Outreach FAQ

As there are hundreds of options for conducting outreach with current and potential fans, it would take an entire book to cover all of them.

In this bonus chapter, I have listed some commentary based on the most common questions I get about self-publishing platforms, social media, marketing, and outreach.

Q: I’m still confused. Is social media good, or bad?

A: Remember the whole point of my approach to book marketing is to find the small number of activities that lead to the biggest results.

Social media is for engagement. It’s a 1-on-1 medium by nature, so it performs well for direct communication with fans. However, social media performs poorly when compared to media like email for promotion, as the vast majority don’t see your promotion and those that do either don’t care or don’t trust you because they don’t know you yet.

So:

• Connecting with fans—Social is GOOD
• Drawing potential fans to your website to build trust—Social is GOOD
• Selling books—Social is BAD
• Wasting vast amounts of time when you should be writing—Social is VERY GOOD

Q: So, what’s the best outreach strategy for authors?

A: The best outreach strategy depends on where you are in the publishing process:

• If you don’t have a book ready for publication—write a book. Forget about outreach for now because it will be a waste of your time.
• If you have a book published—write another book. Tell your friends, family, writing group, etc. about your book, but do nothing else right now except write a second book. Otherwise, you’re wasting your time. If you want to jump right in the deep end—you can publish the book as a series of posts on your website. This is how I got started. This is also how Andy Weir, the author of The Martian, got started. It’s scary giving away your only book, but it’s effective.
• If you have two books or more published—read on.

The most effective outreach strategy for authors is also the simplest:

1. You give something you created away in return for an email address; or
2. You publish a piece of content offering a subscription within the content.

Option 1 is much more effective than Option 2 because of the higher perceived value of providing something tangible in return for the reader’s email address.

The options are not mutually exclusive. For example, you can publish a post on your website containing a form where the reader can download a PDF version of the post.

You can see this strategy gives you plenty of leeways to experiment with what works for you.

Here are the implementations of this strategy I have found effective:

1. You publish a free book on Amazon with a link to free content on your website that the reader gets in exchange for their email address.
2. You have a popup on your site offering free content in exchange for an email address.
3. Content on your site has sign-up forms embedded in the content.
4. Same as 3, but there is a form in the content offering a free download in return for the reader’s email address.
5. You publish free content on your website and link back to it from social groups or guest blog posts.

Remember the basic strategy is what matters, not the specifics. What works for me may not work for you—which is why it’s super-important to measure the effectiveness of your outreach.

You also need to remember you are playing the long game here—no single strategy will propel you to the top of the best-seller lists, so aim for strategies you can set and forget so you can continue to build a body of work.

Wattpad

I have a dim view of Wattpad. It’s not just the bucket-loads of atrocious teen fiction, but also the fact that Wattpad is cultivating a whole new generation of readers who think everything should be free. Even if I believed you could extract some value from the platform, I avoid it on principle.

Scribd

I must admit I had never heard of Scribd until someone asked my opinion of the service. If you don’t know, Scribd is a subscription service for eBooks and audiobooks. It seems to be an improvement on Wattpad in it at least has real books on it (rather than appalling fan fiction), and subscribers must pay. I may put a book on Scribd one day, but I have no advice for you now.

Facebook

I’ve mentioned Facebook a lot in the book, so I don’t have much more to add. Given I practice what I preach, Facebook is the only social media platform I use semi-regularly. I post major news or when I release a book or course. I am in a handful of writing groups where I share some of these updates to increase their reach. I can go weeks without posting anything.

I also maintain a Facebook author page to let Facebook peeps know I am a real person and an author, but I don’t post there often.

What this means is, if you want guru advice on how to master Facebook, I’m not the one to ask. I’ve got this far with my writing career without paying much attention to social media and get much more writing done as a result. If this changes, I will let you know.

Twitter

If you thought the engagement stats were terrible for Facebook, Twitter is worse. The same stats that showed the engagement on Facebook was 0.07%, showed for Twitter it was 0.03%.

Laura Roeder, who is the founder of Meet Edgar, a social media automation platform, did an experiment with her list of over 33,000 followers and found only between 0.6% and 2.5% of her followers saw her tweets and of the few who saw the tweets, only 2% of them clicked the link. The funny thing about this story is her solution to this terrible result was to send more tweets—using Meet Edgar to automate it, of course!

Tim Grahl, whose philosophy is similar to mine, had an author client with 160,000 Twitter followers who used the platform for a book launch. It resulted in less than 400 sales—a 0.02% conversion rate. Another author he worked with had over a million Twitter followers, and a book launch on the platform showed no noticeable difference in book sales.

A commonly cited benefit to Twitter is you can find industry contacts like agents, publishers, and journos on Twitter. As an indie publisher, you don’t need an agent or a publisher. Once you build a track record, they will come to you. And journos are everywhere. If you need Twitter to find a journo, you’re not looking hard enough.

Twitter is also cited as a great way to meet other authors. I can accept this. Writing is a lonely business, and it is good to build rapport with other authors. But this is not a business decision, it’s a social decision and should be conducted during downtime, not work time.

