Pinterest for Fiction Writers Part 2

Pinterest for Fiction Writers Part 2

Gwynn Scheltema

In Pinterest for Fiction Writers Part 1 we explored how Pinterest can help you as a writer while you are writing. But of course, there is the other side to writing: selling the book! Pinterest can help there too. (Note: If you are not sure what terminology like “boards” and “re-pinning” mean, please read Part 1 first.)

Why consider Pinterest for sales?

According to Omnicore Agency’s January 2018 report:

  • Monthly active Pinterest users numbered 175 million (75 million in the USA.)
  • 93% are women
  • 2 million shopping pins are saved daily
  • Millennials use Pinterest as much as Instagram
  • Pinterest drives more referral traffic to websites than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined.
  • Nearly 85% of Pinterest searches happen on mobile devices

One of the reasons I prefer Pinterest is that what you post is always there, easily found and well-organized. You don’t spend time creating a post that disappears into a long news-feed and may never be seen, like on Facebook and Twitter.

Two kinds of Pinterest accounts

Pinterest offers registration as either a personal user or a business user. Both are free.

A personal account allows you to create boards and pin to them. You can also pin from other people’s boards and send to other people’s boards, social media accounts, and email.

If you have a business account, you can additionally:

  • place links on your website to take people to your page on Pinterest
  • get visitor analytics and what they’re looking at the most
  • use rich pins to let users do special stuff with the content on your website or Pinterest page, and add prices to your images.
The right Pinterest mindset

Pinterest is not a point of sale. It drives people to click through to your website or to Amazon or wherever your point of sale is. It’s great for building an author presence, (see how below) but never lose sight of the fact that your end goal is sales!

But, and it’s a BIG BUT, like all other social media platforms, avoid incessant self-promotion. The immediate goal is for vistors to pin and then to click through.

Pinterest is a quieter, more subtle platform where sales are made indirectly by building trust, loyalty and engagement. On Pinterest you express yourself through images. So if you want to showcase a review of your book you’ll have to make a visual for it.

Also remember that most pins are re-pins, so if you provide original content, pinners will happily spread it for you. Just give them a good visual with a few, repeat few, words that hook them and you’re on your way.

Become a Business Author

I’m a personal pinner and I have over 60 boards covering all my hobbies, dreams, and plans. Some are general: gardening; art; books I recommend. But there are also more personal boards: my daughter’s wedding; things I want to do with the grandkids; travel plans and of course, unpublished book boards.

When selling your book, you don’t want your efforts buried in clutter and you want to be accessible but stay professional.  The best way is to register as a separate author persona with a business account.  Use your name, and simple add “author”: Jane Doe, author. And just like Twitter and Facebook, a decent head shot and succinct profile that sells you and your products is a must. Notice in the author page below that Rachel Thompson has 6,000 followers and 22,100 monthly viewers. Wow!

What boards could I create?

You can still have multiple boards, but keep them associated with the book or you as an author. In a business account, Pinterest allows you to have “featured boards” and “latest pins” that show up when you first go to the Pinterest page.

Remember sales is the goal, so make sure to put links to your sales page/s whenever you can. You can put them in your profile, in the description portion of your images, and add the URL to images you create.

Here are a selection of boards to consider:

Boards about the book
  • The book/s.

Create a separate board for each book you want to sell. Pin pictures of the cover, back page blurb, reviews, and enticements to read excerpts. Link all the images to your sales page and where appropriate put prices on your images. In the image below, notice that Carla Laureano has 8 separate book boards. (She also has her website URL prominently displayed and a URL to a free book in her profile)

  • Behind the book/s

Glimpses into the book in the making: pictures or quotes that inspired your characters, settings etc. (all poached from your initial vision board.) Cover choices that didn’t make the cut. Characters and/or excerpts that didn’t make the book. Story boards, notes.

