Guest Post by K. Dawn Byrd
Let’s talk marketing. It’s all so confusing. Twitter. Facebook. MySpace. Pinterest. And, the list goes on and on. What’s an author to do who works full-time and really wants to spend all her free time writing, not marketing?
I’m no expert in marketing and believe there’s no quick fix. I’ll share something that I did work for me though. Mistaken Identity, my first young adult novel, sold more than all of my other books combined.
The reason, you ask? I believe it’s because I tweeted short sentences pertaining to the book with links to Amazon or christianbook.com where the book is sold. The book sold so well that when my publisher decided to test the print market waters with 10 books, Mistaken Identity was one of the books they chose.
Here are examples of two of my tweets:
Mistaken Identity is on sale for $4.79 at CBD. Young adult romance. BFFs in love with same guy http://tinyurl.com/43rwszj
BFFs in love with the same guy. Who will he choose? Party girl or Christian? Mistaken Identity. http://tinyurl.com/43rwszj
I don’t have a lot of time for marketing, but I do have time to tweet. A word of caution…I lost followers when I stopped tweeting about other subjects. Your twitter friends want to hear more from you than just self-promotion, so be sure to post about various subjects to keep their interest.
Sometimes, I’ll post something like, “Who’s enjoying the weather on this beautiful day?” Or, “Wendy’s chili, the perfect lunch.” Also, I enjoy tweeting quotes from famous people and quotes about books and reading.
One wonderful tool I’ve found is www.socialoomph.com. I use the free version. It allows me to tweet the same tweets multiple times because it saves them. The short URLs are there, which saves me the time of having to go to www.tinyrul.com again to shorten them. Because socialoomph stores so many tweets, I can pick and choose which ones I want to repeat and it makes it easy to tweet from my BlackBerry because I don’t have to shorten the URL.
The sequel to Mistaken Identity, Shattered Identity will release in a few days and I’ll be ready. I’ll have gone to www.tinyurl.com and shortened my URLs to both Amazon and ChristianBook and I’ll have a couple sample tweets ready to go.
It will interesting to see if tweeting will push Shattered Identity to outselling Mistaken Identity. Try it with your own books and see what happens. You have nothing to lose.
K. Dawn Byrd is an author of inspirational fiction in several genres. Recently, she tried her hand at young adult fiction and found that she really enjoyed writing it. Four new young adult releases are scheduled for 2012. Three books are part of a new college-age mystery/romance series, scheduled to release January, June, and December. The fourth is Shattered Identity, the sequel to Mistaken Identity, and will release in April.
K. Dawn Byrd is an avid blogger and gives away several books per week on her blog, most of which are signed by the authors. She’s also the moderator of the popular Facebook Christian Fiction Gathering group.
When not reading or writing, K. Dawn enjoys spending time with her husband of 16 years while walking their dogs beside a gorgeous lake near her home and plotting the next story waiting to be told.
Mistaken Identity:
Eden Morgan longs for a boyfriend of her own, an impossible goal when her best friend, Lexi Branson, gets all the attention and all the guys. When they fall in love with the same guy, Eden believes she doesn’t have a chance. She can only hope that sometimes the good girl gets the guy.
Shattered Identity:
Nineteen-year-old Lexi Branson thinks she’s found the guy of her dreams. He’s hot, wealthy, and older. She soon finds out that sometimes the perfect guy turns out to be perfectly dangerous.
