 Alright, we are at 603 so why don't we go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone to book marketing demystified with Matthew Felix. My name is Taryn Edwards and I am one of the librarians here at the mechanics Institute of San Francisco. This event was produced in collaboration with the San Francisco writers conference and together, the Institute in the conference, we strive to provide high quality learning experiences for writers at low cost or free. This event is free but I'd like to thank those of you who elected to support this event and pay a little something to attend. It really does go a long way to help the Institute do more in these challenging times. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the mechanics Institute, we are an independent membership organization that houses a wonderful library, the oldest in fact designed to serve the general public in California. We're also a cultural event center and a world renowned chess club that is the oldest in the nation. If you consider becoming a member with us. It's only $120 a year and with that you help support our contribution to the literary and cultural world of the San Francisco Bay Area, meaning we can do more events like this. Before we get started I just want to encourage our guests to use the chat space, if they have any questions, and we will get to them at the end of Matthew's talk. And if you miss something fear not we are recording the event, and I will send all of our registered guests a link to the events video in a couple of days. Now let me introduce our speaker. Matthew Felix is a mechanics member. He's also an author, a book marketing consultant, and an indie publisher and he shares his knowledge and experience with our community. A lot. He's also program manager and host of the San Francisco writers conference podcast. He works with authors and publishers on almost every aspect of, well I guess every aspect of book marketing and publishing from editing to interior and cover design to how to go live on publishing platforms. And he also provides you on marketing strategies. So you can find out more at his website with, which is easy to remember it's Matthew Felix calm. I will put that in the chat space, so that you can click through if you want to, or I'll include it in the email that I send you tomorrow with, not tomorrow soon with the video link, maybe tomorrow. Don't overcommit. Don't overcommit. Anyhow, welcome, Matthew and thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you Taren always good to be here and thanks for such a nice complete thorough bio I appreciate it and thanks to everyone else for being here as well and of course the mechanics Institute. I see a few familiar names so thanks for being here and lots of unfamiliar names so like I said thanks to everyone for being here tonight. So, I'm just going to jump right into things. When I started when I decided to become a writer full time, five years ago, I didn't have any sort of online presence, and I didn't want any sort of online presence I didn't want to be on Facebook I didn't want to be on Instagram or Twitter and I didn't even have a, you know website. In my first book I realized that that needed to change. And so began an ongoing exploration of an experimentation with the many approaches platforms tools services and platforms that are available to us as writers for marketing. After a while, once I started to have a little success and and get noticed through my efforts, unexpectedly people started approaching me fellow author started approaching me and asking for help. And in particular, stopped me and she said look I want you to do for me what you're doing for yourself. And so that's how again unexpectedly I just sort of fell into doing this kind of work and I've been doing it ever since. Terran already touched on probably most of what I do but again I do marketing for writers and publishers which is everything from developing executing strategies to managing social media to running Amazon ad campaigns. Setting up events doing interviews, all that sort of stuff kind of everything along on that on that lifecycle the publishing lifecycle. Let's talk about tonight so tonight my main objective of this talk is to just give you an overview of a lot of the options that are available to us and in the process again hopefully demystify marketing and I use that title. Because for me when I was getting started it was sort of mystifying right there's so many options I wasn't sure where to start how to proceed. And so it for me initially at least it was very overwhelming I think that's the case I know that's the case for a lot of people I work with initially so hopefully this will help with that. Want to address some common questions share some often overlooked techniques and then the overall hope then is to empower you to go out and do your own experimentation your own. Basically, experimentation like I said to try to figure out what might work best for you because it's going to be different for all of us. If there's one thing that you take away from tonight if you have to go now now would be the time to go if you have to because the one thing is books don't sell themselves. It's not necessarily hard, but it is work and I realize that might sound obvious but in my experience it's not necessarily obvious. I had a client or have a client who we were getting ready to launch right before COVID hit COVID hit. And all of a sudden of course we couldn't do these in store events and in in person events organizational events and things that we had lined up and so then the question was, do we not launch do we defer, you know what do we do. Well it was her first book and she said, you know, let's just go ahead with the launch and let's just let interest in the book grow. And I said, you know, that is not how it works. I wish that were how it worked worked. You know, I took me 10, 10 years to write my novel, and we spend so much time and energy and love and money and all of the above on our projects and so on some level we can just sort of think, well of course the world's waiting for my book. I've put so much time energy and love into it why wouldn't the world be waiting for my book well. Unfortunately, with the exception of our family and friends chances are the world doesn't care about our book. We give them reason to care. And so again, that's where the marketing comes in and that's where the labor of love comes in we have to we have to put in the work if we want to get the word out doesn't just happen on its own. So when deciding how you want to approach the marketing there are a few high level considerations to bear in mind. The first one is, excuse me, what is your marketing objective. Now this might sound really obvious. But again I don't think that it is because when I've in the answer you probably think as well to sell books, right. Well when I first started out and when I was first starting to market, I didn't have any books to sell my objective wasn't to sell books yet longer term of course it was excuse me short term though. I, I hadn't again like I said a moment ago I had no online platform, and I was hoping to get an agent. Well one of the first things that an agent is going to do of course is go look to see what your online presence looks like you know are you out out there in the literary community do people know who you are. So my short term marketing objective initially wasn't to sell books, it was to create an online presence. To get on social media I needed to develop my website that sort of thing so it's important to be clear on short term, what is your marketing goal because it's going to inform the decisions and the approach that you take. Another big thing is you need to decide how much time and money and effort you're going to spend on your marketing endeavor. There is really no limit to how much money or time you can spend on this. So again it's not a rhetorical question. Many, many, if not most writers. We are we're more than happy to do the work initially. I mean who doesn't want to throw a launch party and celebrate the fact that they've finished this huge project and they've gotten it out into the world and that feels good and so most of us are willing to put forth at least that amount of effort with our books. So here the work really starts after that launch party. That's when the real work the real marketing work starts largely to a large degree. And so, again you just have to be honest with yourself, and you have to to set your expectations accordingly. If