Advice for Indie Authors: Hints and tips for indie authors!

It is exactly one year ago that The Drought was published in paperback!

I'm certainly no expert by any stretch of the imagination when it comes to writing and publishing a novel. I am still learning with each step I take, but here are some tips that helped me along the way and things that I have learned as an indie author that you might find useful.

Think before you write
Have an idea before you start hammering away at the laptop! Sit down and write down on a piece of paper what your story looks like - the start, the middle, and the end. Who are the characters and how do they all link together? Where does the story happen? It doesn't matter if this changes or takes a different shape when you actually start writing, but it will give you some sort of direction.

Be committed
Unless you are lucky enough to write for a living then you are going to have to give up a lot of your free time to write a novel. For three months solid I wrote every day after work and as much as I could at weekends. It was not easy at the start (and my girlfriend must have thought have dumping me several times!) but slowly you create a routine. Constantly working on your novel not only improves your writing skills, but it will help you develop characters and create new stories.

Don't burn yourself out
Okay, this will sound slightly contradictory after my last point, but allow yourself a break from time to time. Take an evening off, or allow yourself a weekend when you don't switch the laptop on. As long as you are ready to get back into the saddle after a day or two then this will help recharge the batteries, especially if you are working a full-time job and trying to write a novel at the same time.

Always carry a notepad
Every time you think of an idea, write it down. I find the best ideas always come to me when I'm not sitting in front of the laptop. Every idea I think of, I write everything down. After I completed my first draft I still had 10,000 words worth of ideas that I hadn't even used. Referring back to your notes is a great help when you hit a wall or have writers block. In The Drought there is a whole chapter about how much the main character hates going clothes shopping with girls. The majority of this chapter was written on the notepad on my iPhone while my girlfriend was dragging me around Top Shop in Oxford Street!

Music
Try to pick a soundtrack to your book. Like a film, choose songs that represent the tone of your book and create a playlist and listen to it. Let your imagination wander. Some of my best ideas came when I was listening to my iPod on the way home, or when I was out jogging. Music can also jog your memory of real-life events that have happened in your past and can help you come up with ideas for your novel.

Write what you know
I can only advise from a personal experience, and writing about something you have not researched or have little knowledge of is clearly going to be bloody difficult! Even if you manage to write a complete manuscript, chances are your reader won't believe in the story because it won't seem real. It is no surprise that John Grisham practiced criminal law for a decade - his writing clearly demonstrates an author who knows his way around a courtroom. Writing skills aside, that is a major reason why he has been so successful. If you are blessed with a fantastic imagination like J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien, then all the power to you!

Don't be too critical
If you have decided to write a novel, you are starting out on a process which can easily take over a year before you will be fully satisfied with your work. Mike Gayle, best-selling author of My Legendary Girlfriend, offers some great advice on his website. He says the first draft doesn't have to be perfect, and that the proudest moment of his career was completing that first draft. Your first draft will always be the one that needs the most work, but as Mike Gayle says, by finishing that first draft you have done something that most people only ever talk about. I finished my first draft in September 2009, and I was still making changes right up until it got published as an eBook in August 2011!

Give your novel to friends... and their friends, and their friends...
Choose people who you trust will give you an honest opinion. Take their comments on board and then go back and start the second draft of the novel. Ask your friends to give it to their friends, and to their friends, and so on and so forth. The more feedback you can get the better. You will be surprised how similar the feedback is, and this can be invaluable in terms of telling you what works and what doesn't.

Get your book proof-read and copy-edited
I checked, re-read, and re-wrote my manuscript dozens of times, and I still could believe how many mistakes I had missed when I had my manuscript proofed. It can be a costly exercise but it is well worth it in the long run. You can find proof-reading and copy-editing services in the Writers & Artists Yearbook with NUJ rates starting at £24 per 2,000 words.

