media and on to e-mail or telephone. Do feel free to remove comments that are spammy or inappropriate and report people who continuously spam you. Building your reputation doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat and you have the right to protect your brand.
3. Monitor conversations about you or your book. People may be talking about you in a positive or negative manner on their own social media accounts so it’s important that you search for mentions of your book title and respond appropriately. You can setup Google Alerts to monitor some of this but you must also manually search social media sites proactively. You’ll be surprised at what you learn and much of it will be positive.
4. Use social media to promote but not sell. No one wants to follow someone on Twitter just to hear over and over again “Buy my book. Buy my book. Buy my book.” It is permissible, however, to mention a product discreetly.
If you get frustrated with the time you spend on social media remind yourself that you are building relationships and no one can put a price on that!
Entries are now being accepted for the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards (the “Indie Book Awards”), the book awards program is open to independent publishers and authors worldwide who have a book written in English and released in 2011 or 2012 or with a 2011 or 2012 copyright date. Learn how to submit a book here.
Time magazine listed this writing style-guide, The Elements of Style, as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. A sample of what’s in this book includes eight elementary rules of usage, forty-nine words and expressions commonly misused and fifty-seven words that are often misspelled. You can purchase this essential writing tool at Amazon.com.
USA Book News released the finalists and winters of the USA Book News “Best Books 2011” Awards. Quite a few of the finalists and winners are from independent presses. This is good news for the industry as a whole. You can read the entire list here.
Gigaom blog has a fascinating post entitled “How Amazon Is Helping To Sustain Long-Form Journalism” that covers the best and the worst of how Amazon is shaping the publishing industry. You can read the entire post here.
Tweeter Colleen Lindsay created a hashtag for Twitter “bkstoreluv” used to promote independent bookstores. With the collapse of Borders there are precious few brick and mortar bookstores left and writers and readers want to promote those that are left. Other tweeters joined Colleen in using the “bkstoreluv” hashtag and Media Bistro created a list “Best Indie Bookstores on Twitter” by compiling suggestions from users of the hashtag. Visit Media Bistro to read the list for yourself.
The Tenth International Conference on the Book is being held at the Universidad Abat Oliba CEU, Barcelona, Spain from 30 June-1 July 2012. Plenary speakers will include some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the areas of publishing, editing, librarianship, printing, authoring and information technologies, as well as numerous paper, colloquium and workshop presentations by researchers and practitioners. If this sounds like the conference for you visit http://booksandpublishing.com/conference-2012/ to register.
If you’ve written your book don’t discount the value of international readers. With the high cost of shipping overseas frequently increase more and more readers are purchasing e-books of various formats. If your book is not in an e-book format you’re losing sales domestically and internationally.
Writer’s Block. Every writer suffers from this affliction more often than we’d like to admit. We have a neat trick for non-fiction writers. If you need a topic for a chapter or a rule (as in the 42Rules books) then the first place you should visit is the place where your audience congregates. Often this will be industry forums but it might be topical newsgroups. Drop in frequently to see what your readers are talking about. You’ll learn about the newest trends, the questions your readers have and what they value. All that information is free for the taking!