you really don't want to do the marketing and maybe maybe this was just a personal project for you maybe you're not looking to sell hundreds or thousands of books maybe for you to share it with the world with your family and friends and maybe who else kind of happens to stumble upon it and that's okay. If that's your goal, then throwing a launch party and kind of celebrating, maybe that's enough. But if you want to sell more books than that, you've got to be honest with yourself and say okay well if that's the case I'm going to have to put the work in to get the word out. Another thing to keep in mind is you know you're not just marketing yourself, or you sorry you're not just marketing your book you're marketing yourself in addition. And it's that cliche expression that we hear so often you know you are your brand and I hate that expression I hate that concept because it feels so objectifying. But that is the truth of it. When I first started out, I did not want my picture on my book. I didn't want my picture on my website. I wanted my writing to be famous but I didn't want to be famous. I basically realized however that in 2016, I think is when it was. And, you know, and it's true today even more in this age of celebrity in this age of social media people want to know who you are it's part of their interest in buying your product whatever that product might be. And in our case of course it's books but that's why celebrities get these endorsement deals right we want to we feel like we know them we feel like we can trust them. We want to be like them we want to look like them we want to have lifestyles like them and so while that might be less important to us as authors there still is some some aspect of that that's relevant. And so, unless you're Elena Ferrante you probably need to be out there showing yourself to your potential readership. The thing that I've noticed a few times well first of all I noticed it in myself when I was just getting started and getting myself out into the world and my work out into the world but also I've noticed lately with with some of my clients is just like I didn't want to put my picture out there, and I just wanted my work to speak for itself. Sometimes we don't want to to our own horn right we don't want to necessarily some of us some of us it's not an issue but for a lot of people don't want to talk too much about ourselves don't want to make too big a deal about ourselves. Well, if we want to get our work out there we have to be able to do that because no one else is going to do it for us. We can celebrate our successes we can sing our own praises without doing it in a way that's just about ego and without looking like you know megalomaniacs. And so, sometimes your marketing efforts, like again I'll use that example again with me in the picture, just a very very simple example there are more complicated or more more involved examples but sometimes you're going to find yourselves. You're going to find your marketing efforts face to face with things that might be a little outside of your comfort zone maybe you've never done public speaking, right. You probably want to do some readings you probably want to do some public facing events, and maybe that, you know, maybe that terrifies you if you haven't done it that's just yet another example right so some of the things that we need to do, or that at least it's in our best interest to do to get our ourselves out into the world might be a little uncomfortable. And so I would just encourage you to take a deep breath and kind of seize those opportunities as opportunities for growth and and a way ways to support your work, because the other thing is just like anything, whether it's public speaking whether it's getting used to seeing my picture on the internet and now video all the time. You know we just we we get used to it we get behind it and it becomes less less daunting. The other big sort of high level thing with regards to approach or consideration with regards to approach is and I say this all the time there's not one way to do this. When I published my my last book which is a humor collection. A couple people said well you should see what David Sideris did and do what he did to try to get you know notoriety and attention on your book well. David Sideris what 10 years 15 years even longer I'm not I'm not sure when he kind of came on to the scene but things have changed so much things have changed so much in the last week never mind the last decade plus. And so while it's always good to kind of do case studies and learn from the past this idea that there's one way doesn't really ring true. Something that works for me might not work for you and vice versa. genre fiction is going to be easier to market probably than literary fiction. Each nonfiction book that has a very clearly defined audience is going to be probably easier to market than a much broader subject nonfiction book. But the other thing is the whole publishing industry and the platforms what we use to for our marketing purposes it's all a moving target right it's all changing constantly. And the best example that I have of this is when I first started a few years ago on social media. The best practice with Twitter was that you posted three times a day you posted the same post morning noon and night. Why because Twitter is basically this conveyor belt right and there's so much information getting thrown on to that conveyor belt that you have little chance of getting noticed and so what did we do. We posted the same thing repeatedly and that was just again the best practice at the time. Well eventually didn't take Twitter too long to realize wait basically there's just a bunch of spam out there and we need to clean things up. So from one day to the next they change their algorithm and suddenly you couldn't post the same thing three times in one day. So that's just one example and that so that was a big change right so that's just one example of how from one day to the next without warning. I didn't know about it I'm sure some people did but a big component of how I was marketing my myself and my books day to day changed overnight and that happens all the time. So the point is just to experiment remain agile and just just go with punches. Perhaps the two most important things though that I have you know come to realize as I've been doing this more and more is the two most important components perhaps of your marketing efforts. Platform and niche. And when I first got started, I kept hearing this term platform over and over again and I had a vague sense of what it was but it was never really that clear to me platform. And so I just now define platform is the way that we get the word out about our books. And part of the reason I think that I was confused and I think so many other people are often confused about platform is because it can take so many forms right. What might your platform be it might be a blog, it might be a podcast, it might be social media. It's your mailing list, it's the organizations you're a part of that when your book comes out you share in front you share the news with them and they help to spread the word. It's any other groups, it might be your if you have a relationship with your bookstore that might be part of your platform if you're able to do events with them. And so that's just really really critical is that you have a platform, if you want to get the word out. I do work with clients sometimes you really don't have a platform and we, we do the best we can, but the reality is, you can't just snap your fingers and have 10,000 people waiting to get news of your book right it takes time which I'm going to talk about a little more in a second. So if you don't have a platform, and you've got a book coming out in a year or six months or even next month, but hopefully, hopefully you've got more time, then start building one now, because it does take time. Do not wait until launch. I have a client who I've been telling for a year, you really got to choose on one social media platform I said you know you really got to get on, you know a couple others that we had identified for her that would be good for her and she didn't she didn't she didn't. And that's fine, you know, busy. Well, the book comes out. And then she contacts me and says hey I'm going to get on Instagram somebody told me I should probably get on Instagram. I said, Well, you can, but at this point it doesn't really matter. I mean it matters in the long haul, but you can't get on Instagram today and expect to post tomorrow