Jeff Haws

Independent author

Main navigation

You are here: Home / Archives for Marketing

Marketing

What happens when someone steals your book title?

by 2 Comments

When I was getting ready to publish my first novel, “Killing the Immortals,” last year, I did a good deal of research on the title to make sure there was nothing similar in the marketplace that it would be confused with. I was excited about the title, and wanted to have something unique. Fortunately, there was nothing like it out there, so I plowed forward with it last July.

Suddenly, though, I noticed last week that a Bosnian author self-published a book on June 30 with the title “Killing the Immortal.” So, basically the same title as mine. I don’t publish a book for 37 years, put out my first one, and then somebody essentially rips off my unique title within a year. It was a little bit frustrating. [Read more…] about What happens when someone steals your book title?

Twitter vs. Instagram For Book Marketing

by Leave a Comment

Twitstagram

I’m actually a fairly recent Instagram convert. For a long time, I put so much energy into Twitter and Facebook and the blog and LinkedIn and Goodreads, and I’m getting kind of tired talking about it all, that I didn’t know if I had it in me to add another trick to my social media marketing repertoire. But, after some friends told me about their success with Instagram and I took a close look at it, I decided to take the leap.

To this point, I’m glad I did. But I’ve been a Twitter shill for several years. If you only have time in your life for one of them to try to market your book, or whatever it is you want to spread the word about, which one should you go with? Here are my impressions on a few categories … [Read more…] about Twitter vs. Instagram For Book Marketing

Release Plan for “Killing the Immortals”

by Leave a Comment

Planning

With the Release Day for “Killing the Immortals” fast approaching, I’ve had to shift gears lately from focusing on writing/editing to marketing/publicity. For many authors, this is where shit gets real. “I’m an author, not a marketer” has been the cry from many an author when it comes time to get the word out on their books. And, to be fair, it’s not something that comes naturally for a lot of them, particularly those who didn’t grow up in the social media age and are trying to adjust.

Twenty years ago, the barriers to entry for publishing a book were rather high, and most everyone had to go through a traditional publisher to get their book out there. That also meant going through a literary agent, which meant query letters, rejections, and years of waiting, waiting, waiting. It also meant someone was handling the majority of marketing for you. Your publisher came up with a marketing plan, and you showed up where/when needed. Maybe you did a book signing. Maybe you did a speaking engagement, or a newspaper interview. Whatever it was, your publisher probably lined it up for you.

Today, that landscape has changed. Even if you get a publisher, they only handle so much. Almost no publisher is going to take over your Twitter account; that’s on you. And if you’re self published, you’re everything. I’ve got to not only do it all, but plan it all too. [Read more…] about Release Plan for “Killing the Immortals”

Why Cover Design is So Important

by Leave a Comment

Library

As I move closer to needing to actually sell this novel I’ve written, I have to start thinking seriously about what matters most for doing that — if, for no other reason, than to know where to direct most of the budget I’m willing to potentially waste on getting this thing out into the world of Amazon.

There are plenty of factors that go into that. I talked about three of those in another post. The top one I cited was the book’s cover. Honestly, if your book cover is terrible, I’m not sure much else matters. You can write the next Great American Novel, but if your cover is done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but once dabbled with Photoshop a few years ago. If your cover looks like it was done in MS Paint, nobody’s ever gonna know if your book is any good. [Read more…] about Why Cover Design is So Important

Three Most Important Factors for Selling Books

by Leave a Comment

Selling

As I get closer to the editing phase of my story and this whole book thing becomes more real, I’m starting to think about some of the stuff beyond writing that goes along with putting a book into the market that will hopefully maybe possibly start selling a few copies … beyond the 50 or so my mom will buy just out of sheer excitement.

Of course, the writing matters. The story matters. But I’m not sure it matters as much as many think. I doubt you’ll hear this a lot on writing blogs, but the quality of your story isn’t going to be that big of a factor when it comes to selling books. That’s partially because “quality of your story” is really objective; what I think is a great story, you might think is trite and boring. For example, my fiancee thinks “Pulp Fiction” is boring and “The Big Lebowski” is stupid. Let’s just say we don’t see quite eye to eye on those two. Are those “quality stories”? I think most people would say they very much are, but not to her. What does that mean? Not much, other than it’s all subjective.

It’s mostly, though, because, as long as there’s some redeeming quality in your work, there’s probably a potential market out there for it. Thousands of romance and cozy-mystery stories I’d find to be laughably bad sell massive numbers of books every week. There are millions of readers out there; not everybody wants to read Cormac McCarthy or Jonathan Franzen. Not everybody wants you to challenge them. Some just want a 125-page quick read they can knock out at the beach, or before bed.

So, if not quality writing, what are the three most important factors that will go into selling your book? [Read more…] about Three Most Important Factors for Selling Books