Do your research on self-publishing
So you have sent your manuscript out and tried to secure a literary agent without much luck. If you are like me, you have decided to go down the indie author route. Do your research because the hard work has only just begun. All of the responsibilities a literary agent would take on board are now your responsibilities! This means getting costs to self-publish, choosing and designing a front cover, speaking to book shops to try and get them to stock your novel, sending out press releases and dealing with the local media. The list is endless. The more work you put in, the greater chance your book will stand of gaining exposure, and hopefully increasing sales.

Get by with a little help from your friends
You are going to need all the help you can get to help you along the way. I was lucky enough that I happened to work on the sales team for a magazine serving the print industry, and that the online editor agreed to let me write a blog. That opened doors for me. It helped me make contact with Lynn Ashman, the MD at Pen Press. I was also lucky enough through friends to be put in contact with national newspaper journalists, a television producer, and television presenters. Each one has helped me in some way or another, whether it is by agreeing to read my novel and supply me with reviews, to helping me create a promo video. Think about where you work, the people you work with, your friends and family. Don't ever be afraid to ask for help - the worst someone can say is no.

Keep it local to begin with
Naturally every author wants to see their book reviewed in national newspapers and magazines, and stocked on the shelves of all the major bookstores. But as a self-published author you need to take baby steps. Start by sending your press releases out to local media, and approach local bookstores to see if they are willing to stock your book. Local newspapers love to hear about the achievements of local people, and if you are lucky, gaining enough positive local press reviews might, just might, one day see your novel end up reviewed in the Sunday Times.

Posters, flyers, business cards
Invest in marketing material to help promote the book. If you have asked a local library or bookstore to stock your book, it would be great to have a poster hanging on the wall, or flyers sitting at the counter. Carry business cards and anyone who seems interested in your novel, hand them a business card with your details and details of where they can find your book online. I used a company called Authors Essentials, who specialise in marketing and promotional services for authors.

Create a website or a blog
If you have gone to all the trouble of self-publishing your work, marketing your novel, and sending out press releases to promote your book, then it is crucial to have an area where you point people back to. Think about how you buy things as a consumer. In this day and age, most people will refer to the internet now for more information before they buy. Your website should include details about the book (such as a sample chapter), contact information for the media, and most importantly, where people can buy your book.

Social media
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to name just a few of the social networking tools you have at your disposal completely free of charge. Set-up a Facebook fan page, Tweet details about your novel, and blog as often as you can to raise your profile online. The more you can get people talking about your novel, the better. Check out my previous blog post The social media opportunity for more information. Another fantastic tool is Hootsuite.com, which allows you to schedule and manage all of your social media posts.

Immerse yourself into the book reading community
Go beyond the social media giants like Facebook and find those niche book communities online. I have found lots of great sites that bring book lovers together, and allow indie authors to promote themselves. Goodreads is a fantastic social media site that allows book readers to share and discuss their favourite books. And make sure you are talking to readers in book forums like Kindle Boards or the Book Club Forum, as nothing beats speaking to readers directly.

Invest into an eBook version of your novel
Ebooks have revolutionised publishing across the world. Amazon now sell more eBooks than physical books for its top 1,000 titles, and there are 115 eBooks sold for every paperback. The figures don't lie, so creating an eBook version of your novel makes sense.

Ask readers to write reviews
People will buy from sites such as Amazon based on positive reviews. So if you have had friends read your book and tell you they like it, then ask them to post a review up on Amazon. It won't cost them anything, but it could be priceless for you. And then when you start to engage with readers on social media or in the forums, ask them to write reviews if they are kind enough to give your book a chance!

Enjoy it!
If you don't enjoy the whole process, then maybe writing and self-publishing a novel is not for you. You have to have a real passion for writing, and you more than anyone must believe in yourself. Writing and self-publishing a novel should fill you with a huge sense of achievement. That is what makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Promo Trailer for The Drought: A Guide to Becoming a Player!

Stand-up comedian Steven Scaffardi knows a thing or two about the ladies, and if you want to share in his success, then you should take his advice on how to be a player. Clearly these girls back up his advice! For more laddish fun about a guys point of view on relationships, check out Scaffardi's hilarious debut novel, The Drought! Available now at Amazon and all good bookshops.