and have 100 people who are going to even see that post because the algorithms don't work that way. You have to build up if we're talking about social media in particular, you have to build up a following you have to build that up over time. And a lot of people I run into this a lot where my clients will say okay well I haven't been on Instagram for a year, but I'll post tomorrow about my book. And it's, it doesn't hurt anything and some people might see it if you use the right tags and things, but big picture, you want to develop your platform over time. So let's talk about niche. So that was platform to talk about niche. And it's so many of us. Again, I fell into this category before I got started and a lot of my clients fall into this category. We want to assume that everybody that our book is for everyone. Right. I mean, I am that rare case with this book that I've written as luck would have it it really does appeal to everyone. And we think that's a good thing, but from a marketing standpoint, first of all, it's rarely if ever true it's probably never true. And even if it were it's not good from a marketing standpoint, you don't want your book to appeal to everyone because that means you have to try to market to everyone and you definitely don't have the time money to do that. You want to know who your audience is and those are the people to whom those are the readers to whom you want to market. And, and you want to figure that out before you start marketing as well. Why do you want to do that again because it helps set expectations if you're writing a book for an audience that's really only going to there are only five people in the world, that that book is going to be of interest to, then you want to know that so that when you only sell five books, you're not disappointed. Right. You don't want to think you don't want to go into this thinking well hopefully I'll have a you know a seller when there's really only five people out there who are going to be interested in your book. Of course I'm being dramatic to make the point, but you do want to have a sense do I have a large audience you know how many people if I'm writing a book about surfing in northern California how many surfers are there in northern California, what age group, you want to have a pretty good idea as good idea as possible of what your niche is who the people are who those readers are that you can set your expectations and then you know where to add how to how to develop your marketing strategy based on that audience. You don't want to just scatter a bunch of seeds and see where they're landed. I mean again you can but you're probably not going to have very good luck with that. I have an example which was or is a client who said you know, I want to place ads in industry publications for publishing. And I said well, you're welcome to do that but that's not where your readers are. So you can do that if it feels good to be in publishers weekly or forward you know whatever the magazine was, but don't expect a big boost in sales because that's not your readers you want to go where your readers are and in his case the readers were in another is a very specific genre. And I said, here's you know you need we need to be focusing on figuring out where those readers how to connect with those people specifically, not the publishing industry as a whole. And so he placed the ads and he felt good about him because it didn't felt good to see his book in the industry publications, but he didn't get a significant boost in sales. He felt good about it, you know, and you know he had the budget so that was okay. But, but again, if you want the sales you've got to be marketing to your audience not just marketing to the general public. It's not just about getting the word out it's about getting the word out to the right people to your readers. Okay, so those are some considerations for your approach that you take to marketing. Now I want to get into some of the nitty gritty some of the some of the specifics sort of on the ground or in the trenches sorts of things. I was at a conference a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago now, and a woman was speaking about the importance of author websites. And I was shocked because I thought well don't we all know that we need to have an author website who doesn't who doesn't know that and so I was so surprised that she spent so much time talking about author websites that I ran up to her afterwards and I said you know don't doesn't everyone kind of know that we need an author website you know why did you emphasize that so much. She said, no, they don't. She said that she's often deals with authors who think that social media Facebook in particular is enough. And that had never occurred to me, because it's not enough. And why isn't it enough it's not enough for a few reasons but the main reason is, we don't have control over social media. If Facebook wants to change or you know I just use that Twitter example of Twitter wants to change something from one day to the next, or Facebook, which they have done, or Instagram or snapchat wherever, you know whatever platforms you're using they can change things from one day to the next. They can put paywalls between us and and our readers as again Facebook is done which I'll talk about that in a second. That can happen at any time so we don't have control never mind the fact, something I often hear from clients is, I posted on Facebook and no one seems to have seen it. When we started with Facebook, all our friends anyone that we were connected with, they would see our posts, but that those days are long, long, long, long gone now it's based on this algorithm. The last time I looked at a statistic relative to how many people see our posts was a couple years ago so this is probably way out of date but still just to give me and I give you an idea. It was like 16% of your friends or followers see your posts. Now I'm sure again it changes so often maybe it's 30% now maybe it's 5% now I don't know the point being so many people rely on they think oh I've got an event I'll just post on Facebook, and everyone will know about it. It doesn't work that way so what do what do we need instead, you need your website, your website is the one place and again we use social media social media is part of the picture, but the one place the one piece of real estate online real estate over which we have complete control is our website. So that's why it's that's why it's absolutely important. Got to have a website, and it can be three pages you know it can be a bio an author pay or a bio a book page, it can be really simple, but you need a website. Okay, let's talk about social media so often. People think that this is what we're talking about when we say platform and again social media is part of our platform. One very common question that I get and that I hear is you know which platform, particularly with new writers which which there's so many there's so many social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Snapchat, Tiktok, Tumblr, Pinterest, and you know 10 that probably have come online since we started this this this meeting. So which one should you be on. Well again it comes back to what we were talking about related to niche, you should be on the platforms on the social media platforms where your audience is. So, you know Facebook is kind of kind of ground zero so that might be you're probably going to be on Facebook but maybe not maybe it maybe you're writing for young adults and you want to be on Tiktok or Snapchat ones that are targeted to a younger demographic. Maybe you're writing about politics or your at least your readership is really politicized and they're having heated discussions about politics on Twitter, then you want to be on Twitter. Point being, you just, if you're not sure where they are, then you just need to do some research and some experimentation and find where is my readership where are people who are interested in the themes and the things that I'm talking about in my book and connect with them on those platforms, because you can't do them all right I just listed off how many 10 and we know that there are more than that so you can't do them all well. So choose to or maybe three that you're going to do well and stick with those. Regardless of the platform that you choose whether it's Facebook or Twitter Instagram or something else. It's all about engagement. And this is like the ultimate buzzword, but it's a buzzword that still rings very very true so I want to talk