  • Special offers

Freebies, contests. New book ideas: Invite people to post pictures of what the villain could look like, or what kind of car the protagonist might drive. Give a free book to the winner when the book is done. In the board below, 75 authors collaborate on this board to offer giveaways. The board appears like this on each of their pages.

Boards about the author
  • About the author

You can get personal here or stay all business; it’s up to you. You can cover how you got started writing, your mentors, your writing resume, your future plans, your passions, causes you support, hobbies and views on life.

  • Events

Reading and signing events (use your photos and posters as the visual); conferences, guest posts, speaking engagements, workshops you’re giving; TV, print or radio interviews. Again add links in the description portion of the pin.

  • Fan club

More photos of happy fans holding your book; book club group shots; quotes from fans or fan letters. Tag people using the @ sign in your pin descriptions (tagging in Pinterest works similarly to Facebook.) Plus, other people can pin things to your page (if you allow them to become “contributors” to a particular board), which encourages more sharing and interaction.

  • Behind the scenes

Pictures of you writing, your cork board of favourite inspirational quotes etc,  your waste basket of discarded scenes, the view from your window, your cat lying on your keyboard. Let your public see you as the person behind the book.

Boards that support the content of your book/s
  • Topic boards

If your book features a mental health issue, have a board about that mental health issue; if your books are Georgian romance, boards of all things 18th century would be of interest to your readers.

  • Books you recommend

Can be in your genre only, or anything you recommend. Alternatively, have a board about “reading now” or “my to-be-read list.”

  • Related activities

If you have written a kids book, have companion boards for teachers or parents or libraries.

  • Any other book-related topics

Libraries you love. Book stores you recommend. Books you loved as a child. Quotes from writers ……..

And there’s more

Once you’ve created your Pinterest author account, don’t forget to grow your audience by adding a Pinterest Follow button on your website so people can follow your Pinterest account from your website.

You’ll also need to brush up on some of the technical stuff, all of which could warrant a separate blog post, but there’s plenty of help out there. Here are a few links to get you started.

Of course you can search on Pinterest yourself! Here are three pins I found in a search “selling books”.

Blogging for Authors: Must We?

Blogging for Authors: Must We?

Guest blogger: Kimberly Moynahan

Back in January, this article came through my Twitter stream: Blogging for Authors: Why You Need a Blog and How to Get Started, posted on the Nonfiction Authors Association website. In that article, e-book author Stephanie Chandler recommends that every author have a blog.

She advises you “contact your webmaster” to add a blog to your site; she talks about “keyword concentration”, how blogs are good for SEO and how content is king; she explains how to choose a blogging platform, why you shouldn’t host on a secondary domain and…well…are your eyes glazing over yet?

Here’s the thing: Starting a blog is like joining a gym. Eighty percent of people who begin will not last three months. Okay, I made that number up. But in fact, the realty for bloggers is probably worse. In 2008, a blog search engine company found that of 133 million blogs only 7.4 million had been updated in the last 120 days.

That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled. — Douglas Quenqua, New York Times, June 5, 2009

So before you jump onto the “every author needs a blog” bandwagon, ask yourself if blogging is really for you. Because frankly, having a sad neglected blog is probably worse than not starting one at all.

Here is what you need to be a blogger—

 

A Bit of Technical Abilitycrow with tools

Even if you have a webmaster, she’s only going to set up your site. You still have to put up your own post, format it, add graphics and tags, and publish the thing. It’s not difficult, but if you are the kind of person who gets faint at the idea of formatting an Excel column, you might want to think twice about blogging.

Lion sleepingTime. Lots of it.

Stephanie, in her article, advises that you blog five times a week. It’s good writing practice she says.

First off, no, it’s not. You know as well as I do, if you are dashing off five quick posts a week, you are not practicing good writing. You’re just adding “content” which is great for attracting search engines bots and random strangers, but not so much for engaging readers and impressing publishers.

