One of the first things I learned about being a published author was that I was going to have to sell my own books if I wanted to be a success. My own publisher informed me (after my book was on the market) that they put 90% of their effort into 10% of their writers simply because the economics of the publishing business dictates that this is so. In essence, unless you are already a bestselling author there is very little chance that a publisher is going to spend up big on pushing a book from an unknown author.
Plugging Yourself in Cyberspace
The Sword & The Serpent
From my interaction with other authors this is an almost insurmountable obstacle. After all of the toil and sweat that they have put into their books to find out that the completion of the manuscript was only the beginning of the whole job can be soul destroying. As a pragmatic soul I took this information on board and decided that I needed to learn about how to market the books that I write and since the publication of my first novel Loot in 2009 I have become much more adept at selling my work. My latest book, The Sword & The Serpent has sold much better than that first effort, due largely to my increased ability as a marketer (for example the way I worked the plug for it into this post).
The internet is the best place to market yourself as a writer which kind of makes sense because mostly what people do online (when they aren’t watching pirate movies or looking at porn) is to read. It follows that if you are looking for a market of readers then a place where billions of people go everyday to read things may be a good place to start. So I did.
Many of the writers that I have run across on the interwebz have been under the impression that their book just needs to be printed and the readers would just turn up like worms in the Field of Dreams. The pragmatism that I have already noted above told me that if I was going to be an overnight success that I had better plan on working at it for a decade or so and so I developed a long term strategy. I have written about the business of writing at great length on this blog already so I won’t reiterate here. Suffice to say that I can now also recognize someone who really has a handle on the business of cyber marketing and who I can learn a trick or two from for my own personal gain.
Getting it Right
Recently I had an experience of an author that is successful because she is doing it the right way and all of us tadpoles in the literary pond could take a leaf out of her book. The lady in question is Suzanne White whose book The New Astrology was published in 1988 and has remained popular for a quarter of a century. In fact this conflation of the Western signs of the Zodiac and the animals of the Oriental Horoscope is a favorite reference work for my wife who looks up the correspondences of every person whose birthday she learns. Consequently I have also become familiar with the book and while it is a bit simplistic for my particularly esoteric tastes in occult literature I found the idea of conflating the systems very intriguing.
The New Astrology
So when I found Ms. White on Facebook I clicked on like and I have been following her posts ever since. What I like about the way that she is using social media to market herself is her genuine engagement with her fans on the site. This is the vital aspect of using social media that most business people don’t handle very well and the most critical part of book marketing for an unknown author. One look though Suzanne’s Timeline shows that she posts regularly and doesn’t just post pictures of cats or the latest popular meme but really uses her posts to create interesting and, more importantly, shareable content.
I have been impressed in the past with the way that she is so obviously the one that is making a personal reply to a comment and that she just as obviously enjoys this engagement with her readers. This is why she is still selling books after 25 years and the first lesson that new authors could learn from the way that she does business. The second thing that she has done to market her books that has impressed me involved the way that she has chosen to market her latest books.
The original volume is something of a tome because it cross references twelve signs of the zodiac with the twelve animals of Chinese astrology resulting in 144 separate profiles being produced. This year Ms. White has released a series of twelve books, one for each of the Western signs and in each one the twelve animal signs are described for people under that sign. This has allowed her to create a range of books that is tailored to individuals rather than just a single product that covers everyone. This clever use of the e-book is the sort of thing that every new writer should be aiming at.
The Value of Personal Engagement
The other thing that Ms. White is really nailing with her marketing is the freebies and samples that she uses to introduce her work to new readers. Recently she posted on Facebook that if her followers e-mailed her with their birthday that she would send them a copy of the book for their sign. As the missus is a fan I thought it would win me some brownie points and so I e-mailed Suzanne with the (top secret) date. I was expecting the standard form e-mail thanking me for my interest with a link to a free download site but was pleasantly surprised to receive a personal reply from the lady herself with the promised e-book attached as a PDF.
