Tips To Pay It Forward To Other Authors

We spend so much time promoting our own novels, we sometimes forget that we have some really great author friends who also have novels they would like promoted.

I'm a big fan of PAYING IT FORWARD. I mean TRULY paying it forward! The kind of paying it forward when you help someone without expecting anything back!

Here are some tips from an AUTHOR'S point of view:

1) AMAZON
Go to your friend's novel and click the like button. The more 'likes' they have, the more visual they become for more readers to find them. Don't ask me how algorithms work...they just do.

If you have read their book and agree with their tags, go ahead and tag them too.

As a reader, you can create a LISTMANIA LIST. Add your favorite authors to it. This helps new readers find new authors, your friend's book! Be sure to TAG and LIKE books that you do like by your author friends. 

2) TWITTER
Give your friends a shout-out or two on the day of their release and be sure to link to their book so it will be easy for your tweets to find.

3) FACEBOOK
On the day of your friend's release, be sure to give them a shout-out on your Facebook pages.

4) BLOGS
If your writer friends have blogs, be sure to follow their blog. It's always fun to share their blogs with their target audience.

Tell me, how do you pay it forward?

Shameless VS Shameful Self Promotion

Confession time!

I LOVE MARKETING AND PROMOTING! I love teaching other writers how to market and promote. What I teach is hopefully the shameless type of self promotion. not SHAMEFUL self promotion.

When we release a book we really want to sell 1,000 copies the first day out, or more. We spend all our time refreshing the page to see if we even sold one or ten within the last time we had refreshed the page. Or as a traditional author, you try not to obsess on checking the stats.

When you don't see the numbers you want. . .PANIC SETS IN!

What do you do? You rush to Twitter and tweet your release a few times, head over to Facebook and update your status (for the tenth time) that your book released that day, you send out mass emails to your writer friends and beg them to promote your book.

STOP!!! Move away from the social-media. Step away from the computer. RETHINK your SHAMELESS self promotion that will effectively help you sell more books!

1) Do you have an opt-in newsletter on your website or blog? I do! And I have over 600 people who have subscribed to it. Creating a newsletter about your new release and sending to your subscribers is a great way to spread the word.

They opted in to receive your news, so they obviously want to know what's going on with your writing career. Do NOT email everyone in your contacts from your email list, only your opt-in list.

2) Do you belong to Facebook groups that allow you to post promotions? Be sure to visit those groups on the day of your release. When you receive a notification that someone left a comment, DO NOT go in right away and comment back a thank you, wait.

Why wait? Because every time you comment on a group page, it brings that update back up to the top of the group page. If you have three comments about your release from others, go in and thank each one, but make sure you thank them an hour apart. This way your release status you posted earlier in the day continues to go to the top of the group page and is visible to the group throughout the day and doesn't get lost.

DO NOT send a group message to your writer friends on Facebook to ask them to spread the word! That's rude and completely SHAMEFUL!

3) Do you belong to any tribes on Triberr? Of course you do! So yes, on the release day you can use your blog to promote your release. When you belong to a tribe on Triberr, your post will automatically go to your tribes where your tribe team will help get the word out. BUT you have to be sure that you are participating and paying it forward on your tribe too.

4) A great way to get the word out about your other novels is to make sure you put a plug in the back of each book. If the reader bought your book, they will be interested in knowing what else you have out there. Or if you have a PR BUDDY that you trust for LIFE, ask them if they would like to promote their novel in the back of your novel and vice-versa.

5) Be sure to watch your Twitter feed throughout your release day. If someone mentions you, be sure to tweet them back and thank them "for mentioning my new release A Charming Cure". The tweet will go in their streams and that is NOT SHAMEFUL self promotion.

By watching your manners, doing SHAMELESS promotion will not only make you stand out from all the other authors out there, you are building on your image of an amazing author with great marketing techniques that work!

Do you have any SHAMELESS promoting tips to add?