Tag Archives: Lynn Emery

Goodreads for Authors: 8 Easy Ways to Raise Visibility for Your Books by Lynn Emery

Book geek heaven, that’s a good description of Goodreads. Even now that Amazon owns the site, it’s still very much reader centric. The czar of customer service seems to have recognized this and mostly left the way GR works alone. If you want to increase your reach with serious book lovers I recommend considering these tips to leverage GR.

Disclaimer: I’m not trying to convince writers that they MUST be on Goodreads NOW or their writing careers are OVER! I have few extra hours or energy to invest in another time suck, like many writers. Still there are low cost ways to get your info flashed to readers without spending a lot of time.

1. Do giveaways. Ignore the GR advice. Have short giveaways of 5 to 15 days. Why? GR promotes new giveaways and those about to end, urging readers to hurry before the deadline. In between your giveaway is merely listed with thousands of others.

You don’t have to give away 10 + books. Do less. Some writers do just one. I think that’s a bit restrictive. I’d say 5 is a good number. But you should open the giveaway to all countries, or at least multiple countries. I hear you, “But Lynn, GR only allows print books as prizes. That’s a lot of postage!” Drop ship your books directly from your POD company. Mail books to foreign winners from Book Depository (www.bookdepository.com). You can ship one book to worldwide for free! Check their list to make sure your winner lives in a country they ship to, but it’s a long list. Tip: you can only send one book to another country for free during a shopping episode, but I found a work around. I had three foreign winners. I discovered that if I waited a day to send the next one it was still free.

2. Add books to your shelves. GR members love seeing what other members are reading. They want to know you’re not just hanging out to push your books, but you’re a reader, too.

3. Post what you’re reading so your friends (and their friends) will see the books you like.

4. Post reviews. Members read reviews. It’s word of mouth. While they’re doing that guess what? They notice you’re an author and check out your titles.

5. Post book trailers on your author profile. We’re living in a visual world like it or not.

6. You don’t have a GR author profile filled out? Create one.

7. Try GR ads. They’re surprisingly affordable.

8. Open up the new “Ask the Author” feature. One tip I read is to pose a question yourself, answer it and give visitors insight into your process. I just started using in the last month, so far no questions. Still it’s another useful took to reach out.

None of these will guarantee your sales will jump. What you will do is get your name and book covers in front of hungry reader eyes. The goal of advertising is to reach your target audience so as not to waste time and money. GR members are some serious book fans.. I don’t hang out on GR a lot, and I haven’t searched for and added a bunch of friends. But I actually enjoy posting my current reads, when I finish each book, and doing short reviews.

My results: sales increased about 7%. Several hundred GR members added my books to their “To Read” lists. GR sends out updates to members, so others see my book covers listed in their friends “To Read” lists. GR reviews increased significantly (about 35%). Admittedly I don’t have a huge number of reviews per book, but that’s a lot more than I had before. Updates also show reviews to the friends of those members, therefore e visibility for my books increased. This led to more reviews. Print sales went up, but not significantly.

Give it a try. You don’t have to spend any money or a lot of time. Where else can you find millions of book-a-holics looking for their next favorite read? It just may be worth it.

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Lynn Emery: Mix knowledge of Louisiana politics and forensic social work, with the dedication to write fiction while working each day as a clinical social worker, and you get a snapshot of author Lynn Emery.

She sold her first novel in 1995 to Kensington publishing for their groundbreaking Arabesque line. NIGHT MAGIC went on to be recognized for Excellence in Romance Fiction for 1995 by Romantic Times Magazine. Her third novel, AFTER ALL, became a movie produced by BET and aired on December 3, 1999. Holly Robinson Peete stars as Michelle Toussaint, an investigative television reporter. In 2004 Lynn won three coveted Emma Awards. She was chosen Author of the Year and her novel KISS LONLEY GOODBYE won Best Novel and Favorite Hero. GOOD WOMAN BLUES was nominated for the Romantic Times Best Mainstream Multicultural of 2005.