This kind of profile building strategy works in many ways. Firstly your readers will make a better connection with you and be more interested in your writing if they feel that they can communicate with you and taking the time to reply in person instead of having an assistant do it makes your readers into your fans and encourages other people to like your page creating even greater potential in your Facebook market. It is also a great way to collect e-mail addresses to use for later book marketing efforts, the premium quality advertising medium of the 21st Century. The direct delivery underscored the personal nature of the connection and meant that I had the book to read straight away- an all round winner.
Writing is Only the First Half of the Game
Most writers are fairly solitary creatures and so this kind of social networking can be a challenge. Many of the questions from first time authors on writers’ forums are centered on this issue which seems to a source of much consternation for many. The fact is that the important half of the business of being an author is the marketing because that’s the bit that pays. In order to succeed it is necessary to overcome the introverted urge at least once in a while to sell some books.
Related Posts:
http://thenakedlistener.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/blogzodiac1/
When I am not blogging or studying the arcane occult sciences I write freelance copy for the web. One of the topics that my services are most in demand for is writing about various things connected to the web and internet marketing and as a consequence I am usually one of the first people in my social circles to learn about new things on the interwebz. While most of this is stuff like the changes made to search engine algorithms which really only interests other computer geeks; sometimes I learn of something coming up on the cyber calendar that is of wider interest. The latest big change that is impending in cyberspace is the introduction of a search function to Facebook.
Graph Search- the End of the Cyberworld as We Know It?
Does Anybody Really Know How Graph Search Works?
This social search tool on the world’s biggest social network goes by the name of Graph Search and is still only a beta application at the moment with users that want to give it a try needing to apply for inclusion. Because I sensed that it was going to be the first big issue in social media marketing circles for the year I signed up for the beta when it came out and so I have become used to the new presentation of my Facebook pages and know something about the ins and outs of how the new search feature on Facebook is going to work. My experience has also told me that when Graph Search is officially launched that there will be a certain amount of negative reaction amongst Facebook users who seem to dislike even the smallest changes to the site.
Last year when Facebook changed over to the new Timeline configuration there was more than the average amount of grumbling about the new layout. As the approach of the main launch of Graph Search approaches and users are discovering what is coming their way there is a new wave of grumbles developing in Facebook’s corner of cyberspace with all of the usual messages of impending doom appearing in the newsfeed. Of course, as is usual, the main issue of contention is the worry that Facebook is contravening our privacy by making our previously hidden posts and photos findable through this new search feature. Many users that have seen old images of themselves suddenly resurfacing in the newsfeed have incorrectly concluded that Facebook has somehow altered their carefully configured privacy settings and is now making their most private moments in life that they were only sharing with their closest 137 friends (the average number of friends that Facebook users have) public property.
Facebook Friends and Abused Privacy
How Good are Your Facebook Friends?
Privacy is a big issue in social media and Facebook have made it possible to create a complex privacy profile to control who sees what you post. Of course only a tiny percentage of Facebook users actually ever look at the instructions for setting your level of privacy that Facebook has published and so every change seems to mysteriously change their exposure to public scrutiny in ways that they don’t understand. The reality is that Facebook doesn’t change any settings and their updates don’t alter them either- it just seems that way. In the latest instance, old photos or posts that have suddenly returned from the dead because of the introduction of Graph Search are almost always from someone else’s timeline with less stringent security settings. It turns out that it isn’t Facebook that is disregarding your privacy, it is your friends. This is because of the way that Graph Search works.
Graph Search is a semantic search engine which means that it tries to discern the searcher’s intended result based on their connection to other Facebook users rather than just on the basis of a keyword. In practice this means that it will look for the kinds of posts that the searcher is looking for that also have some sort of personal connection to them. This is reflected in the search categories that Facebook is offering through Graph Search which are all centered around the user’s friends. So it is possible to search through your list of friends, to see who their friends are, the restaurants, games and music that they like as well as any photos that they have been tagged in. It also allows users to see all of the photos that they have liked.
Keeping Your Precious Cat Pictures Strictly Private
My Cat
For instance I can enter ‘people who like cats’ into the search window and it produces a list of my friends and friends of my friends that have liked cats in their profiles. It is possible to refine the search and if I refine the search by adding the parameters of females born in 1963 it produces a list of 50 year old women in my friends list who have liked cats and shows me which of my friends’ friends that are 50 year old women have liked cats too. It doesn’t reveal any of the private information posted by any of these people to me and profiles that are restricted to friends only don’t appear in the results.