about this for a second. People are on social media to engage so what does engage mean what is that buzzword so it's they want to be entertained, they want to be informed, they want to have discussions they want to learn something. I had a whole list of other stuff but it's basically what else yeah express their opinions they want to have conversations. If I just post a link to my book probably doesn't really do that right, I see a lot of that sort of thing, where we, we don't think of social media, regardless of the platform we don't think of it in terms of engagement we think of it as just kind of sharing with the world what we're up to I posted a link to my book on Amazon so hopefully people will go there. That's just it's not usually how it how it works. Thank you for your posts. First of all there's two sides to this there's your posts and other people's posts for your posts. You want to ask questions you want to share things that that start conversations. You could do some really obvious things again this is kind of the extreme example just to show you the sorts of things you could be doing you could be doing quizzes. But one of the best examples I always use is, if you're in the process of developing your covers and let's say your, your cover designer has done three cover designs, a great thing to do on social media is to throw the three designs up and basically take a survey hey which cover do you like the best and why those sorts of things people like to share their opinions they also people genuinely like to help each other right. And so when we have the opportunity to help you choose between two or three covers like we enjoy doing that we want to do that sort of thing. So that's what we're talking about when we say engagement versus just saying here's my book here's a link. Go buy it it's got to be you've got to be more engaged than that. The other thing though so that's the that's the your side of the equation the other side of the equation though is engagement is a two way street. So, if you want me to care about your posts, you need to like like my posts once in a while you need to comment on my post once in a while. You need to, if it if my post resonates with you maybe you need to share my posts once in a while, right, we're all out there hopefully helping each other that's engagement we're all there supporting each other encouraging each other, sharing each other success, and getting the word out, you know, I don't have a week a book out every week. So I'm happy if your book comes out I'm happy to help you, you know, congratulate you and maybe share if I think that you know my following is interested in your book, that sort of thing so again it's a two way street. I'm going to post about myself, but I'm also going to make sure that I'm paying attention to your posts and and reacting to and engaging with your posts as well. So back to what we post ourselves be creative about what you post so where do some examples other than the link to your book on Amazon. Do you have a launch party take video of the launch party take pictures of the launch party post the pictures. If you get a great review post an excerpt of the review and again this can be on Twitter this can be on Facebook this so much of this stuff can happen across platforms even if you might, you know, tweak your application a little bit depending on the platform but so much of this stuff can happen on different platforms. I did I did a series of excerpts from my novel when I first published my novel I would just put what I thought were salient clips, even on on Instagram I would put, you know I would create a picture which I'll talk about in a second. I would go to number one, which hopefully they do the last one dead you know in a couple categories. Then I celebrate that right, and I celebrate that because I've already celebrated other people stuff again I'm mixing in talking about myself with talking about and supporting other, you know my other friends and followers, but awards sales milestones excerpts like I said, any events related to to your book you want to take advantage of that content and share it on social media. The first thing is how we post. And what I mean is not just doing text, right. I forget what the with the exact statistic is but pictures get exponentially more attention than just text posts, and then video gets exponentially more than pictures. There is a statistic it's a little old now I think I got this couple years ago but at the time. I still use this because it just illustrates the point so well by 2022 so theoretically next year online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic 15 times higher than it was in 2017. So even if that stats a little old the point is everything's going towards video. So whether it's Facebook Instagram Twitter. I use video and all of those platforms and and you should to it's it's it helps you get that much more attention for what what your marketing. Not everyone has video editing skills I just use on my Mac you know I just use the iMovie it's actually really easy there are lots of other apps out there that make it pretty easy it doesn't have to be fancy. Another thing is I, I live and breathe, you know Photoshop but there's there are services and there are apps like websites like Canva that if you're not very gifted with doing the graphics and things they've got all these templates and they make it really easy canva is a great a great place to go if you want to create posts that are much more interesting than than they might be otherwise, and they're all sized, you choose the size for Facebook the different size for Twitter. So anyway, if you put a little bit of effort, whether it's videos whether it's pictures if you put a little more effort into those I'm able to I use reuse so much of mine. Right. And so yeah it might take me a little longer to come up with a set of posts and things, but, but a lot of it I'm able to reuse and so I feel like it's it's worth with the with the time and effort when to post. So for a book now I'm talking specifically about a book because I a lot of what I've been saying has been specific to books but this is particularly specific to books. Excuse me, I'm not only going to post after launch I'm also going to post in the run up to launch, at least, I don't know at least three months or six months I don't know what the magic number is. I mean I would usually probably start six months ish point being you want to generate the excitement in the interest I always say that launching a book without marketing ahead of time is like throwing a party and then sending out the invitations. Right, so you want to send out the invitations and you want to remind people that's how you get people to show up to your event. Right, you don't wait until after the event to send out the invitations and the reminders and things. And so it's the same with your with your book marketing, I you ideally we want to get people in such a frenzy that they can't wait to buy your book. Right, and that doesn't happen if you start a week before a couple days before you want to start months ahead of time. Ideally, then that's beforehand but then afterwards I'm going to keep marketing for a long time I marketed my book for at least four years very actively and I kept it oftentimes a lot of the time way more than half the time it was number two in the Morocco categories, just after learning the planets Morocco. And that wasn't that didn't happen by accident that happened because I had a podcast that supported it I did Amazon ad campaigns and support of it that I kept running for those four years I was active in Facebook group supporting that. And when I got busy with other stuff and I decided you know, again, we can only do so much when we have so much time, and I realized okay I think I've kind of run the time and effort that I can for that Morocco book and so now it still sells but it doesn't sell nearly what it did when I was actively doing that marketing. Okay, let's get even more specific with regards to the platforms because there are a few questions that always come up related to each of these platforms so I do want to touch on those. So in my book, when I was first starting out, and I still hear this, again, I was told that and told, I mean I when I did the research I read and learned that I should have an author page, right what I'm an author Facebook has author pages how great is it that I can do that and feature my work. And so I spent all this time and energy getting people to like my author page and