Social Media Strategy for Print Publishing
In this Part 3 of a five-part series on indie writers and social media, I suggest a framework for self-publishing printed books.In Part 1 we looked at commoditization and its effects, and the hype surrounding social media that gives so many people so much false hope. In Part 2 we explored the difficulties in being sales driven, the traditional book publishing model, and how we might use the economics of the long tail.
Now, with this background, we can get down to some practical nuts and bolts of the thing.
There has always been a stigma attached to self publishing. Obviously there are some issues like the lack of access to a helpful editor or some kind of peer review, which we’ll discuss in Part 5. Most of the bad press was really about defending the status quo in the traditional publishing model.
The status quo is not sustainable and, as discussed in Part 2, it keeps many deserving books off the market.
Core Strategy
The core of our strategy is to use a web-based print-on-demand service. The diagram below shows Lulu but there are several such services and probably others that I haven’t found:Essentially these services print copies on demand to fulfill orders. You can print one or small batches such as 10-100 and put them in inventory. The services are very economical, costing around $10 per copy for simple books with no inside colour.
Another approach is to write your book as a series of blog articles, and turn that into a book:
Lulu, for example, will take care of getting an ISBN for your book and listing it on Amazon. You could, of course, sell your book on your own web site but Amazon has more foot traffic and can spin the long-tail effect; whereas your site can not. I think it’s a form of hubris to use your own site. Amazon has better reach and is a bargain for around 30% of your cover price.I can’t suggest a cover price. How many copies can you sell @$80? @$26? @$10? Maybe (nearly) free is more profitable. You have to figure that out, and it’s not easy.
Marketing Plan
In terms of overall strategy you need to develop a marketing plan and an engagement strategy (see below). A marketing plan identifies your audience (see Part 2) and provides enough information for you to make decisions about things like pricing and how to reach your audience.You will remember we defined a hypothetical audience of 13 million young American women ages 25 to 34 that we were going to reach by advertising on FaceBook.
This is just an example; your audience might not be on FaceBook or there may be better ways to do this.
Engagement Strategy
The above diagram positions several social media on a time scale. Your engagement strategy should define the type of message that you publish through these different media. In essence it's a communications plan. The purpose of these messages is to engage your audience, so they have to contain something about your book or about you and your activities that resonates and causes your fans to respond. You’re trying to create a buzz.All of these messages should link to the point of sale at Amazon, and they should cross-promote (join me on FaceBook, follow me on Twitter, etc.).
Generally, Twitter is CB Radio. It’s best for daily tweets and your headline news.
On FaceBook, you should have an account for yourself as an author that is separate from your personal account. Keep the personal account for your real friends and family. Set up a group for your book, and link it to an externally facing FaceBook ‘page’. Engage your followers at least every few days. Be imaginative, for example ask them to suggest plot lines or vote about your characters.
FaceBook is important because, like Amazon, it's where 400 million people go. Also, in June 2010, FaceBook linked to Yahoo! (600 million users) so updates can be shared across both networks. In turn, Yahoo! owns the social bookmarking service Delicious and the photo site Flickr.
You might also consider a blog as part of your promotional mix. A blog is like a daily or weekly newspaper, and a regular frequency is vitally important. You should aim to publish 250 words/day or 1,000/week about your thoughts as an author on any remotely related subject X. (Yes, I break both rules.)
FaceBook has numerous plugins for your web site to create viral feedback loopsOn your blog, add some code for FaceBook Connect or FaceBook Like so there is a viral loop between the two sites. And everywhere you can, put a Share This link to social bookmarking sites.
Example Share at the top of the right-hand panel on this blogDevelop an email list. I suggest using it monthly because people hate spam. Use it to tell people to visit your latest blog, or to announce a sale or whatever. Don’t forget to put in links to Amazon and FaceBook and so forth.
Finally, don’t forget public engagements. Make yourself available as a speaker, attend book fairs and any other event you can wrangle. Take a few books with you, too. (There are services that will take credit cards over your smart phone.)
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