Advice for Indie Authors: Local book signings - sell yourself!

One of the hardest things to come to terms with as an indie author is that it is up to you to sell yourself. If you had the luxury of a publishing deal, you would have a team doing that for you! But you don't, so it is time to get busy!

There isn't any real rocket science when it comes to getting a book signing at a local bookstore. A good press release will help, but it's really just about making contact and asking if you can do one. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to arrange a book signing. At the start of September I went into my local Waterstones in Sutton and simply asked the manager if I could do one - that was it! I had seen other authors doing book signings before so I thought why not - the worst they can say is no.

But as I said, they were quite open to the idea. I simply explained to the manager that I was a local author and wondered if they held any events or book signings for local authors. At the end of the day they are a business and they have to think of ways of getting people through the doors and then buying copies of the books of the shelfs. Having an author in their store signing books is a bonus.

Initially they arranged for me host an event called An Evening With Steven Scaffardi. The idea would be to have people pay (yep, I said pay!) £2 per ticket to come and spend an hour and a half with me as I talked about my stand-up comedy and The Drought for an event at the end of November.

Two tickets got sold! I couldn't believe it either - that is two more tickets than I expected, and it wasn't even my mum who bought them. It was a total stranger!

But two strangers staring at me for 90 minutes for the paltry sum of £4 wasn't seen as a good business model, so it was decided we would switch the to a daytime event where I would simply stand in the shop and sign copies of my novel for anyone who wanted to buy a copy. (Pen Press are helpful at this stage, as they will make sure the bookstore where you have arranged book signings are fully stocked with copies of your novel.)

In the meantime, I simply went on to Waterstones website and looked at where the nearest stores were to me, and then fired off an email to those stores asking for further book signing opportunities, and I am pleased to say I got one at the store in Croydon on December 2.

As for yesterdays book signing, I think it went well. I managed to sell 10 copies (including one copy to the lady who had bought the two tickets to come and spend an evening with me!). The most challenging thing is making yourself speak to people in the store, and to keep doing it for 3-4 hours. Most people won't be interested, but they will be polite enough as long as you don't hound them too much and you just have to remember that these people are in a bookstore for a reason, and it is not to buy a kettle! Sooner or later you will find someone who is interested in the genre of your novel, and the opportunity to buy a signed copy of a book is a good selling point. And then we are back to word of mouth - if they like it then they'll tell there friends about it.

It is certainly something I highly recommend any indie authors doing, especially around the Xmas period. You don't have anything to lose and everything to gain. Not only will you sell copies of your book to people who did not know who you were previously, but I now have copies of my novel stocked in both the Sutton (and soon the Croydon) branch of Waterstones. For me, that is a huge achievment and a big step in the right direction.

Advice for Indie Authors: Sharing my book with the world... literally!

In a previous post I mentioned that I would be sending copies of my book out into the big, bad, wide world to fend for themselves. Well sort of.

Bookcrossing.com is a community of book fans - old school printed books and none of this eBook malarky! The idea is simple, yet brilliant. You take one of your books and you find it a new home, whether this is by passing it on to a friend to read or leaving it on a park bench for someone to find. The only catch is that you register it on Bookcrossing.com and generate an individual code to identify that book by. When someone is given the book or finds a copy that you have sent out into the "wild", they can then go onto Bookcrossing.com and insert that code to submit their own comments about the book. That person is then encouraged to pass the book on again once they have read it to continue the cycle.

For me this was a brilliant way of getting my novel in front of people who would have never heard of me or my book.

Originally I planned to send out 25 copies, but I didn't quite make that number (I managed a measly four copies!), but it is certainly something I am going to stick with. I left two copies of the book on the London tube (they have never been registered and no feedback has been posted yet), but I was contacted via Bookcrossing.com by two readers - one in the Netherlands and one in Australia - requesting copies of my novel.

Within a couple of weeks of sending the books out they had been registered to say they had been received, and in the last couple of days both of the readers posted comments and feedback after reading a copy of The Drought. Both copies have now been passed on and hopefully the cycle will continue.