I've got like 700 or 800 likes on my author page and for a while that was the main focus. When I was on Facebook I was primarily posting and focusing on getting people to that page. Well, per the conversation that I did or per my comments a little while ago. Facebook changed things and all of a sudden, basically because I had by by getting an author page we're telling them that we're a business. So from one day to the next Facebook decided that they wanted me to pay to get, I mean me they wanted us to pay to get our author page posts disseminated to people. And so now I rely almost exclusively on I still post on my author page because it's there and I have enough people who do see stuff there that I still post there, but my main posts, my main efforts go to my personal page and it's the same for my friends it's the same for my friends they've all experienced that same phenomenon whereby their author pages are way less important than they used to be once upon a time. I should say though that there are a couple of pros. If you want to do Facebook ads which I'm about to talk about. You need to have an author page if you want to get metrics. You get metrics with your author page. I've never really found them that helpful but some people, some people probably do. Those are the those are the advantages. Facebook ads. So the great thing about Facebook ads that you always hear people rave about is you can just you can target based on so many criteria geography age education level interests and on and on and on so that's a great side to Facebook ads. The con to Facebook ads is I've never sold any books with Facebook ads that I can tell I've never seen any noticeable and I have tried so many variations, because I have a novel, I have a travel collection I have a humor collection. And so I've tried all sorts of different graphics I've tried you know funny ads I've tried serious ads I've tried video ads. And I've never had significant particularly relative to the cost I've never really had significant success and I don't know authors who have now. That doesn't mean that you won't because again it's different for all of us maybe your demographic maybe your target audience for whatever reason responds to those ads and, but but they haven't for me. I always recommend that you try it spend $20 on Facebook ads right you can do it, you choose what your budget is you could you could do it with five bucks right. So there's a low cost there's a low risk there and so far as if you want to give it a go. But, but again for me I haven't had much success with Facebook ads for books. What I do instead on Facebook is I leverage the groups. There are Facebook groups if you don't already know their groups for everything. Absolutely everything there are lots of books, you know book related groups, people and you know to get into genres there's mystery writer groups there's sci fi groups there's all sorts of groups and there of course are free. And so it's a way of targeting still finding your target audience without without paying. And I'm not saying it's necessarily as targeted as sophisticated of course as the ads are, but it's it's for me it's been a nice compromise and a way that I, you know, or functionality at Facebook offers that I do leverage. Instagram I touched on this a second ago it's not just pictures, I because I get this a lot from people who aren't on Instagram. Well I'm not really photographer I don't really have a lot of, you know good photos. The highest, the most likes I ever got on an Instagram post was from a poem that I posted. I already mentioned a second ago that when my novel came out I would periodically post excerpts from the novel. You know you can just create a nice border again with Canva or in my case I just use Photoshop. You can create a nice border you can create a nice image that looks good on Instagram but it's really about the text. There are so many. There's a whole world of quotes on on Instagram. So don't think of Instagram only in terms of pictures quotes reviews book covers events. Instagram now has. I mean you've been able to use video on Instagram for a long time but now they're really pushing their reels which are 30 second video clips. So again is really important on Instagram. It's not just photographs so Instagram is is worth checking out again if that's where your audience is. The other thing I should say relative to Instagram why I like it is whereas on Facebook, my posts are pretty much only seen by people I know on Instagram because they have tagging which I won't go into now but basically you know if you post about again surfing. But I'm going to use that metaphor again just because it's easy. For some reason it's in my mind. You can tag surfing surfboard surfer. So you can you can tag each post with the things the themes that are in that post and so you're able to reach people who aren't your friends. So whereas on Facebook, I have met 95% of the people we might not be close friends but at least I've met them in real life on Instagram. I haven't met 98% of the people probably who follow me. And so since the goal here is to get the word out not only to the people we know but to expand our audience that's why I like Instagram is because I feel that it's easier to do it on that platform versus versus Facebook. So why be on Twitter again I mentioned this earlier about the sort of the political conversation so Twitter is more about conversations right it's more about having dialogue, it's less about what did I do today, or here's my news, and more about. I mean again politics dominate Twitter it's not just about politics though it might be if you have a certain subject matter. If you're you know history buff. There are threads on Twitter about different aspects of history where historians are having conversations. And so it's that sort of thing I don't use. I have a presence on on Twitter, but it's not it's not my main one. One thing I will mention the travel writer friends or Pete friends who write for magazines journalists, another good example of how Twitter can be useful in a way that like, again maybe Facebook can't or Instagram can't is that they're able to use Twitter as a way to directly reach, reach editors of magazines and things. So there's there's an access that some of these platforms can provide that otherwise can be hard to come by. Ultimately though, all of these things that depends on who and where your audience is. YouTube so according to word stream online advertising software and services provider more than 500 million hours, 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day. So I film every event I do, you know we're filming this I film my book launches I film the podcast. I film basically everything I do and I do upload it to YouTube now. So the pro there obviously is just that it's this huge platform, which is great right there's the potential to reach so many people. The con is that it's a huge platform and there are so many people and there's 500 million hours well that's not how much is uploaded I don't I can't remember how much is uploaded but again since we started this event. So that's the con right is how do you get noticed amongst all of that that's getting uploaded. And it's hard and that's why we hear about you know we hear about in the news. These, these kids who they've dedicated everything to YouTube and they just burn themselves out right because it's so hard to stay relevant and to keep producing content that gets attention. It's hard to maintain that now, most of us are never going to be we're not going to dedicate our ourselves 100% to YouTube. So there's no danger of that. But I just use that to illustrate the point that while YouTube is definitely worth pursuing and like I said I use it for everything. It's tricky to get noticed. And if you're not comfortable with video and you're not going to post regularly then it might not be for you. For a lot of people it's like I said I'm I'm now I've done enough video that it's just kind of second nature and just like again this event. But it's hard to get noticed and it takes effort to get noticed because that's the other thing people often think is, well I'll post it to YouTube and that's my marketing that's part of my marketing well. Yes, if people find the video organically on YouTube, but usually you have to help people find it so you have to market your marketing. So, lots more to be said there. Let's talk about Amazon, right so we've talked about our website we've talked about social media, most of us as indie authors most of