Tag Archives: facebook

The Invincible Duo of Self-Publishing & Social Networks for Authors

Written by EmilyK. Posted on February 15, 2011. Filed under Author news. Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , . 162 Comments.

Have you heard of her? Young-adult paranormal author Amanda Hocking was fed up with traditional publishers and decided to surf the wave of digital publishing. She sold 164,000 books in 2010 – most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads. The young author credits her success to aggressive self-promotion on her blog, Facebook and Twitter. It also doesn’t hurt that her books star trolls, vampires and zombies…

We’re incredibly impressed.

Authors catch fire with self-published e-books
By Carol Memmott (USA TODAY)

You may not know her name, but Amanda Hocking and others like her are riding the comet of digital publishing.

Amanda Hocking sold more than 450,000 copies of her nine young-adult paranormal books last month. Virtually all were e-books.

Fed up with attempts to find a traditional publisher for her young-adult paranormal novels, Hocking self-published last March and began selling her novels on online bookstores like Amazon and Barnesandnoble.com.

By May she was selling hundreds; by June, thousands. She sold 164,000 books in 2010. Most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads.

More astounding: This January she sold more than 450,000 copies of her nine titles. More than 99% were e-books.

“I can’t really say that I would have been more successful if I’d gone with a traditional publisher,” says Hocking, 26, who lives in Austin, Minn. “But I know this is working really well for me.”

In fact, Hocking is selling so well that on Thursday, the three titles in her Trylle Trilogy (Switched, Torn and Ascend, the latest) will make their debuts in the top 50 of USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list…

For the rest click here.

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Hewson’s Costa Series Is Optioned for TV

Written by EmilyK. Posted on January 25, 2011. Filed under Author news. Tagged , , , , , , , , , . No comments.

Speaking of authors who use social networks, one of the authors I follow on Facebook posted some exciting author news yesterday regarding one of her favorite crime novelists David Hewson – author of the Costa series. In the spirit of keeping the social networking momentum going (it’s kind of like a game of digital hot potato, right?) it’s my job to help propagate the news…

From Hewson’s website:

Entire Costa series optioned for TV

“I’m delighted, as you might imagine, to be able to pass on this news release from my literary agency Blake Friedmann…

The Blake Friedmann Agency is pleased to announce that a deal has been signed between David Hewson and Bavaria Media Italia for all eleven of Hewson’s contemporary crime novels based in Italy.

Bavaria Media Italia optioned screen rights in order to develop and produce a major international series of six television movies. The series is planned to be shot in English by Bavaria which will work in conjunction with co-production partners from several European territories. Bavaria’s Philipp Kreuzer will Executive Produce the series; Bavaria Media TV will handle international sales. The concept for the series is currently being written in Rome.

The deal was negotiated for Hewson by Conrad Williams of Blake Friedmann’s Film/TV department and for Bavaria by Philipp Kreuzer and legal counsel Georg Hoess.

Said David Hewson: “It is enormously flattering to have eleven of your books snapped up for option in one swoop and with such high ambitions for English language, feature length TV dramas.  There is a lot of work to be done on a project of this magnitude. I am happy that it has already started.”

Bavaria plans to develop and partner this series in 2011 with production slated for 2012. It will be shot on location in and around central Rome…”

For more on this, click here.

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Birds Do It, Bees Do It, And Now Authors Do It Too

Written by EmilyK. Posted on January 18, 2011. Filed under Author news, Social Networking. Tagged , , , , , , . No comments.

With the advent of social media, even the most reclusive and shy authors may have been able to keep up with the achingly author-driven new world of book promotion. Many authors have learned the benefits of giveaways and social networking: No intermediary needed to reach the reader, and very little (maybe just a tad) face time needed either.

How Authors Move Their Own Merchandise

By JOANNE KAUFMAN

To gin up sales for her 2009 essay collection “Bad Mother,” Ayelet Waldman rewarded those who preordered the book with such lagniappes as a donation to a scholarship fund or a copy of a novel by her husband, Michael Chabon. “I think all of that got ‘Bad Mother’ on the New York Times best-seller list,” Ms. Waldman said.

Eager for lightning to strike twice, she began working the Facebook rolls before last summer’s publication of her novel “Red Hook Road.” Those who preordered (or sent an email explaining their lack of interest in preordering) were entered into a drawing to win an iPod loaded with music thematic to the book. “Some author—I don’t remember who—had a drawing for iPads, and I was thinking ‘that’s someone with more money than me,’” said Ms. Waldman, acknowledging that, in fact, her publisher, Doubleday, had donated the iPods she used in her reader raffle.

“I find the process of self-promotion excruciating,” said Ms. Waldman, who, frankly, seems approximately as shy as a Kardashian. “I’m sure there are plenty of people who think ‘she’s so tacky.’ And I say: ‘I have four children to feed. I wish I had the luxury of not being tacky.’”

Excruciating it may be. Nonetheless, authors are becoming more and more involved in the nitty-gritty of moving the merch. “It’s no longer a top-down media culture,” said Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group….

For the complete article click here to go to The Wall Street Journal.

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How to get the most out of Facebook.

Written by Jonathan. Posted on October 19, 2010. Filed under Author news, Social Networking. Tagged , . No comments.

Lots of authors are out there using Facebook to engage their fans. It’s a powerful tool that is only getting more powerful with every passing month. In our brief review of author facebook presence we see a wide range of activity. Many authors have multiple facebook pages – their personal page, a fan page and often a community page they don’t actually control. The average number of friends, fans and community page followers is around 5,000 for bestselling and midlist authors. And that’s excluding some of the hugely powerful social networkers like Stephen King who with a million plus followers are in a league of their own.


But here’s the rub, having more followers isn’t necessarily the only path to social network success. The more people who are on facebook in general and the more fans you have , the more the signal starts to become just noise. How do you know if anyone actually gets to see your post before its gets pushed down the timeline into obscurity? Well facebook anticipated some of that and have left little to chance. Just like the google pagerank algorithms that dominated search marketing, facebook has its own algorithms in place that manage what gets seen and who sees it.

Thomas Webber’s recent article on the Daily Beast does a great job analyzing the various components of the algorithm and explaining how you can make the most out of the system.

Some of the highlighted tips include:

- Post content that stimulates comments: ask questions or dare to be provocative
- Use links as often as you can: when you comment on reviews for your books make sure you are linking out to them
- Include images and video as often as you can: taken any pictures on your book tours lately?

Take a look through the entire piece, its well worth the effort to help you on your way to mastering Facebook and maximizing the chances your content will be seen.

Oh and while you are at it, make sure to check out the peroozal Facebook page and, yes you guessed it,  leave a comment.

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