Where the issue of privacy arises is when your friends have shared photos or posts that you have made which put them on their Timeline where you have no control over them. This is compounded by these posts being shared on complete with any tags that are embedded in them. While users may have taken every precaution against unwanted viewing of their private content it is unlikely that all of their friends have, especially as we are only tenuously connected to many of the 137 people on our Facebook friends list.
Resistance is (Almost) Futile
Of course this has spawned a slew of online articles about how to keep your content private and what we all need to do before Facebook introduces Graph Search to make sure that your security isn’t breached by this latest work of evil from Zuckerberg’s cyber empire. The standard Facebook scam message has already hit the newsfeed as well with a post circulating that starts out with: “Just so everyone on my Friends List knows that I completed this and I am done! Facebook has changed their Privacy Settings once again! Due to the new “Graph App” anyone on Facebook (Including other Countries), can see your Pictures, Likes and Comments“. This is followed by the dire threat of being unfriended for noncompliance with the instructions for modifying the privacy settings of your friends’ posts. Of course the instructions won’t do anything of the sort and in reality the instructions will remove that particular friend from your newsfeed.
The only privacy settings that a Facebook user has any control over are their own settings and the amount of control that users have is quite adequate to preserve your privacy if it is set up in the right way. The first thing to remember is that you cannot alter any of these general settings in the newsfeed so all of those complicated instructions are really just a waste of time. All of the security settings are accessed either through the security tab in the left column or via the gear icon that opens the privacy shortcuts. It is possible to set the privacy of each individual post so that it can only be seen by a restricted audience but in order to make this work it has to be done on every post.
The Really Important Settings Controls
Most users will probably like Graph Search because it will make it much easier to find things that have been buried in the unending stream of posts in the newsfeed. If you are looking for a photo of your friend that you saw on Facebook months or even years ago Graph Search will find it for you straight away in most cases which is much more convenient than trying to look through your friends’ photo albums for a half remembered image that you liked (or thought that you did). Other social information like what your friends thought of the Hobbit movie or which restaurants they have eaten at in are also easy to find and so it should increase the usability of the site for most people.
One thing is certain, Graph Search isn’t going to compromise your privacy on Facebook, your friends have done that already.
Related Posts:
Some humorous Facebook Graph Search Results
Recently I was contacted by Marie who asked if I would let her guest post here about her new website that celebrates the Rolling Stones turning 50 (the same age as me!). I have been a fan of the Stones forever and as the byline of this page is ‘blogging about everything’ I agreed to post her article. Enjoy.
Celebrate The Stones Age With Us
We might never see a pop/rock act being such a major force 50 years after their debut. And that’s why I’m writing this article out to celebrate Rolling Stone’s 50 years in the music industry. Remember that you are watching history when you are watching the legendary Rolling Stones. They are the biggest and greatest rock and roll band all of time. And they will always be. Here are 5 reasons why The Rolling Stones are the biggest and greatest rock band in the world.
Half a Century of the Stones
- Everything they do turns into Gold. Their A Bigger Bang is already the #1 tour of all time. The Stones are the only band to hit #1 singles in the 60′s,70′s,80′s,90′s,00′s. Their singles are also the longest staying singles in billboard charts.
- Every band out there, that tries to perpetuate that tough guy image, owes something to the Rolling Stones – they are the original.
- The Stones are no strangers to football’s biggest game. Last 2006, The Stones played to an audience of 1 billion people at the Superbowl. It was one of the best Superbowl performances if you would survey people. And just last Superbowl, Mercedes – Benz 2013 Superbowl Commercial used the soundtrack of the Rolling Stones Sympathy for the Devil. The commercial was wicked! I would wager that plenty of fans had wished to see them returning on that stage after that commercial.
- Everything the Stones do is a major media event. Whether it’s a scandal, a tour or an album. Admit it, when the Stones come into your town they are front page news. Can you say the same about Green Day or U2 or any other rock bands out there?
- The Stones are more alive at 65 years old than you will ever be. The Rolling Stones are currently celebrating their 50th anniversary, marked by the compilation GRRR! They are booking gigs and concerts for this 2013 year. “We haven’t finished yet” said Keith Richards.
