Author Fanfare You do not have the right to sell, or give away this report. The authors assert their moral and legal claim to copyright of this material. Note: your results may differ from ours in using this information and we cannot be held accountable if you do not achieve the results you expect. As with any online endeavour with book marketing, a lot of your success will depend on your chosen genre, writing style and ability, and perseverance. 2 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Table of Contents Hi, and Welcome to Author Fanfare!...4 Click Here to go to Noisetrade.com...5 Fill in your Author Information...6 Writing Good Bios...7 Setting Up Your Profile...7 Simple Trick...8 Linking to Your Online Presence...9 Adding Your Book...10 Keyword Research for Your Book Description...11 IMPORTANT: KDP Select Is Not An Option...12 Adding Subscribers to Your List...14 What to do Next...16
Hi, and Welcome to Author Fanfare! In this report, I'm going to guide you through how to use a short book to create a list of fans that builds itself on an almost daily basis, with no further effort on your part. This is as "push button" as anything gets, and I am going to show you: Where to upload your book How to make sure it's discovered How to weed out the right people to build your list of fans Note: If you pick up the companion report, Chimp Charmer: Author Edition, I'll show you a dirt-cheap way to market to your fans over and over again. You probably already know that the most successful indie authors (those who don't have the backing of large marketing departments in large book publishing companies) have one thing in common: A list. The money is in the list, or so they say. But I'll get back to that later, cos it's not entirely correct. For now, let's take a look at how you can build your own list using a neat little trick I discovered. This is not only one of the easiest ways to build a list as an author, but it is the closest thing to "set it and forget it" I have ever found in book marketing. I know that phrase gets bandied about a lot, along with "push-button riches" but let's get real here for a minute. I used this to gather 132 subscribers over approx. 6 months - on autopilot. That's a nice amount of subscribers for 30 minutes work, isn't it?
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole This method takes a little initial work - how much is up to you, because we will explore a couple of different options you may take and why you might take each one. Then, it will require follow up - but once a week for a few minutes at a time. The size of the list you build depends a lot on your niche or genre. You're probably not going to "explode" your list with this technique - but the list you build will be filled with people who willingly give their email address to you, so it's a targeted list. What's more; this method will get your book sent via email to a customer database that's already in existence. Sound good? Yep, I thought so! But let's not stop there - why not give away a taster and then make it really easy to make your prospective reader look at what else you have to offer. If you've ever shared a piece of a chocolate bar with your partner, you know for a fact they re going to take a look at how much more chocolate you have when they finish that piece. But that's info for later, too. For now, let's go through this step by step. Click here to go to Noisetrade.com
Author Fanfare Join Noisetrade Books as an Author When logging in to this site, you will get a choice of artist, author, or fan so make sure you watch what you are doing when you login - specially, if like me you use LastPass. Fill in your author information. What's important to do here, is that you create a good author biography. Something that will get found in search engines by the people who read your type of books - but also something for Noisetrade's internal search engine. For your Author Biography: this is the bit every author dreads (unless they are dreadful narcissists!). It needn't be that difficult. What you need to do here is show that you are the kind of writer that might appeal to your target audience. To do this, make your biography like a blog post. Most writers find it difficult to blog because they are so focused on creating their work that they don't know what to say about it. But they are over complicating matters. Let's take for example, a fantasy writer. For their biography/blog post, they might say things like, "I am a fan of Game of Thrones", "Anne McCaffrey's books were a big inspiration to me", or even "I often wonder what would happen if Doctor Who showed up in a world where dragons reigned supreme." Okay, that last one was a reach, but the idea is that by talking about what you like as a person, you are giving your bio readers an insight into whether they like the same kind of things you do. If a Game of Thrones fan were to read the bio above, they might think, "Hey, this guy likes GoT too, I think I'll try one of his books." 6 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole If you are a romance writer, it seems almost a requirement to add "is married to her husband, Tom, of 8 years and lives with their dog, Albert, in Idaho" or some such thing. Writing Good Bios Ditch the 3rd person description! We all know the majority of writers have to write most, if not all, of their bio stuff. Doing it in 3rd person just comes off as pretentious. If it doesn't, then it certainly creates an extra distance between you and your reader - a distance you don't want there. Start telling your story in your bio - make the reader engage with you right there and then. Don't think, "I'll wait till they start reading my book then pull out all the stops." Okay - author bio done, now let's turn our attention to the left hand side of the screen. This is something unlike any other publishing platform online. This is a novel way of using Author Information (pun intended). Setting Up Your Profile First of all, your author name will become a URL - so choose wisely. Now the really cool stuff starts. Look at "For readers of."