Visit Lynn Online: http://www.lynnemery.com/

Don’t have a copy of the SECOND EDITION of Become A Successful Author? What are you waiting for?Become A Successful Author is used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author for only $4.99 (eBook) or $9.99 (print) from: Amazon (US) or Barnes & Noble

Making Up History by Lynn Emery

I love history, real and made up. By made up I mean the author creates a rich back-story that reaches back years, even generations, to support the plot and character development. The events, settings or characters may or may not be real, but mostly you know that the author just made it up. There was no such war, town or event. But who cares when you’re deep into a page-turner? I don’t for sure.

The thing about history that hooked me at a young age is how it relates to the present. Suddenly the questions “How?” and “Why?” are answered, just from stumbling on a dusty old book or a pack of ancient letters. When you learn secrets like your Great Aunt Lucy had a scandalous affair or your grandfather had a brush with death at the hands of a lynch mob, you begin to understand things about your family.

As an author I have way too much fun creating history. I have to control myself or I’ll end up not writing the book. Although doing research is a chore for me, I’ll happily gather enough background to create a whole history of my own, sprinkling in just enough of the real to make the made up history even better.

For example, in Tell Me Something Good Lyrissa Rideau is looking for a valuable nineteenth century painting by her artist ancestor. Now this man never existed, but I did research on African-American artists in New Orleans during the time period. In that way I created what he would use as subjects for his art, what kind of paint he’d use and where he’d have shown his work. I mentioned a few real artists and art techniques prevalent at the time. But the history about Lyrissa’s family, and the artist himself? Totally made up. Imagine my delight when readers asked where they could find those paintings. Mission accomplished. I created a world that was believable. I’ve done this in just about all of my books, but another good example is my novel A Time To Love. I took oral family history heard during my childhood and went to town creating the secrets Neva uncovers about her fictional family.

In my new novel Only By Moonlight I went even further. I created a family tree that spans 200 years for psychic LaShaun Rousselle, the main character of my paranormal mystery series. I also invented a newspaper article from 1836 that relates to the plot. What fun I had! To see these “historical” documents go to http://lynnemery.com/lashaun-rousselle-series/

Naturally all of this hit me because once again we’re in Black History Month. I’ve made it my mission to spread the word that our history is way too big to be contained in only 28 days! I celebrate real history and the larger than life people who made history year round. I’ll keep making up history for my characters, but it will always be inspired by real history. After all, the true, whole story of us in America and the world is too page-turner good to do anything else.

Lynn Emery

Read more about my three LaShaun Rousselle paranormal mysteries and other novels at www.lynnemery.com
Only By Moonlight, eBook and print, is on sale now!

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Don’t have a copy of Become A Successful Author? What are you waiting for?Become A Successful Author is used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author for only $4.99 (eBook) or$9.99(print) from: Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Barnes & Noble

Facebook Advertising: What I’ve Learned by Lynn Emery

In July I decided to find out if Facebook ads would make a difference in my sales. So in the month of August I ran ads every weekend. I didn’t pay for any other ads for the first three weeks so I could attribute increases to FB. Here’s what happened:

I increased my sales by a tad over 50% from July, and I made back the $100 I spent (so far, I’m writing this on 8/31). Sales did go up and I saw the difference immediately. For me it was mostly KDP royalties. No movement on my Nook sales until the end of the month. So much for FB ads not selling books. Still, I’m not convinced it’s worth the money. Sales didn’t shoot up dramatically. But here’s why I may continue.

I know from my traditionally published days that promotion has a cumulative effect. My efforts at branding and getting my name out the first five years after I sold paid off. After a while I didn’t have to make those calls. The opportunities came to me. It just took time. In 2000 I got a better deal from HarperCollins and some sweet royalty checks. I attribute it to my early efforts at marketing.

Now in the days of Bookbub, Kindle Daily and other venues, authors want instant big numbers. My experience leads me to favor the long tail. I may extend my FB ad experiment until the end of the year. I’m not selling a ton of books, but I’m extending my brand. And I’m not losing money. In fact I would argue that I’m extending my brand globally in a way I never could have in traditional publishing. I get to reach FB users in as many countries as I choose who listed “reading” as an interest. In January 2014 I’ll see how long the bump lasts. I won’t keep doing FB ads indefinitely, because that wouldn’t make sense to me. Unless there is a lasting cumulative effect I mean.