Instagram and Pinterest

I’ve never opened an account on either platform, nor used them, so I have no advice for you. Refer to my previous comments on practicing what I preach—Facebook is my primary social channel, and I don’t touch the others. If I ever add to my 20% and open an Instagram or Pinterest account, I will let you know how it goes.

Social Automation

Social automation is where you pay a monthly fee to companies like Hootsuite or Meet Edgar for the convenience of scheduling social media posts, so you don’t have to do it by hand.

If you plan on joining the “post until your fingers bleed” cult, this can save you time. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your money.

Author Blog

An author blog is valid for two use cases:

• Non-fiction authors should post articles and book excerpts in their area of expertise. This is good for building credibility with readers, provides a quality target for outreach, and is excellent for search engine ranking as readers link and share your content.
• Fiction authors should post short stories, book excerpts, world-building, and backstory content. The reasons are the same as for non-fiction, except the intent is to draw readers into your worlds, not to build credibility.

Unless you are a compulsive sharer, all other forms of blog content are low-value and unnecessary for your success. If you are a compulsive sharer, make your blog your go-to place for posting and link back from social, rather than post to social first, as this is an easy way to turn a time-waster into a valuable bit of outreach.

Other Blogs

Posting to other blogs (guest blogging) is outreach. You need to prepare your 5Ws and monitor to see if the result was worth the effort.

Book Launches

The book launch is a carryover from the old days of traditional publishing where a publisher needed to move a crap-ton of copies to recoup their costs.

Big book launches are not only unnecessary for an indie but don’t often return a benefit that outweighs the time, cost, and stress of trying to coordinate the launch.

I do what I call a low-key launch that is 20% effort, 80% results. I could put more effort in and push up the results, but I find it’s not worth the stress for an extra few sales.

My launch process:

1. Email your list saying you will publish a new book soon. Have a link in the email they can click to register their interest.
2. Publish the book. Publishing on Amazon is never a smooth process, so it’s best to make sure the book is published and available on Amazon. This will save you massive amounts of stress, trust me. Don’t worry about the book being available before the official launch. Unless you are a big-name author, your book will be invisible on Amazon until you have made quite a few sales.
3. Send another email to your list outlining your “official” launch—where the book will be available for a launch price of $0.99 (the lowest you can set it to on Amazon) for a few days only (7 days max). Ask them to click a link if they want to agree to leave you a review.
4. The day before the official launch, set the price to $0.99 on Amazon and then send another email saying that the launch starts tomorrow. Link to the book page on Amazon in this email. Don’t try to synchronize the price drop with your email. Amazon takes a few hours to update pricing, and your readers will be in many time zones, so it’s pointless trying.
5. Send an email on launch day. Link to the book page on Amazon. Repeat the request for reviewers.
6. Send an email the day before the launch ends. Link to the book page on Amazon. Ask if they bought the book. Include a link to the review page so those who purchased the book can leave a review.
7. A week after launch, email all review volunteers asking them if they left a review. Include a link to the book review page for those who haven’t left a review yet.
8. Send an email a month after the launch ends. Link to the book page on Amazon. Ask if they bought the book. Include a link to the review page so those who purchased the book can leave a review.

The cool thing about this process is it’s automatic. I write the sequence once in my email program and copy and change the sequence for each book launch. It took a few hours to get the sequence right the first time, and about an hour to update the links and test for each new book. Then I forget about it.

You can use the same sequence with minimal modification to run a special on the same book every few months. From experience, the specials are just as effective as the original launch in generating new sales and new reviews.

Ads

Advertising is unnecessary for your success and is not a part of the 20% effort that will get you 80% of your results. Once you are established, however, they can be worth considering. Social media ads can be an excellent way to draw people to your work because you can get quite granular with your targeting.

The downside is it’s easy to lose money if you aren’t careful. Ads are high-risk for a new author as “buy my book” advertising doesn’t work. To get a conversion rate that doesn’t contain a lot of zeroes, your ads must point to free content. This free content must contain a Call to Action (CTA) to paid content.

When an Internet user sees an ad, their trust goes down. To get them to follow through to a paid option, you need to regain their trust, which means you must offer something of value at no cost. My advice: get great at your organic marketing before you consider advertising.

Permafree

Permafree is where you list your book on Amazon with the price set to zero. You can’t set your book price to zero in KDP as Amazon has a minimum price of $0.99. You first must list your book on a site where you can set the price to free (e.g., Barnes and Noble) and then email Amazon to get them to price match.

I rate permafree second only to free downloads on your author website for building an audience. It’s not as valuable as it once was because so many free books are published on Amazon, but you can still expect 5-10 times as many downloads for a free book as a paid book—even if the reader is only paying 99 cents. As long as your book has quality CTA’s inside, permafree is still a good way to increase your fan-base.

Kindle Select

I can’t offer any specific advice—I sell books on my author website, so don’t qualify for Kindle Select. I suggest an effective strategy could be using free days with the same sequence I outlined in the section on “Book Launches”.