Blogging five times a week is a herculean task. Even filler posts – YouTube videos and “Wordless Wednesday” images – take effort to pull together. Recruiting guest bloggers helps, but there is work around that as well. And these stopgaps will only entertain your readers for so long. Your audience wants to hear from you.

How much time does blogging take?

My advice to potential bloggers is this: Write your first five posts before you commit. Time yourself from the moment you start thinking about what you’re going to write, to the moment all five are written, formatted for the web, proofed, have catchy titles, and have legal-to-use images with credits and captions.

Now add an hour a week for site maintenance and improvement, another hour for responding to commenters, and fifteen minutes a day (at the very least) for promoting your blog on social media. Now how’s your week shaping up?

Social Media SavvyBees

Blogs cannot live in a vacuum. It will be up to you to find your audience and make them aware of your blog. Sure search engines will find your blog so people will stumble upon it, but you will have to do the real work of alerting your followers and attracting new readers every time you post. This means mastering and diligently usingTwitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media.

Herd sheepSomething Unique to Say

What are you going to blog about? Here’s a subject that could take up a whole post. But in short, if your blog is to rise above the babble of a million author bloggers all doing the exact same thing, you are going to have to deliver something unique.

Rule #1 is reward the faithful for showing up. Your readers are your most valuable promoters. Feed and nurture them accordingly. Talk to them. Give them something they can’t get anywhere else. What that is depends on your target audience – readers, writers, or both.

Rule #2 is that blogging is not all about you, The Author. If you want to connect with your readers, you must show a bit of you, The Person.  No need to throw your entire personal life onto the screen (please), but talking about your passion for 1940s jazz, your daytime job as a dog trainer or the crazy thing that happened at the grocery store this morning goes a long way towards making your readers feel special and welcome.

Thick Skinwalruses

You’re a writer. You’re used to editors pointing out flaws in your manuscripts. You’re used to rejection. You might even be used to negative book reviews (if one ever gets used to that). So already you are stronger than most.

But how are you when your ideas are attacked? How will you respond when your credibility is challenged? When a reader comments (shouts!) in UPPER CASE that you are not worthy of the pixels you are printed on?

If you blog well, your comment section is going to be more than just people heaping praise and thanks upon you. It can become the lifeblood of your blog, an exciting place where people debate and discuss ideas. It can also become a place where people criticize, even attack you.

For instance, these are actual comments from my blog:

Are you on drugs? You clearly lack journalistic skills on top of empathy for life… 

This article is the biggest piece of SHIT I’ve read so far …

I leave them on my site for my own amusement and also so I have great examples for posts like this.

KittensYou have many choices in how to handle individual commenters and your comment sections as a whole – another topic that could fill a post. But the two choices you don’t have if you want to build a vibrant community on your blog, are turning off the comment sections and screaming back in UPPER CASE. (This never goes well.)

Stephanie Chandler is right. Blogging can help you connect with your readers. It can be a way to increase your following and possibly book sales. But so can meeting with book clubs, starting a newsletter, giving workshops, having a Facebook page, engaging on Twitter, posting on Instagram and doing the most important thing of all – finishing your book.

In the end, the answer to “Should I blog” is, it depends.
But the answer to “Must I blog?” is, no.
Read More:

L.L. Barkett: It’s Time for (Many) Experienced Writers to Stop Blogging

Jane Friedman: Reasons to Keep Blogging

Kidlit.com: Do Unpublished Writers Have to Blog?

Huffington Post: 5 Reasons Authors Should Blog

Joe Bunting: What Fiction Authors Really Need to Know About Their Platform

 

All images CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay

BIO

 

Kimberly MoynahanKimberly Moynahan is a freelance science, nature, and interpretive writer. She blogs on the natural sciences, animals, and the writing life on her site Endless Forms Most Beautiful. She has been published in Scientific American’s Best Science Writing Online and WOLVES Magazine. Kim serves on the Leadership Team for Science Borealis, the Canadian science blog network and is a regular blogger for the Canadian Science Writers Association. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

 

 

A Newbie’s Guide to Book Conferences

A Newbie’s Guide to Book Conferences

Heather M. O’Connor. My publisher Orca Books recently invited me to sign copies of Betting Game at the Ontario Library Association (OLA) Super Conference.