Here are my tips if you decide to give it a try. Some of these I learned in researching the use of FB ads before I started my project.

Set your ads to run on weekends. I found that the advice I’d read is right. Weekday ads just don’t get the same amount of traffic. I experimented and found that Friday to early morning Monday were the best days.
FB offers ways to advertise that cost as little as $5 for three days, these are called “Promoted Posts”. There are ranges for created ads as well. The lower the price, the fewer people they’ll expose your ad to, so look at those numbers. The good thing is FB will show you the range of how many people will most likely see your ad.
Target your created ads by age and interests. When you go to the “Create an ad” page you’ll see what I mean. You can target your ads to people who are interested in reading/literature, and recently they’ve narrowed it down to genres such as “romance” or “mystery”. You can also target people interested in horror movies, romance, sports, etc. They might be interested in giving your book a try if it contains those elements. This is great because targeted advertising is the most effective.
Select which countries you want your ad shown to. I missed this feature the first go round of ads I did (not paying attention!). Now I typically select US, UK, Germany, Italy, Brazil, France, Japan, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico. I select others based on if the number of potential views increases. I go for any country that I know has a sizeable middle or upper-class with disposable income.
Set your budget realistically. If you can’t afford more, don’t go into debt. Try it and watch your sales numbers. But be patient. Unlike KDP select and other tools, don’t expect thousands of downloads in a few days.
Remember that people don’t visit FB to shop. They visit FB to be social. Which is another reason I say don’t go all in and spend big because you see won’t sales that match those huge numbers FB says will see your ad.
FB favors the visual, so use pictures! Just writing a pitch won’t be as effective. Facebook favors showing photos and graphics. You’ll get more views.
DON’T use book covers. FB will reject photos that have more than 20% text. That means book covers. I use the stock art used for my covers before the text was added or other stock photos that fit the book.
I found that trailers worked best for me. The ads with just photos and a link to a product buy page didn’t work nearly as well (the ads I did before this August experiment).
People on FB tend not to want to leave FB, so external links got very little love. Remember, people are on FB to be social. That means they want to keep hanging out to post and get updates from their pals. So make sure you give them a fun experience so later they’ll go buy (while they’re still online, but done socializing!).

A quick word about trailers – keep the length to less than two minutes. I’ve read advice that says they should only be a minute long. I’ve had a tough time doing that so far! But remember you’re not trying to tell huge chunks of the story. You should whittle your pitch down to main the conflict. Also add music. Trailers with good music are way more attractive in my experience.

About the audience – if you’re going global consider that Kindle is not the number one device in most other countries. In Canada and Japan Kobo is on top. This may explain why when I stopped doing Kindle or even Nook product page links click through rates and sales bumped up.

I suggest you have a “Page” that is just about your books. You can brand a page to match your website and customize the header. That way your book posts won’t be mixed in with posts to Aunt Millie and photos of your sister’s new kitty. Looks more professional. Besides does Aunt Millie really want people in Brazil knowing she’s had surgery? I don’t think so. Anyway, back to the page. Here is a big “BUT… Put fun and interesting content that isn’t about pitching your books. If people think it’s just a page full of ads you won’t get much traffic. The main reason I did ads is because people know they what they are and choose to read more. Once they’re on my page they tend to “like” posts unrelated to my books.

Finally, “Likes” don’t equal sales. Period. The advice and articles I read turned out to be so true for me. Before I did FB ads, I got lots of likes. I started my “Page” with just over 950 “Likes”. I posted, got a few more likes. Sales went nowhere. I did those inexpensive $5 promoted posts. Got more likes. Sales continued to be stagnant. I got up to over 2,000 “Likes” and… you guessed it. Zero sales increase. It’s nice to be liked, but don’t be surprised if the love doesn’t translate to dollars.

