Wednesday 14 October 2015

Marketing and other non-writing stuff - by Karen King





Marketing is increasing in importance to most authors now so when I heard The Belmont Belles of the RNA (Romantic Novelists’s Association) were running a workshop on 2nd October about ‘Readers How to Find Them and Keep Them’ which included lots of marketing tips I signed up.

It was a really interesting day. The team, Sue Moorcroft, Kim Nash, Katherine Gerbera, Lizzy Lamb, Lucy Felthouse and Sarah Houldcroft led us through starting a Street Team, reaching readers with newsletters, using Carva and Photofunia for graphics, scheduling tweets and Facebook posts using Buffer, using hashtags – especially useful with Instagram- and making use of the Facebook ‘Call to Action’ button on your Author Page to direct people to your latest book or newsletter. All very useful stuff and I came away with lots of notes.



Here I am with Sue Moorcroft, who gave a workshop on Street Teams

Some of the authors had put together a set of Regency romances into an Amazon Kindle Box Set and were getting pretty good sales for it. I thought this was a really good idea. Like many of you, I already use Amazon Kindle to self-publish out of print books and back copies (actually only one at the moment but I intend to do it with a few more when I can find time). But I'd never thought of compiling some of my books into an e-box set. Have you?  


If you’ve written several spooky stories, for example, you could republish them as a Halloween box set. Or you could get together with another author and publish a collection of YA Reads, or School Stories. That way you can share the expense of covers and any marketing and enjoy more exposure. Yes, of course you’ll have to share the profits but that wouldn’t be too complicated.


I’m looking through my back list right now to see what titles I can make into a Kindle box set. 


Karen King writes all sorts of books. Check out her website at www.karenking.net


(With thanks to Pixabay for the book picture)

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