So enough already about how old the Stones are. Why do the Stones get so much crap about their age anyway? Maybe it’s because they are still the biggest name out there playing on the biggest stage in the world. It’s time to start thinking about the Stones like blues greats BB King and Muddy Waters. They are growing rock up and taking it farther than anyone (not the Beatles, not Elvis) have taken the genre before. The Stones age should be celebrated!
Prehistoric Stones
And to give you something to celebrate the stones, I want to share to you this site I saw
http://www.howthestonesroll.com/
and I’m sure other Stones fans would love it. They have this really cool graphics that would take you to a journey of the Stones in the music industry. Hard core fans of The Rolling Stones from all over the world. Put on some real good Stones music, play it loud, and enjoy your stay there. I’m out of here.
article by: Marie Felipe
How the Stones Roll
The arrival on Australian shores of Dutch far Right Politician Geert Wilders this month has caused a storm of debate over the right of people to express their point of view in our supposedly free-speech supporting society. The fact that Wilders’ message is an unpopular one has earned him the ire of the Premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett who has refused to allow Wilders to use any government buildings as venues for his speaking tour after other venues backed out of their agreements with him due to the public reaction to his message.
The most disturbing thing about all of this isn’t Wilders ridiculous assertion that the Islamic community here holds any real threats for the wider population. In a free society like ours Wilders is entitled to his opinion and (theoretically) he has the same right as everyone else to express it. It isn’t even that the proprietors of several venues have refused to allow Wilders’ to use them for his talks that is worrying, after all how they carry on their business is their business. If they don’t want a mob of angry anti-discrimination (if such a thing is possible) protestors potentially smashing up their venue then that’s their choice.
It is the use by an elected official of his position and his exposure in the media to declare that Wilders’ message isn’t suitable to be heard in his state. The public buildings that he is denying Wilders the use of don’t belong to the fucking government, they belong to the people. By denying Wilders the use of any of the state’s public spaces Barnett is denying whatever percentage of Western Australian taxpayers’ the right to listen to his message no matter how far off the mark it may or may not be. Now, they won’t get the chance to decide for themselves because Colin Barnett took it on himself to decide for them.
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.- George Washington
The Evil One Himself
The irony is that Geert Wilders is a sitting member of the Dutch Parliament and the leader of the fourth largest political party in the Netherlands, the Party for Freedom. Under what circumstances should the elected officials of a multicultural society like Australia refuse to allow a visiting diplomat speak in public? And if another politician, albeit a visiting one, is gagged what chance has the average guy got of speaking freely?
In fact at Wilders’ event in Melbourne the protestors who did show up became violent but this wasn’t the focus of the media or of any statements by the government that followed it. If a US Senator came to Australia and protestors rioted outside of the venue and disturbed the proceedings the next day the media would have been full of MPs denouncing the vile means of the protestors for disrupting proceedings with a few comments thrown in about the freedom of speech that we all enjoy. Bah!
Muslims make up 2.5% of the Australian population, hardly even enough to create a minority, and certainly not a major threat to the 97.5% of us infidels. In fact I am confident enough to say that the Jihad won’t be starting in Adelaide. There is more of a threat posed to Australian society from bad American TV than from Islamic extremists.
Australians like to think that they enjoy a similar right to freedom of speech as they imagine that Americans have enshrined in its famous Constitution (there’s a topic for another post!) but the reality is far different. In fact the only time that the Australian Constitution mentions freedom it is in reference to Her Majesty’s freedom to veto bills that have been passed by the democratically elected Parliament. She is also free to wait up to a year and a day to make up Her Royal Mind. Any illusions that Australian’s have about their “Right” to free speech they got from watching too much American television.
Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire- Abbey Hoffman
Western Australian Ubermensch Colin Barnett
It seems that Australian politicians have a real problem understanding what freedom of speech actually is. Colin Barnett doesn’t seem to understand that the public that elected him has the right to decide who they hear speak, not him and that he really has no right to tell them how to use their public buildings either. As a political colleague of Barnett’s the leader of the opposition championed free speech by admitting that Wilders is “entitled to his view” but apparently not enough so that we should allow him to express it while he is here. After all Abbott is the fearless leader of the Liberals and Barnett’s number should be in his iPhone.