Author Fanfare Do you see how cool that is? As I have a book about writing for the web on there. I chose Tim Ferris - a known entrepreneur who has tremendous reach and appeal. This is tailoring my book towards the type of people who have read The 4 Hour Work Week. Noisetrade tell you that you must enter 3 - as if, given this opportunity to target readers through association, you won't add in as many as you can! Unfortunately, you can only pick 5. Simple trick: 1. Look up a book similar to yours on Amazon. 2. Filter the results with bestsellers at the top. 3. Choose the top 5 bestselling authors. If there aren't 5 in your niche - unlikely, but possible - look down at the "customers also bought" and pick the rest from there. Now you have big names to be listed with. 8 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole An aside: I recall listening to an audio excerpt from a famous copywriter whose name escapes me right now, but he said that one way to become known as a big player is to create a list of highly respected or influential figures in your business and add your name to that list. Just by having your name seen with those other names is enough to start cementing it into your readers' minds as being important. Nifty trick! That's why I always like to create lists on Listopia and List.ly (and you should too!). Okay, back to work: now that terms related to your book have been used in your bio and you have targeted your book to the audience you want, you can now add some reader bait. Linking to Your Online Presence Noisetrade allows you add your website link, Facebook fan page and Twitter handle. Make sure to do so in order to attract new fans through your book listing. You can also add links to where readers can buy your book online - including your own website! That means you can sell other books to that reader too. If you haven't got an author account on Goodreads yet, do so and add the link here. Trust me when I say, Goodreads is somewhere you should be active as an author! But that's for another day. Make sure to include your email in the last section to allow PR people get in touch. I haven't had anyone contact me, but depending on your niche, you may - especially if you are publishing in a hot trending genre like adult coloring books, where journalists are crawling all over it for stories right now.
Author Fanfare Adding Your Book All done? Click the Books tab, then "Add Book." Again, this will create a book URL (a URL is just a web address like www.google.com) so make sure that you have created a book title that is suited to both humans and machines: with keywords that a search engine will pick up as relevant to your work and a title that is compelling enough for humans to want to find out more about. I recall a headline for a product that went something along the lines of "Get more hot traffic than Kim Kardasian gets..." I can't recall what it is se gets a lot of - but the keyword "traffic" was in that title, and I know for a fact I wasn't the only one to be curious (and entertained) enough to open up that sales page and read it. That product was a bestseller. Now you can add your: book cover category (fiction or non-fiction) 10 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole 2 genres Changing any of this info afterwards is really easy - so make sure you do so if you are not getting as many downloads as you feel you should. It's not like Amazon's Kindle where it takes up to 24 hours for anything to happen - the power here is in your hands! And with great power comes great responsibility, blah, blah. Seriously though, do experiment with changing one of your genres and analyze the effect in terms of how many downloads your book gets. Your ideal market could be looking in a genre you didn't think to add to your book. You can even add a tip amount that you would like - sometimes people do actually tip you through your PayPal, and it's awesome when they do! How much you choose is up to you, but I like to set it at something around the equivalent of what a similar book would cost on Kindle, or a dollar or two less. Keyword Research for Your Book Description Next, the book description. Again, make sure to do some research on what keywords your target audience might look for. Non-fiction authors: I am a keyword research NUT. I own or have tried almost every keyword research tool out there. I even wrote a guide to it myself, but if you want the very best guide I have seen (other than my own), then I recommend Brian Dean's one here: http://backlinko.com/the-definitive-guide-to-keyword-research Fiction authors: you are not off the hook! Did you know that Amazon employs a company called A9 who analyze books for relevant keywords so as to sort their books? Head on over to: Forgottenbooks.org - here's a book I have chosen at random:
Author Fanfare http://www.forgottenbooks.com/books/the_corsican_brothers_and_ Otho_the_Archer_1000161122 Scan down and you will see "Most common words in this book." See how that can have an effect on what your book might be perceived as? I'm not saying that you should write a piece of fiction based on keywords, but just that you should be aware of certain terms that usually crop up in particular books - like "blood" or "pale" in a vampire book. Okay, next you can add a video trailer, publisher and ISBN if you have one. None of these are important for the purposes of list building. Book files - you don't have to stick with the one native file format here! Add a PDF, Epub AND Mobi, if you like. The more formats, the more readers you will reach. IMPORTANT: KDP Select Is Not An Option It's important to note: as you may have guessed from the ability to receive a tip, you are giving your book away free here. That means you can't have it enrolled in KDP Select. Make sure if you already do have it there, that you take it out of Select first. KDP Select is truly an awesome tool for reaching more readers with free book giveaways. For that reason it does make sense to use it for your book even once, before taking it out of the KDP Select program. Announce your giveaway in social media groups, free giveaway sites and a press release; get it out there for downloads, then unenroll it. You can do this by going to your KDP dashboard, and clicking the three dots under Book Actions and choosing "KDP Select Info" and then unenroll. 12 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole You will have to wait until the 90 day enrolment is finished before you can give your publish your book elsewhere, though some people have had success in removing their books immediately by contacting Amazon and asking. Now you are free to publish it elsewhere! And that's how you will build your list - with a permanently free book to offer as a taster. Why give away your book? Well there are two reasons: 1. Remember back in the Author info area? Well, by giving away a book, you can have someone contact Amazon and tell them about it to make it permafree - a common way to attract readers to your writing, with the aim to market your other books to them afterwards. 2. This is the best bit: you aren't really giving your book away - you are trading it for your readers' email addresses. Remember when I said the money is in the list, but it's not really? That's because it's in your relationship with your list. That's an important distinction. First, hit "Save Changes & Publish" and then let's discuss your list. The next tab on Noisetrade; Reader Data, is where, once your book is published, you re going to find the emails of those who wanted your book enough to give their email addresses in exchange for it.