“Me? Sign books at the OLA? Sure!” It’s the largest library conference and trade show in Canada.

A day or two before the big day, I felt like a preteen going to her first boy-girl party. What should I wear and bring? What are the signings like? What do I say?

I’ve gathered some super tips for preparing for and attending the OLA Super Conference. You can also use this advice to get the most out of other major book events, trade shows and conferences.

Be prepared

Check out the event website. You never know what you’ll find. (The OLA provided a cool photo frame for my pics.) Identify and use the conference hashtag, and add the conference app to your phone.

Read the program, even if you’re not attending the panels. Who is signing? Who is speaking? Maybe you’ll “bump into” that editor you want to meet.

Shout out on social media that you’re going, and ask who else is attending. If you’re signing books, announce the time and your publisher’s booth. Share news about other signings and events. If the conference has a Facebook group or event, join it.

What to wear

The default attire is business casual.

However, some authors add a little cosplay flair to their signings. Lena Coakley donned a prim Brontë-style bonnet to sign Worlds of Ink and Shadow at the OLA. Kari-Lynn Winters signed Bad Pirate in ARRR-some pirate gear at Reading for the Love of It, a big Toronto teachers’ conference.

Skip the high heels and opt for comfortable shoes. You’ll be on your feet for hours.

What to bring

A phone for taking and posting pics, following the program and connecting with friends. A watch. Business cards. A strong bag for carrying all the book loot.

Two reliable pens or Sharpie markers for signing, if you’re picky about your writing implements. (What writer isn’t?) Book swag, like bookmarks or buttons. My time slot was at the end of the day, so I offered a free draw to entice people to stick around.

Coffee for your publishing team—they can’t always get a break.

Meet the people

Conferences are the perfect place to network, do market research, and connect with writers and book-lovers. Strike up a conversation with your neighbour. Browse for books. Share a lunch table.

Librarians and teachers:

  • find out what their kids like to read and what they ask for
  • mention you do classroom visits, book clubs and programs
  • tell them about funding for author visits (more about that in a future post)
  • swap book recommendations

Publishers:

  • study the books they showcase at the booth–what are they selling?
  • find out which books they’re excited about and why
  • identify trends and ask market-related questions (when they’re not busy)
  • pick up catalogues and take advantage of a live peek at their books

Authors:

  • hang out with other writers and expand your tribe
  • observe experienced writers in action and ask their advice
  • promote other authors and their events–what goes around comes around
  • check out the event before you’re published so you come prepared
Schmooze dos and don’ts

DO take lots of pictures. Selfies. Signings. Capture the excitement, then share your pics on social media and your blog.

DON’T accept book giveaways or enter the free draws at conferences for librarians or teachers, no matter how tempting they look. You’ll take those resources away from classrooms and libraries.

Book signing tips

Check in with your publisher when you arrive, and return to the booth 10-15 minutes before your signing. It gives you time to stow your bag, straighten your clothes and thoughts, and think about what you want to write. Ask someone to take pictures.

Librarians and teachers are book people. They’re your fans. When they ask you to sign their book “For the students of XXX School,” you feel like a million bucks. I add a personal line, like “Always count on your team” or “Keep kicking!”

Make small talk. Find connections—a student who likes soccer books, a familiar school. If they seem interested, share interesting facts and valuable resources for your book, like extras on your website or an online teachers’ guide. Or mention you do school and library visits.

You feel like a rock star while you’re signing, but it’s over before you know it. Enjoy!

What are your tips for getting the most out of a big book event like the OLA Super Conference? Share them below.