The trouble that our Right thinking politicians have with freedom of speech is that they don’t get that it means everybody gets to have their say with equal respect being shown to all points of view no matter how grotesque or erroneous. As Larry Flint of Hustler fame once said; everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it”. As soon as someone wants to say something that the Powers That Be don’t like their devotion to the principles of free speech grow qualifiers and all speech is deemed to be created unequally.
Where there is a great deal of free speech there is always a certain amount of foolish speech.- Winston Churchill
Anyone that has a Facebook account will see the truth in Churchill’s observation. He wasn’t criticizing the foolish speech, he was extolling the virtues of the potential that free speech has for saying something really intelligent and maybe even important. But unless they are allowed to speak no one will ever hear it. Any government that tells me that I don’t need to hear something, or that they are protecting my interests by boycotting someone from expressing their opinion is lying to me through their anally retentively clenched teeth.
A true political proponent of free speech and liberal thinking would have helped Wilders to find a venue for his speech and encouraged protestors to make their point lawfully as well. All that Barnett achieved was to make himself look a little more like a Nazi, a common look amongst Australian conservative politicians.
Protestors at Wilders’ Melbourne Appearance
Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears.- Louis D. Brandeis
Rocket scientist, occultist and Libertarian Jack Parsons wrote a short book entitled Freedom is a Two Edged Sword in which he warned of the consequences of the erosion of personal liberties in the democratized world of the West. Progressively we have been shifting towards a nanny state where our lives are parceled out to us in a regular drip feed of government dependence. As we develop a greater addiction to their succor the rights that we possess are plucked away one at a time, almost unnoticeably until a government official telling us that they are not allowing someone to speak freely becomes the accepted norm.
The only way to preserve that freedom is to never let it go in the first place. Thomas Jefferson said that freedoms, once lost are impossible to regain without a struggle. By that time the struggle is too late and it is before the rights and freedoms are taken away that we need to resist. The most difficult thing about having freedom of speech isn’t expressing it, any idiot can do that (see Facebook), the hardest part of having Free Speech is keeping it because this means allowing others to freely express their opinions however much you disagree with them.
Freedom is a two edged sword of which one edge is liberty and the other edge is responsibility, on which both edges are exceedingly sharp; and which is not easily handled by casual, cowardly or treacherous hands. For it has been sharpened by many conflicts, tempered in many fires, quenched by much blood, and although it is always ready for the use of the courageous and high-hearted, it will not remain when the spirit that forged it is gone.- Freedom is a Two Edged Sword, Jack Parsons
In my life as a freelance copywriter I learn a good many things, much of it is basically useless trivia but some of it is absolutely essential to my 21st Century life. Most of what I have been writing revolves around discussing, explaining or expressing an opinion on something to do with internet marketing. Dull, I know, but a guy’s gotta eat right? Anyway, in the course of my researches into the ins and outs of things like search marketing and click through rates I often run across something that is relevant to my efforts as a blogger.
Penguin Comes to Town
Penguins on the Attack
Several months ago Google altered its search algorithm and this became the hot button issue in the online marketing world. Essentially this update to the equation that Google uses to decide who makes the first page of the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) called Penguin was aimed at removing the junk from the SERPs by finding pages that were pointless compilations of keyword stuffed gibberish or which were linked to pages of keyword stuffed gibberish called link schemes.
As is the case in grammar, keywords are the words within the content of a web page that are central to its topic and which the spiderbots use to index the page. The thinking once ran along the lines of if six keywords is good then sixty keywords is fantastic. Link schemes are an insidious form of spam that either creates link farm content with many, many links pointing to it or, usually in combination with these pages, sends out trillions of spam comments to blogs. Either way, the object is to build ‘link juice’ for other junk pages. They are the cyber equivalent of highway advertising billboards that are erected along roads that nobody wants to travel.
The online marketing world was abuzz with apocalyptic predictions of the end of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the industry changed its buzz word to ‘Content Marketing’ (wild bunch, internet marketers). While this is generally good for me because someone has to write all of that content the Penguin Update also gave me useful insight into what NOT to do with my own blog if I wanted to rank well in the SERPs (which I do).
