Social Networking and Book Publishing
Selling an e-book (or book) is easy in many writer’s minds, they will often believe that they have a large number of family and friends to count on and don’t worry about any social networking sites until it is too late, generally after their failure to sell books to their ‘buyers’. They seem as emotionally invested in your work, or writing, as you are, what they really are is bored, or exhausted of you talking about your book.
This small network will expect you to “give” your book away so they can ‘read’ it, and they will not do anything to promote your book. This can be very disappointing to any writer and can give them a feeling that they won’t be able to sell their e-books to a larger network. There are other networks to to build your book sales on, and you need to think of them before you publish a book.
Logically, the places to try are the social networking sites, Twitter and FaceBook, and online writing sites. These often will give you a larger network to work with and should you “follow” or “friend” the right people there is more of a chance that your published book will sell. It is important that the sales do not spike or die over time, but that the writer keeps on working with the very readers who will purchase their published book.
Twitter is a good social network site to start with, as you will need to be creative with what you “tweet.” As you only have 140 characters to work with, it is best if you post tweets of engaging and funny sort of things about your writing and yourself. It helps make your followers feel that you are not spamming them. If you are planning to make a lot of money with this, it won’t happen since there are millions of writers doing the exact same thing you are.
A smart way to start is establishing your account before your book is published so that this allows your followers to get to know you and allows you to learn the ins and outs of twitter before you begin to promote your book, otherwise you are in for a painful surprise. Your followers are more likely to respond to your promotion if you already have an account and rapport with them.
After you have been on twitter a while and have a number of followers who might be interested in your book, then you can think ‘promotion’. The best advice given to me was make your author name something that readers on twitter will not think of as a “spammer” but rather as a human being and someone who will go the extra mile to help others out.
It is your readers, who purchase your books, but they also will purchase based on what you have done for them. Retweeting is one thing, but retweeting a link to their book is something most authors are excited about. This is networking at its finest, and this is the best way to network on Twitter. Many of the more successful writers say this works well, but also it works when you do a favour and not expect anything in return. It’s always nice to see my book In Search of The Lost Ones
That is why when you add a link to your newly published book you will need to step back and think about what your followers want. It also adds an element of care when you are not always telling people to buy your book. You socialize with your followers, and by the act of retweeting their book to your followers, you give them a chance to retweet your books, they have a network you might not even know of.
Twitter, as a good social networking site, is one way to gain readers for your work and to increase sales, but there is another large social networking site out there that you can use to gain friends and readers to your books. However, be aware that the key to success on twitter and the like lies in the word ‘networking.’ it’s almost unspoken it’s not about you rather it’s about whom you know who will be willing to retweet one of your tweets. It’s about building a community with silent communication. Where the expectation on Twitter is that you are not spamming nor are you out there to just be there.
You are sharing your product, but you are also a part of the community no matter which place you are sharing your work on.