Author Fanfare On this page you will see the total amount of downloads your book has received, total tips given and a graph that displays the download quantities that can be sorted by the week, month or quarter. Here's the thing about KDP - if you have a plan that works for KDP that is great! But often, books get buried beneath a ton of other freebies and offering them free just doesn't help. Don't get me wrong, the right mix of press releases and freebie announcements mixed with a hungry crowd will help you enormously. But after a while you'll have to wonder what the point of keeping your book on KDP for 90 days at a time is if it's not doing some kind of work for you. By gaining email addresses, it's definitely working for you by creating a marketing database of interested readers. Adding Subscribers to Your List Click on "Download Reader Data" to get an Excel file of your readers' info. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of detail in this data. There's enough for our purposes, but we need to be careful. Don't just start firing out 14 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole emails to these people, unless you want to get in trouble with your autoresponder company! First, do something that most people don't - look at the actual data in that Excel sheet and start creating separate lists. First thing you should look for: after the reader's name you can see what date they signed up. That helps you see whether you have already added them to your autoresponder or not. You'll need to do this every couple of weeks (the "almost" set and forget) adding them as you go. Be smarter than that, though. Take a few minutes to do this the right way. Take a look further along the readers' data - see how you can find out what country they live in? That's vital info. If our reader lives in an economically challenged country, they're not going to want to hear about your business services, or what websites or offers you found that might be of interest to them. So put them on a list of potential buyers for the next book you publish (or to let know about other
Author Fanfare similar books you have previously written). These people should be fine for one off emails that just let them know you've got a new book out, and if they'd like a free download during a promotion, or to get it at a good price, then here's the link. Next, put the people that speak your language (English I presume, if you are reading this) into another list - people in the UK, Australia and USA are more familiar with receiving emails with tips, great finds and offers and far less likely to hit the Report Spam button. Make sure your autoresponder is set to send a welcome message to anyone you add to a list you create especially for Noisetrade readers - so that you can mention in the message that they have downloaded your book and you hope they found it helpful, and by the way, here's a free download off my website, an opt in to my new book coming out next week (you can have it free on the first day/at 99c before the price goes up), whatever - but you get my point. Make sure they understand you are following up from their Noisetrade download and what kind of emails you will be sending them in the future - with a BIG OLE UNSUBSCRIBE BUTTON. It's far, far better to have them opt out now, than to have them get peeved when they receive a second email and decide to rat you out as an undesirable (in their minds). What to do Next 1. Create a folder to keep your reader downloads in. 2. Create a text file for each group - per book if you have more than one, but definitely as I described above for the two groups of people. 16 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole 3. Create a list in your autoresponder with a welcome message that tells them how you got their email, who you are and what you have to offer. 4. Upload your book, add your keywords, influential authors in your niche/genre, author bio, etc. Add your website and social details, and a link to your book on your website if you want to drive traffic there. 5. Create an alarm or choose a day that will stick in your head, like every Wednesday, every other Saturday, or the 1st of every month to download your reader data and add new subscribers to your Noisetrade list. As you can see, while on the face of it, this is quite an easy method of gaining subscribers to your list, there are a few tweaks needed to get it operating well, and a little maintenance on a regular basis - but once you have set it up right, this can run and run, while you need to do very little but send some emails and reap the rewards. I hope you've found this helpful, and in full disclosure; you can expect to hear from me gain with tips and tricks about publishing and marketing your books. I hate being on a list where all I get are the latest offers everyone is jumping on to collect an affiliate fee, so you won't get those from me. That being said, please feel free to unsubscribe if my style doesn't mesh well with yours and we will part friends. You can also connect with us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/epubscene/ All the best, Dave PS (from Dave and Barbara) - in our excitement, we forgot to mention: Noisetrade likes to email their subscribers with news of new
Author Fanfare books that have been published on their platform. Without question, the ones they have emailed me about all had great looking covers. Make sure you spend some time on a good cover, even if you are giving your book away free. Remember - you want your readers and potential readers to associate you with quality! A typical email follows on the next page: 18 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com
Dave Lynch & Barbara O'Toole
Author Fanfare - note the download link is embedded directly in the book image, so people can click straight through to your book! And in case you are wondering... though there's no erotica section in Noisetrade, the "Mommy Porn" book in the image above is categorized under romance and has a warning on the book description as to its content. Okay - don't delay. Go put a book up on NoiseTrade, and if you haven't picked it up already, save yourself a ton o time and money by grabbing our guide to Chimp Charmer:Author s Edition to help you set up your first autoresponder. Trust me, you're going to have your eyes opened if you didn't consider using them before! If you'd like to connect with me (Dave Lynch) on social media, please feel free to do so by following me on Twitter or Facebook. I also have a small group for self publishers called epub Scene where I'd love you to come say hello. All the best, Dave Lynch Barbara O Toole 20 Barbara O Toole http://epubengineer.com Dave Lynch http://epubscene.com