our books are going to get sold on Amazon. And I hate the fact that they're this monolith and some of the adverse effects of course that they have on indies now we have bookshop.org. But let's talk about Amazon because reality is, we still are going to spend a lot of time and put a lot of effort there. Take the most of your book page. So many authors don't do this and what do I mean by that. If let's talk about my Morocco book if you're going through the Morocco section and you land on my Morocco book because you're not sure which Morocco book you want to buy. You're going to see five lines when you land on my book page. Those five lines need to jump out usually what you see is just a paragraph right it's not formatted it's a basic description it might be a great description but it doesn't jump out. Well I only have a split second to get your attention and to draw you in further. So what am I what am I going to do with those first five lines. That's that's how many show up for Kindle a few more show up for the paperback version. I am going to, I'm going to create a catchy tagline so that you know in an instant kind of the vibe of the book and whether or not it might appeal to you. If I've won any awards I'm going to mention them if I got a great review. I'm going to mention that. So what is social proof social proof is if you don't know me, I need to prove to you that society, quote unquote, has has has said yeah this guy this product is legit. So that you feel safe buying my book versus somebody else's book who's maybe more famous. If you see that that Peter Greenberg liked my book if you see, then that proves to you that there's some legitimacy there and you can feel comfortable taking a risk on me if you might not know me otherwise. So all of that I'm going to try to get into those first five lines, then I'm going to do a succinct synopsis, not sometimes you see this, you know, practically, you know their chapter long synopsis I'm going to put a succinct synopsis that gives you the look of the not the look and feel but it gives you the feel of the book, and I'm going to format it. You can bold you can italicize and so if I won gold I'm going to bold the word gold things like that. Point being, think about the presentation of your Amazon page don't just, you know post a paragraph take advantage of that formatting it doesn't take I'm not talking about something that takes. You know, we're talking about another 15 minutes of effort it's not it's not a big undertaking but it can make a difference and so far as the presentation. The other thing I'm constantly shocked at how many authors and I understand why but I'm nonetheless I'm shocked by how many authors don't go to the effort to get reviews and again reviews are critical from the social proof standpoint. I don't know you I need to see that Kirkus said your book was good or forward said your book was good or even better New York, you know, New York Times book reviews said your book was was good so those are the editorial reviews. You want to, and maybe they're experts, you know, maybe they're they're either those sorts of services publications industry publications, or they're experts in your field or they're another famous author has endorsed your book, you want at least a few of those in the editorial reviews section. And of course, you need to get your readers to give you some reviews and I when I work with my clients I usually suggest that they line up at least like five reviews sort of seed reviews that are already there when the book goes live or you know moments after the book goes live. So that people they have that social proof from the get go. And then I suggest that they, you know, ask over and over and over for reviews now. Technically, you're not allowed to ask your family and friends for reviews of Amazon knows that it's your family or friend they will remove the review and then it's happened to me many times. It happens. And it's very frustrating because it takes so much to get people to actually leave a review and so then when they leave the review and then Amazon takes it away. It's very frustrating. Another way to avoid that is don't give them the link don't give your family and friends again I'm not telling you to ask your family and friends of course but if you were to do that don't give them the link, because there's so much metadata in that link Amazon can will know that you sent them that link unless you clean the link, which is more than I'm going to talk about here. So just tell them to go search for your book and leave the review that way and also when I'm asking for reviews I underscore. I'm not asking for a New York Times or a Kirkus level review just give me a few sentences and five stars or four stars if you didn't like it that much but you love me enough, you know, give me four or five stars. Really, really important for the social proof. Okay. I'm going to talk just briefly about Amazon ads in the interest of time I'm paying attention here to the time. I used to have a lot of success with Amazon ads and now I have moderate success. Again, I don't know if they change the algorithms if they change how they do things, but for a long time I, I really they I sold a lot of books with Amazon ads now it seems a little I still recommend that you try it I still recommend. I don't recommend that you do it thinking you're going to come out ahead, but I do recommend it just in the traditional sense of add dollars right anytime we're going to try to get something on on the market in any industry. We place ads. Again, we have to let the world know, and we don't necessarily I mean we hope that we're going to earn more than the add dollars that we're spending. So with Amazon ads maybe you will maybe you won't I still do it even if I'm breaking even I still do it just for the visibility, right and just hoping that that visibility then spreads, you know has it has sort of a ripple effect. Basic way that Amazon ads work there are two ways now. Initially, once upon a time there was one way which was you would just go in. You would choose you would set your budget. I'm only going to spend $20 a day I'm only going to spend $100 total on my campaign for example. And then you would choose a bunch of keywords that were relative to your book Morocco travel Morocco travel Tangier. And then you would set a bid for each of those keywords and then he would send it out and people would hopefully see it and then buy your book. So that's one way that you can still do it the other way that you can do it is now you can just say Amazon I just trust your algorithm. And I'm just going to this is how much I want to spend just do it for me so you have both of those options so short version of Amazon ads is that they're worth, they're worth exploring. Another thing that I that I've had a lot of success with and and this is one tool that has helped get my books to number one in lots of categories is discounted mailing mailing lists. The famous one is bookbub, but that's really hard if you're an indie author if you're not traditionally published it's really hard now to get accepted by bookbub bookbub I've been accepted a couple times. But again, really hard now but there are lots of other lists that do the same and basically what these lists are is if you're an avid reader, and you like ebooks because these are for ebooks. So in this list and you say, send me all the weekly deals or the daily deals for historical fiction or for science fiction or for romance or for mystery whatever your interests are. And then they send you these books that are on sale for 99 cents $1.99 to 99 whatever the prices might be. And so this is these these services are great and bookbub is super expensive, but that has always paid off a lot. And that's a great one if you can get accepted but these other ones are more like 25 bucks 35 bucks, and I usually break even or come out a little ahead. Again though it just depends on your book depends on your audience. But I always get, and I'm scared to say always because if it doesn't happen for you don't blame me but I have had really really good success with always getting a big bump in sales and when I say big bump maybe it's 20 books maybe it's 30 books but you have to make a big difference in that single day in the rankings and then to get the attention that comes with that. And again the hope being that there's a ripple effect the hoping that then you stay up there for a while, and and you continue to enjoy sales as a result of these lists. Others, other than bookbub that