Lynn

www.facebook.com/lynn.emery.author

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The Art of the Unexpected by Lynn Emery

Writing is hard work, and the more you write the harder it gets. Yes, you read that right. The more you write, the more you realize how much you have to juggle. Setting, dialogue, pace, suspense and plotting. Oh my! That’s a lot to create time and time again without repeating yourself! Today’s readers have seen it all, and seen it done well. So how do we keep it fresh? After writing going on seventeen books I’ve learned the value of giving readers what they don’t expect. It’s so easy to slip into the cliché by accident, the predictable turn of events, or the typical character actions or motives. How can you avoid the same old, same old? Here are some tips and exercises:

Make a character do something that is totally different from what the reader might expect. What if the murder victim’s wife laughs hysterically when told he’s dead? What if the hero is close to having the one thing he says he wants, but then he refuses it? What if the scene leads up to a hostage situation, but the person held hostage is the hit man, the strong character who terrorized everyone else, someone the reader totally doesn’t see as a “victim”?

Create a plot twist that is logical, but totally unexpected. What if the serial killer is killing serial killers for a reason other than to save their victims? What if the murderer is innocent of the murder he’s accused of, but killed someone else? What if the district attorney wants the truth to come out, and the defense attorney doesn’t?

Create a setting that contrasts with the events. Set your story in a sunny, lovely town full of nice people- with nasty secrets, but those secrets are for a very good reason. What about a dark and gloomy place that seems full of shady people, but they’re actually heroes? What if a fun treasure hunt weekend is a cover for something sinister?

Just remember, you should not rely on coincidences. Well you can, but you’ll seriously annoy readers. Any unexpected turn of events should make perfect sense because you’ve laid the groundwork properly. Know exactly why the unexpected happens and make it believable. That means you need to know why the victim’s wife is laughing, and eventually reveal it to the reader. The seemingly “weak” hostage taker who turns the tables should have the means and abilities to do so, and you should give clues along the way. See what I mean? Hard work. You have to give some thought to plot turns, character motivation and more to master the art of the unexpected.

http://www.lynnemery.com/

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Busting Through the Block by Lynn Emery

Some say writer’s block is a myth, a form of procrastination. Other authors insist it’s real, and they’ve suffered through it. As a therapist I’ve learned that if a person is convinced, it doesn’t matter if others say something is real or all in your mind. The bottom line is you need to work on the problem, whatever it is. Here are some tips to shock your unconscious muse back to life.

If you are blocked on what a character should do next or how they would react to a story event/plot turner go back and work on characterization. Chances are you need to flesh out more details on who she is- what are her goals, values, motivations, beliefs, etc. It might help to get to know her again. Most often hitting this kind of brick wall means you need to do more work on your character(s).

If you are blocked on what will happen next in your story (plotting), go back and review your story outline. O maybe you need to do one if you were writing by the seat of your pants. What story questions must be answered? What are the internal and external conflicts? What are the character motivations? What are the character goals? What is the dark moment when all seems lost? What is the climax (main characters must make a decision and take action)? What is the resolution? How are the main characters changed by this journey at the end?

Writing Exercises

Kick Start Your Brain

Start a scene with your protagonist arriving or leaving some place in your story setting. Describe this setting through her eyes, including emotional reactions. Describe how secondary (or other major character) view the setting and the arrival of the main character using facial expressions, body language and dialogue. How does this affect the scene where you hit a block?
Write a character’s worst moment, something that changed her or him in a basic way. Now write a scene where the effects of that event color how the character lives and now views the world in a way that affects your plot.
Write a scene in which your character is arguing her viewpoint, some subject that she feels strongly about. This could be high concept (e.g. testifying before Congress, negotiating with a hostage taker) or discussing a subject with another character (relationship problem, family problem). Either way make the stakes high, in other words something terrible will happen if she doesn’t prevail. Throw in barriers that might keep her from prevailing. How does she overcome these?

Lynn Emery ©

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Don’t have a copy of Become A Successful Author? What are you waiting for?Become A Successful Author will be used in the “How To Write That Novel” course at Chicago State because it covers everything from branding to writing to editing to formatting and uploading electronic and print books to marketing and so much more. Your time is money. Look at all the time, thus money, you’ll save by ending your search for answers: Purchase Become A Successful Author for only $4.99 (eBook) or$9.99(print) from: Amazon (US), Amazon (UK), Barnes & Noble