The Two Don’ts
What I learned not to do revolves around two different aspects of running a blog. Penguin targeted low quality sites which were filled with unnatural content. That is to say, content that isn’t written in a natural way but really just slapped together to contain a set keyword density. Pages like this, usually illegible, are designed to scam advertisers who’s Pay Per Impression (PPM) ends up on the page and they had grown in number until they had begun to choke the SERPs with useless results. The move against keyword stuffed pages like this has also been good for me as it has made it easier for my naturally written content to rise in the SERPs. So the first DON’T that I learned was don’t over use keywords in my blog posts in an effort to get an edge in the SERPs. Do write naturally.
The second DON’T that I learned was don’t accept everybody’s links. Just because you think that they are a good guy doesn’t mean that they don’t have cyber cooties. I learned this the hard way when this website suddenly disappeared from the SERPs and my visitors dried up to a trickle of faithful followers (I know who you are).
Spiderbots Can’t Read
“Why has this happened to me?” I asked. “Has my incisive social commentary suddenly become droll?” Thankfully the gods of cyberspace enlightened me in a binary epiphany and I checked the links on my website. “Eureka!” I ran through the suburban streets of Essendon naked in emulation of Archimedes (okay, I said “Woo Hoo!). The trouble was a link that was (formerly) in my blog roll to a friend’s website. This fellow cybernaut was approving spam comments posted by the link farms as real engagement and Google had pegged him as a link scheme page too. I know that he’s not a spammer but spiderbots can’t read.
The upshot was that after I removed his infectious link my page rank returned to a respectable 3 out of 10 (Wikipedia is only an 8) almost overnight. The take away is that bloggers need to be careful about which comments they approve and they have to be discerning about who’s pages they list in their blog roll or link to in posts. Fortunately the difference between a good link and a bad link are easy to spot.
Not All Links are Created Equal
Including links in your blog is still very important to the general SEO. Links tell the crawlers that you are engaged with other pages on the web and it judges you partly by the quality of those pages. Search engines attribute levels of authority to websites and pages like Wikipedia have a high credibility rating and so linking from an anchor text in a blog post to a Wikipedia page tells the crawler that you have taken the time to link to your source and so it gives you a little link juice. Many websites have a good authority rating with Google (like this one) and linking to them can establish your place on the net for the search engines and improve your place in the SERPs.
The Bad Link Fairy
Another kind of link that is especially good for your blog are links that point to you. This means that when someone puts your page on their blog roll or gives you a track back or a ping back you are getting a little bit more kudos with the spiderbots, unless those pages are link schemes, or look like link farms to the search engines. This is why it is vital to vet the comments on your blog now and to be selective about giving ping backs and other cyber validation to potential Black Hat SEO websites.
Takeaways
For most bloggers, especially many of the ones that read this blog, most of this is never going to matter very much. The first key takeaway is that concentrating on good, high quality content that is naturally written and includes images or video content that matches the copy will be ranked well. For most of the blogs that I follow personally this really means that they should just keep doing what they are doing already and try and do it better every time.
The second takeaway is that for the most part comments aren’t worth the trouble that they can cause most of the time. The average engagement level for blogs is around two comments for every hundred visitors (my own rate is just below this) so no matter how gratifying they are they don’t generally contribute much to the quality or the content of the blog- there are exceptions. I have decided to continue to accept comments here in the interests of offering a fair right of reply but I trash anything that is unreadable or even looks like spam.
It is also important to check out any websites before you post a link to them on your own blog. The e-mail that they send you may sound like they are genuine when all that they are doing is using a more sophisticated form of spam to attract traffic to their shitty websites. One school of thought among SEO professionals is that you shouldn’t swap links with anyone who has a lower page rank than you do and as medieval as it sounds it may just be the right strategy.
If you liked this blog post then you may want to read these as well.
More on Blogging SEO:
Writing Blog Posts that the Search Engines Will Love
Writing Blog Posts that the Search Engines Will Love cont.
Writing Blog Posts that the Search Engines Will Love- final
Pointers for Effective Blog Writing