you can check out that I've had success with book gorilla bargain book see fussy librarian and there's just a lot out there. Some of the lists are like somehow they have different lead times different requirements. And again, I'm sure that they're each list probably has its own audiences that with which it has the strongest following so again experiment. Okay, so coming close to the end here so there's just several more things I'm just going to touch on really briefly. That are things that I use as part of my strategy both for myself and when I'm working with clients kindle unlimited. So this is if you make your ebook exclusive to Amazon, it's called Kindle unlimited and you get certain marketing benefits, but also people readers who sign up for this program. They can read your book by page and then you get paid by page. You get paid less this way, but I use it all my books are are exclusive to Amazon, despite my misgivings that I mentioned a little while ago. And because it's just another audience it's just a way to reach another audience and the other the reason I decided to do this because I did have some moral dilemma or some moral debate, because I just, I'm not so I don't sell ebooks on the other platforms I always launch my books on all the platforms and then I wait to see. I just, I sell a negligible amount on iBooks or those other ebook retailers, unfortunately, I wish that weren't the case. So I did make my books, my ebooks exclusive to Amazon to take advantage of this other pool of potential readers. And I have had many, many, many, many thousands of pages read, you know at this point so it in my view it is worthwhile pursuing that free books. I've taken chapters or stories turn them into free books and I've had way more than 20,000 of those downloaded the idea of being just to use them as a way to get my name out audio books repurpose your content. Audio books can you know can cost a few thousand dollars to do that if you have the budget though it's great to repurpose that existing content audio books are only becoming more and more popular giveaways. I always always do giveaways for myself and for my clients I usually will do a good reads giveaway in the months leading up to launch it's a great way just to get you know attention and they're not that expensive they're like $125 I think. Paid promotion you can consider this I haven't done a lot of this Kirkus reviews forward reviews. And there might be other targeted options you know again in your niche depending upon your book. And then the last thing I'll mention are blog tours. These are basically bloggers come together and they sign up for these services and when there's a book that they're interested in, they will. They'll ask to interview you they'll ask you for a sample chapter or they'll. You know they'll just do they'll feature your book in different ways, and this is really just for genre fiction, mostly. But one of my clients has had a lot of a lot of success with that once again it depends on the provider you want to find a good one I think the one that we used is goddess fish I think it's called you can email me about that. But that's mostly for genre fiction so I am more or less out of time so I'm going to wrap it up there but that's just a that's as much as I could fit into 50 minutes of my different approaches and the tools and services and and how to approach your marketing strategy like I said it's really good for everybody. Experiment, see what works for you. And thanks for listening. Wow, thank you so much. I took a lot of notes, which I hope I have every intention of reading and following up on and making a plan. Yes, kind of have a plan. I appreciated that. I just want to tell everyone if you have any questions, put them in the chat space and we're going to try and turn on your microphone so you can ask the question directly. But if you put, if you put the question in the chat space, at least we can all see it in case the microphone thing doesn't work out. Thank you Marlene. Yeah Marlene has a nice comment there. I guess you're looking at it already. I already saw this presentation most of this presentation so when I saw that Marlene was here I was delighted and then I thought oh I hope she doesn't get bored so thank you for saying that Marlene. Hopefully there was enough that you didn't remember everything for the last time. It's always nice to have a friendly name on the list of attendees. It is. It is. Okay so I know someone has some questions. Otherwise I'll just keep talking. Otherwise I'm gonna have to dig in my notes. Otherwise you're gonna have to dig in your notes are messy. I've seen your notes. They're just all over the place. All over the place. One question that I have about starting one's marketing plan. Did you start to craft this before you finished your book or did you like finish your book and then say okay done now I've got to start marketing. Well that's how I did it and that's totally the wrong way to do it right. I mean because for me my so my first book took me 10 years that was my novel that's not the first one that I published that was my first book. And so at that stage in my you know career or whatever I was just trying to get that book done right. So I didn't have time to figure out marketing and so I know that and that's the case for so many of us right we're just trying to get our first books done. A lot of what I'm talking about in so far as doing it beforehand. I get that that some of us, you know we're just not there yet so this is like the ideal this is what you want to do. Some people might not just have just might not have the bandwidth they might not be able to do a lot of planning ahead but but in an ideal and not even very ideal world, you do want to do the planning ahead of time, because it's really hard to scramble after the fact and as we know in marketing again whatever the industry is. There's such a premium placed on what's new. Right. And so you want to leverage the fact that your book is new and so in order to leverage that you have to have planned ahead. You can't it because it takes I can't just call Mechanics Institute and say I wanted to do an event tomorrow right you plan way ahead I you know, setting up while Amazon ads actually you can do right away. But most of the stuff that we're talking about there's a lead time right there's a lead time if you want to get any sort of press there's a lead time for most sorts of appearances. And so you need to plan ahead. And if you can't then you do your best, but ideally yes you're planning ahead. Great. We have a question from Bob. And so I'm going to try to have Bob, ask this directly because it's, you know, a little bit more fun to hear people's voice. There's Bob. But he's still muted because he asked on himself. There we go. I just did. Yep. Can you hear me. Good. I hear you. What you get with the book marketing is about series marketing. The idea is to put your first book out and then chain additional books to that book. Right. You get you do the first book free and then you start charging for the second book. Yep. And you do various kinds of free promotions at various points to restart things. So what's your experience with that. I don't have direct experience with that. Like I said, I have done some because I don't I don't have a series, right. But I like I said I have used free ebooks to get attention and like I just said a second ago I've had way more than I say way more because I haven't checked the book for a year or two. But when I checked a year or two ago I had in excess of 20,000 free ebooks downloaded. And so I do know that that's a people people love things that are free and I do know that Joanna Penn super super successful. I can't remember 50 million books I mean some ridiculous figure of books sold I interviewed her for the San Francisco Writers Conference podcast you might want to check that out she talks she does that. She has a bunch of series and she heard the first book in her series is free. And I think it's a, I think it's an absolute it's basically like I'll give you a trial run, I will prove myself to you. And people are happy to pay once they know it goes back to the social proof also that I was talking about a little while ago I mean it's not the same thing but it's the same idea that if you if I can prove to you that my book is legit and of interest to you, then you will be willing to buy it. So using a free book to get you started, you know, I think it's a great way and if you have a series, then I would definitely recommend playing around with that absolutely. Thank you. Yep, thank you. All right, next up is Paula. Hello. Hello. Great presentation. You're welcome my question is about the effectiveness of using book talk. I recently launched a self published book poetry self help self care, wondering if that is a good platform for that. I don't know book talk, I don't know book talk. I'm going to know it afterwards can you tell me a little bit more about it. It's, it's a division I think my husband's on the line he knows better he's the one who told me about it but it's a division of tick tock. Okay yeah I don't know about this I don't I haven't I don't have much experience with tick tock I don't really do a lot of that demographic but so I can't answer that question but I will definitely check it out afterwards. Okay, thank you. Sorry. I wish I had more but and but see this also does though I'm glad you I'm glad you gave me an example. Like I said, there's just how many platforms have launched since we started this conversation right there's so much out there and every time I give one of these talks there's another something like this that comes up. And so so I appreciate you bringing that up and like I said, I'll know more next time. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'm impressed with how hip. Everyone is. I would ask Paula I guess what's what's the premise of that because I might be able to speak to the premise what's the. Okay. Again this is second hand because my husband did the research. You give a little verb of video 30 seconds I guess about your book so it's like a teaser. Right. And yeah, that's it that's all I know. Okay, so it's not it's not as if you're reading for it's not like some sort of audible thing it's more just a it's you're using tick tock to promote your book with a quick teaser. Well, so yeah so I mean I definitely done lots of video clips related to so I went down so from my novel I went down to in front of the Golden Gate Bridge I had the bridge in the background and I had my friend film me. And I did lots of 60 second I did a series of 60 second blurbs about my book which it sounds like it's that same kind of idea. So if it's if it's that sort of thing where you're just using video and you're using this platform to generate excitement for the book and absolutely I was thinking maybe there was more going on but no use video and if that's where your demographic is and 30 seconds make the most of those 30 seconds, especially on tick tock you've got to, you know you do need to be hip and and make it fun. But, but yes. Yes, absolutely. All right, thank you. Thank you. Sounds like a really fantastic platform. We'll see Don has a question I see in the chat. Yeah, Don, let's turn you on. Hi. Don, are you there. Maybe what says he's unmuted, but so I'm just going to read his question then so it says, my publishers paid for all the marketing 20 years ago, do they still do that. No, no they do not. I had a huge expectation, even for, you know, I mean I talked to a New York Times best selling friend the other day because I needed a publicist I mean for for another client and you know, and she was having trouble getting a publicist and she was going to have to pay for the publicist I talked to another New York Times actually best selling friend. A few weekends ago, and she talked about how she wanted to, she wanted to promote her book at the Miami Book Fair, and how they would not pay for her to go there so she said well I'll pay if you can just get me in. So no, they don't, they don't offer the kind of support that they did once upon a time and one of the first things that they're going to do is look to see what kind of effort are you going to make. And in building your platform improving that you are going to put the effort in which again includes spending the money to get the book out. So no, those days are gone. Sadly, I would have loved to have benefited from them. Wow, looks like Paula is back with some follow up. Where is she. Let me see if she wants to talk again. I'm just, I'm just full of questions. That's good. That's why we're here. Thank you. I did a bit of research about becoming a New York Times best seller. And I read that self published books are not eligible is this accurate. You are just determined to ask me questions that I don't know the answers to. That's what makes it interesting right. So, so now I'm going to check. There are indie titles that come to mind that have definitely been best sellers so 50 shades of gray, the Martian. Those are just two that off the top of my head come to mind that were independently published. Now what I don't know is, did they become New York Times best sellers after they got picked up by traditional publishers, or I'm not sure. So, so there's a way that you can still as an indie, you can get there, but you might have to generate enough success on your own to get picked up by a traditional publisher and then make it to that list. It wouldn't surprise me if you have to be traditionally published that wouldn't surprise me at all. Okay. Yep. But now I'm going to check on that too. Thank you. Let me know what else I need to know because I'm going to check on all of these things. Okay, well, I don't want to go out of turn but I do have another question. And that is, how do you get picked up by a publishing house. If you have already published or just in general. If you've self published. Right. So usually what happens is if you've self published, you're probably not going to get picked up. You really want to go for a traditional deal. My understanding is that you should try first to go for a traditional deal. Now I decided to examples that are glaring examples of that not being the case right. They did self publish they were over the top successes but that that's the thing. Most of these that do get picked up by a traditional publisher it's because they were already so successful that they're a safe bet. Right. That's the whole thing with the industry right now the industry does not want to take risks. That's why they want to know that that's why Brittany Spears is going to get a book deal. But we're not necessarily or you know it's going to be harder for us actually we are going to it's going to be harder for us because. Fame brings that guarantee right and so they want some sort of guarantee so if the Martian sells a million independently or 50 shades of gray does they already know that they're going to make sales if they can just expand and so they'll pick it up. But those are the exceptions. So if you want to go with the traditional publishing house and one of the big five publishing houses then usually you're going to need to get an agent and don't self publish weight because what I tell my clients when they're trying to decide whether to independently publish or to get a traditional deal and what I do myself is like with my with my humor book. I think I queried 40 40 agents which is not that many sadly I I queried about 40 agents and then I thought you know I got a little interest but not enough interest and I just wanted to move on to my next project. And so I just chose to independently publish but I did not publish first and then query normally you don't want to do that. Okay, thank you. I got I got one out of three. Thank you. Okay. Let's see. Did anyone else have any questions. Going, going. All right. Okay, well, Matthew you as usual have gone over the top and given us all food for thought you stunned us we don't have any other questions done to I stunned you. Oh my God. Okay, great. Um, I did want to, I did want to say that if you have time in the next few days to follow up with a comment about book talk or something like that. One of the questions that you were unable to answer let me know and I'll include it in the email to the registrants with the video link because Yeah, I've been sending rich emails with commentary and discuss you know stuff from the event itself so happy to do it thank you pass it on to the the registrants if we need to. Excellent. All right well I want to thank you for sharing your knowledge as always and I look forward to hosting you again feel free to pitch me again. Okay, I'll pitch you again and I just want to say again I'm at Matthew Felix calm and if you have any questions or, you know, follow me I'll follow you back on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and feel free to be in touch. And thanks again Taren mechanics Institute. All right, look forward to seeing you later. Okay. See you later see you next time. Bye everyone. Bye bye.