In 2012 I want to send out a few more copies to see what happens, because I believe that word of mouth really is powerful tool, especially for an indie author. For every person who reads my book and enjoys it, maybe they tell three of their friends, and they tell three of their friends, and so on and so forth.

I am under no illusions that this is going to ensure I shift hundreds of copies of my novel, but it is just another piece of the puzzle that is self-marketing. Happy Christmas all and if you are looking for a late Christmas present (for a man or a woman!) then why not check out The Drought.

Advice for Indie Authors: An online audience is a great starting point

If there is a huge excitement on the day your book actually gets published, you will unfortunately experience an anti-climax in the aftermath once the dust has settled. Please don't misunderstand what I am saying - I am not trying to put a downer on things! But seeing your book on Amazon is one thing, now getting people to buy it is something completely different.

Once you have exhausted your friends and family, if you are serious about getting your book noticed, you are going to have to start branching out. Previously I have talked about how I had got the ball rolling with a series of interviews with local newspapers. But now I need to find an audience of potential buyers for my book and that is not easy. I did not realise how time consuming this part of my book publishing adventure would be. I knew I would have to put time and effort in, but I wasn't quite prepared for just how much time and effort!

It has literally taken over my life! If you are thinking about self-publishing but you are a bit work-shy, then I would give up now! Seriously, give up and find a different hobby, perhaps something like bingo, or even bowls - that is quite slow-paced. Because a day has not passed in the last couple of weeks without me doing something to try and promote my book.

The first thing I did was trawl the internet (no, not for that you filthy beggar!). I have continued to build on the in-roads I had been making with social media. Try to find out what the relevant hashtags are that will attract readers to your book. I have been using a series of hashtags including:

• #books
• #ebooks
• #fiction
• #paperback
• #kindle
• #indieauthor
• #selfpublishing
• #readthis

The thing is, I am only scratching the surface with this list, and for every Tweet I post, there are a thousand others like this. I whole-heartedly recommend you use Hootsuite, as this is really is a fantastic tool to schedule your social media posts, and saves you having to put time to one side every time you want to post something on Twitter or Facebook.

But the one hashtag I have had the most success with has been #competition. About two weeks prior to The Drought being published I set up a competition using social media, offering a free signed copy of my novel and a £25 Amazon voucher. As well as using the #competition hashtag, I also posted my Tweets with tags such as #win and #giveaway. All people had to do was follow me on Twitter and Like my Facebook page. In less than a week I had over 400 followers on Twitter and over 300 Likes on Facebook. It is amazing what people will do for free stuff! I now have strangers Re-Tweeting my posts and leaving comments on Facebook. I now have an audience.

I continued to build upon this audience using online forums. I posted information about the competition and picked up followers there, but now I was picking up genuine book lovers and avid readers. But you have to be careful with with forums and not go too overboard with the self-promotion. You have to remember that the people on these forums are like little communities. They come to these online meeting points to discuss their favourite books with like-minded people, and you will slowly irritate them and lose their interest if you simply post topics about how great your book is. You need to fully immerse yourself within these online communities; get involved with their discussions and engage in debate with these people. Forums are a slow-burner but they are well worth the effort and the benefit will be worth it in the long-run. I have already managed to sell a couple of eBooks and get some reviews on Amazon from people in these communities.

And last. but by no means least - blogging. Content is king with it comes to people finding you on the net. I have already established a healthy amount of content on my own website, but a good blog will encourage people to engage with you. It also puts your book in the shop window, and by using Amazon Associates, you can also advertise your book on your blogs to boost sales.

A special mention for book sharing website BookCrossing.com. I am planning to send copies of my book out into the 'wild' for people to find. For example, I left one book on a London Tube for someone to find. Each book you leave is assigned a special ID number generated by BookCrossing.com. When someone finds that book, they can log-on to BookCrossing.com and post information about where they found the book, and a review, before passing the book on for someone else to find.

I plan on sending about 25 copies out into the wild between now and the end of the year, so make sure you check out the blog to find out where they turn up (see you're interested already!).

