An Evening With Fauzia Burke at Bernardsville Library, New Jersey
4 DESIGN TIPS
First impressions are made in one-tenth of a second.
- Your photo: Look friendly. It should make people want to work with you.
- Book Jacket: It should represent you, and your work.
- Website: Get it up & running 6 months before your book is published. Get it professionally done. Readers will judge the quality of your work by the quality of your website.
- Graphics: Must have a professional look
5 RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
- Blog: Show your expertise. It will allow readers to judge your writing style. Blog on your blog, on your website, and post your blogs on LinkedIn—its free, and does not require an exclusive. Contact bloggers you admire, suggest a few topics to them and ask if you can guest post on their blog. It will widen your audience.
- Social Media: Get active; engage with your friends & followers.
- Mailing List/Newsletter: Very, very important. Get started now. Generally, the open rate is 2%; for authors it is 50%. Keep your readers informed, and they will buy your book. Keep your newsletter small. Don’t make it a sales pitch. Drive it to your website.
- Videos: They demonstrate and engage.
- Be likeable:
o Ask questions
o Smile
o Be honest
o Don’t seek attention
o Be consistent. Have a routine; don’t drop off.
VISIBILITY
- Advertise: Use Facebook and Google to advertise your work.
- Distribution: book stores are key to making your work visible.
- Events: Hold book readings
- Goodreads: Be generous to authors in your genre, review their work; help others. Have your name in front of them—hopefully they will review you. Have giveaways.
- Blog: Your own blog will give you the SEO benefit.
- Facebook:
o Create an Author Page in your name.
o Get people to Like your page. Get to 1,000 followers.
o Boost your post to the audience you select.
o Pay to get followers.
o Stream events live on Facebook.
o Geo-target ads for events, but first get to 1,000 followers.
And watch the magic work. Its work.
Read more in Fauzia's book: Online Marketing for Busy Authors.
Visit my Author Page on Amazon