This blog was originally posted on printweek.com

Advice for Indie Authors: Sell, sell, sell!

Ten days ago the first printed copies of my novel, The Drought, were finally delivered to my doorstep. It was a joyous occasion, despite the best efforts from the London looters to halt their arrival (the books should have been delivered two days earlier but the riots caused their delay - sort it out Cameron!).

I stared at the 65 copies of my book; filled with the words that I had written. Two years of hard work packed neatly into two cardboard boxes. Proudly holding a copy in my hand, one thought immediately popped into my head: How am I going to shift this lot?! After all, 65 copies of the same novel on my bookshelf would not only look a little silly, but perhaps a tad self-indulging too!

I did not want all this hard work to simply be viewed as vanity-publishing. For the first time I realised that if I wanted to do this properly, I would need a business plan. I wanted to evaluate everything that I had done so far, set myself an objective, and then work out what I needed to achieve to this.

Time to look at the facts:

- So far I had spent in excess of £2,000 on publishing and marketing (including the silver self-publishing package with Pen Press, the promo silver pack and Kindle eBook conversion with Author Essentials, and a website with Advanced Web Creations)
- The first 65 copies I sell would offer me 100% profit as these books come as part of the silver package
- I would make an average of £1 - £2 profit for every printed book sold through a retailer
- My profit would increase by nearly 200% on all sales off my own back (I am able to purchase additional copies of my book at any time from Pen Press at £3.25 per book - minimum 25 orders)

Clearly there is a greater benefit selling my book myself because of the larger profit margin. However, as a consumer, I am also aware that I would more than likely buy something from a reputable retailer than I would anywhere else. I also couldn’t use any of my promo marketing material yet, as it all references that you can buy the book and a Kindle version from Amazon, but it is going to take approximately six weeks for my book to be registered and start appearing on sites such as Amazon.

Rather than bogging you down with numbers and a maths lesson, I worked out that in order to break-even and start turning a profit, I would need to sell 665 copies of my book myself. Time to get to work!

I set-up a PayPal account and created a business account to allow people to buy copies of the book through my website. This also allows people to pay by credit card if they don’t have a PayPal account.

My plan for the first six weeks is to try and create a buzz through people that I know - friends, family, work colleagues, clients, friends of friends, acquaintances! Anyone I can possibly make direct or indirect contact with. I put together a list of 250 email addresses I have and sent an email blast out to announce the book has been published and that they can purchase a copy from my website. Furthermore, to incentivise people to buy through my website, I am offering signed copies and a free bookmark.

I have also targeted contacts and friends through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I asked people post links on their status updates or re-tweet information to their followers.
After week one of sales I have shifted 50 copies of the book. Not bad for a first week, but plenty of sales to go!

But already I am starting to forward plan. For every sale I make, I make a note of their their email address because in six weeks when the book will be available via retail outlets online, I will email everyone who has bought a copy of the book to ask them to write a review on Amazon.

And reviews are the next stage of my business plan, but that is for a different blog.

This blog was originally posted on printweek.com

Advice for Indie Authors: Edit, re-edit, and edit again!

This week has been busy and productive, and things are now starting to pick up some real pace. Two days ago I approved my final edited manuscript to be sent to press. Within a week I will receive the first hard copies of my novel, The Drought.

There is a real air of excitement now. For the last two weeks I have been spending pretty much every spare minute I have reading, checking, and re-reading my manuscript, to make sure all mistakes are ironed out. I have been working with a brilliant editor at Pen Press, who has been helping me every step of the way.

I can’t stress how important the re-editing stage has been. Over the last two years I have lost count of the amount of times I have re-read my work, edited it, changed things, added new characters, deleted chunks of text, re-written whole chapters, and somehow inserted an extra 10,000 words worth of new content.

When I completed that first draft back in September 2009, the most difficult thing I found was to sit back and be self-critical. I knew I would have to make the odd spelling and grammar correction, but in my eyes all of the effort I had put in already was enough.

But you have to be open minded to realise that there is always lots of room for improvement. I tried looking at my work through a different set of eyes. It never ceased to amaze me the amount of errors I had missed, or how much of the content I decided to change, each time I re-read the manuscript.

I started to scrutinise every minor detail, but in doing that I gradually fell into the trap of being overly critical, obsessed with making it as perfect as possible, and sometimes making changes for the sake of making changes. A comma here or an extra word there; I think I drove my poor editor, Claire, mad with all of the little last minute tweaks I insisted on making towards the end!

I’m confident all the changes and the time putting into the editing stage will all be worth it in the end, but as Claire said to me: “You have to learn to listen to that instinctive voice inside that tells you when it's done and to step away from the canvas.”

And that is what I did in the end – I listened to myself.

The rest of my week has been spent looking at designs for my marketing material. As I mentioned in a previous blog, social media is a fantastic tool, but nothing still quite does it like good old fashioned print.

Through Pen Press, I was put in contact with a company called Author Essentials who specialise in marketing and promotional services for authors. I have opted for flyers, bookmarks, postcards, A3 sized posters, and business cards, and I plan to use them all in various different ways. But perhaps the most useful way will be off-the-cuff conversations I have with people who take an interest, and I will be able to physically hand them a piece of marketing material related to my book. The power of print…

The next step of the process is now in the hands of Pen Press, who are taking care of registering the book and uploading information (ISBN, price, dimensions, genre and description). As per national legal requirement, all books are registered with and copies sent to The British Library and Neilsen BookData.

Nielsen's supply information to the majority of the book trade, and is where all reputable book sellers get information on books so that they can sell it. It is important to give an advance release date when registering. It takes six to eight weeks for booksellers to upload their information for PODs and three months for full, traditional published books.

Once that has been complete, I will be a published author. Writing the book in the first place was by far the hardest part, but the guidance I have received from Pen Press since April to get to this point has been invaluable. I’m already looking forward to the next chapter in this process.

This blog was originally posted on printweek.com

Advice for Indie Authors: The social media opportunity

At the start of this year a story appeared on printweek.com about Bristol printer Business Forms Express (BFE), who had made the bold move to drop their own website in favour of a Facebook page. At the time, managing director Colin Roberts, said the company was “moving with the times”. I’m not too sure how that move has worked out for BFE, but it certainly highlights just how much social media is regarded as a marketing and business tool.

No one could have predicted the growth and strength of Facebook when it was launched in 2004. After all, it was originally designed for horny college students to track down girls. Fast forward seven years and it is now worth $50 billion, and as of July 2011 it has 750 million users. And whether you are an indie author like me, or a printer based in Bristol, the great thing about social media sites is that they are absolutely free to use. Self-publishing my novel, The Drought, means I am solely responsible for all of the marketing.

“Conventionally published books previously held the public eye, funded by publishers with vast marketing budgets and contacts in high places,” Sarah Juckes, Head of Company Marketing at self-publishing house Pen Press, explains. “But now, the balance has shifted, giving the indie author the chance to reach a mass audience that was previously unavailable without huge funding. Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs have become must-have marketing tools for every author.”

But the real challenge with social media is that you are competing with millions of people all trying to promote one thing or another; whether it is a business or simply someone who is willing to shave their hair off if they get one million people to 'Like' their group. It doesn’t matter how many friends you have on Facebook, you cannot simply rely on these people to be your customers. You need to expand. Like any marketing strategy, the key is to plan your attack on this huge audience. My book should be published in August, but my digital and social media marketing campaign started over eight months ago. I wanted to build up some momentum so when I had a publication date, I would already have started to raise awareness.

Personally I believe a website is just as important as any social media tools available, because I use it as the central hub that points at everything that I do. I specifically planned to have my website created at the start of the year because I found out that it can take up to six months before search engines like Google start to trust your content and therefore improve your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking. I had my site created by a fantastic small web design company called Advanced Web Creations who specialise in websites for small to medium local businesses. They were extremely accommodating, professional, and perhaps most importantly – great value for money.

Content is key when it comes to a website, as you want as much related content to your product as possible in order to appear high in the natural search. This is one of the main reasons I started performing at open mic stand-up comedy nights. My book is a comedy novel, so I was able to film my stand-up comedy shows and upload them to YouTube as well as my own website.

Anyone searching for "comedy" could now potentially stumble across my website. I am now tapping into the video-sharing community, as well as getting my name out there as a comedian and raising my profile. If people like my comedy, then hopefully they will take an interest in the book. Keeping with the comedy theme, I also started to blog about my experience on the stand-up circuit, and linked everything back to my website. I was slowly starting to build my online “brand” across various different websites, and increasing my SEO presence across different platforms.

These rules apply to any type of business, whereby you upload content about your products and services, and that is the mindset I am trying to get into - an indie author is a business.

LinkedIn is undoubtedly a fantastic business tool, but how could I use this as an independent author? This is where you have to start mixing and matching your social media activities. I have been blogging on printweek.com about my experience of self-publishing with Pen Press since April, so I found relevant self-publishing groups on LinkedIn and posted the URL to my blogs in these groups, as well as in any self-publishing forums I could fine online. This has produced feedback from other authors and those working in the publishing sector across the globe, and has made my name aware to people I never normally would have gotten the chance to put myself in front of.

So now I have the website, the YouTube videos, and the blogs. It was time to unleash this content on to the big boys of the social media world – namely Facebook and Twitter. I have had an account on Twitter for a couple of years, without really doing anything with it other than informing my 9 followers what I was having for dinner. But since using my tweets to promote both my stand-up comedy and the upcoming release of my novel, my followers have grown to 174.

“Twitter allows the author to set up a voice among the millions, following and engaging with his/her targeted readership,” Sarah Juckes told me. “The author can tweet about the book’s themes, characters, plot etc, and cause a stir that could quite literally spread to the masses. Every tweet has the ability to cause worldwide interest.”

But how?

“It isn’t enough to tweet to an empty room – Twitter, like everything, takes work,” Sarah continues. “The author must engage - using tools like the hashtag (#) to tap into discussions, Direct Messaging and @ing individuals to build up a reputation as being someone worth following. Once they have a follow base of readers, the author can start selling, directing the masses to the book on Amazon, the blog with free snippets of the book, perhaps even to the free eBook downloads as rewards for those who help spread the word.”

“Once Twitter has them hooked, Facebook can keep them in the boat. A ‘like’ of the author/book page means that person will see updates and giveaways amongst their friends’ personal updates every time they log in. Facebook is for friends – it is more intimate. This is how you can get a casual follower to become a guaranteed book buyer – perfect for those sequels.”

Creating a Facebook page has been the most recent piece of my social media marketing puzzle. For someone to “Like” you on Facebook, there needs to be a good reason. My stand-up comedy gave me a reason to develop a page and 105 likes later, I now have a decent sized audience, who have bought into my brand of comedy from my open mic performances, that I will be able to promote my book to.

“Of course, this just the tip of the iceberg,” Sarah says of the social media opportunities. “YouTube and the boom of the book trailer is a great way of directing people to your book – giving them a feel in pictures and sound rather than tweet after tweet saying the same thing. Goodreads and Shelfari allow the author to tap directly into a book-buying demographic. The blogs of others generate discussions the author can involve themselves in, and their own blog will normally allow readers to subscribe to the blog and updates.”

Social media can be as much about research as it is anything else. Whatever type of business you are in, take the time to do your homework before launching into a social media marketing plan. Could you really imagine creating your own video advertisement 10 years ago to promote one of your products? Social media has opened up that door to the masses. Use it in the right way, and you will get results.

I am not suggesting that social media is the only tool you will need. Printed marketing material is just as important as digital, and that is why I contacted Authors Essentials who specialise in various book marketing needs from eBooks to websites to printed material. They are also currently promoting a short story competition with the prize being a Bronze publishing package with Pen Press. (Competition closes August 20 - check out link for more details). But this is a story for another blog...

I’m off now to film my book trailer – Hollywood here I come. Well, sort of.

This blog was originally posted on printweek.com