How to do book research using Google online forms to gather information
“Content is king.” The statement has been used so much it’s become cliché. Nevertheless, it is still true and creating valuable content means you provide information not available anywhere else.
One way to do this is to do your own research. Collect data online by asking a group of people to provide responses to a question or a series of questions. The information that you collect is uniquely yours so it can be a big selling point for making your book stand out authoritatively.
Let’s say you’re a historical fiction writer and you want to find out what people’s responses are to visiting a particular historical site. You could create a form with a question and then share it with those people who have visited the site by asking on Twitter or Facebook. A better way would be to connect with the historical site and ask for permission to survey their visitors. If you share the results of the form with them and acknowledge the historical site in your book in a positive way, they may be glad to share the form with their list.
There are many ways to create a form on the web. You can write your own if you have coding skills but, for most of us, the easiest way is to use an online form service. Some are free and others charge a monthly or yearly subscription.
One of the best options is using Google Drive. Under Google Drive, you have an option for creating a form that you can send in an email or post on a website or Facebook page. You can view a short video tutorial [3:31] that will get you up and running quickly.
The information gathered from your form can provide statistical information to write a chapter in your book or an article or news release.
If you’re an author and feel stuck in your book marketing, get a jump start by learning about the best and latest book marketing strategies in the Authors Academy.
How to grow your author fan club
Behind every successful author is a dedicated group of fans. Let’s call it your author fan club.
This club may not include card-carrying membership with dues, name tags, or annual parties, but it does exist in some form or other. As an author, you need a faithful group of followers to ignite your book sales, show up at your events, and promote by word of mouth everything that comes off the press.
I do realize that when you start out, this fan club consists of your closest family members. They do come to your events, don’t they? No matter how small a fan club you have, the truth is, you do have one, and your task is to make it grow.
The easiest way to get started is to start collecting email addresses from your author website.
Of course, all that is much easier said than done.
Collecting email addresses from casual website visitors with nothing but “Sign up for Updates” is not going to happen unless you’re an A-list celebrity author. We’re all overwhelmed with too much email clamoring for our attention already. Our mailboxes overflow every morning with stuff we know we should read, would like to read but simply don’t have time to read every day.
To entice people at a local event or website visitors to give you their email addresses you must give them an irresistible offer such as a free (downloadable) book, a sample, or a report they want to read.
Then you want to be in touch with them regularly via email.
Then, to keep your email subscribers from hitting the unsubscribe button after the initial fervor wears off you must commit to providing valuable ongoing content or they will drop like flies once the initial offer lands in their email box.
So how do you get your author fan club to take off and grow?
There are many offers out there that promise you a massive list in a short time but I’m not sure that works for most people. The only way I know that does work is to consistently provide something of value and to be as available and responsive to every fan as you can be.
It’s not easy but it pays off.
Share consistent content on your blog by writing helpful and informative articles. Link to other relevant websites and articles on your author blog. On Twitter, share both your blog’s and other people’s articles. You can do the same on your other social media accounts as well: Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus, or LinkedIn.
It’s easy to be discouraged in the beginning when you realize that no one is listening. The way to get out of that mindset is to make creating content something that you actually enjoy doing! Don’t make it feel like work.
If you have fun sharing great pictures, if you think sharing tips, resources, and information with others brings a smile to your face and someone else, then you will keep doing it simply because you enjoy it. Keep providing this value for the few fans you have now, and in time you will be providing it for many, many more. To get a more detailed overview of how all this works, be sure to view the webinar “The One Way to Market Your Book” in the Authors Academy.
5 basic tweets for building your author platform
Building your author platform is a daily exercise every author must commit to for a book’s success.
If Twitter is part of your social media routine, coming up with interesting and relevant tweets can be a chore. One way to make this task easy is to create a tweet subject list.
To get started, decide how many tweets a day you will do. Three to five is usually a good number to start with. Leaving it up to whatever happens happens usually means that nothing will happen. So get yourself a piece of paper and let’s get started building your author tweeting program.
For this example, I am going to help you plan for five tweets a day. You can shorten it if you like to three or four.
When tweeting, a good practice is to offer tips, links, and interesting news items that will be of interest to your followers. Obviously, you want to promote your book, writing, and projects you are interested in, but make sure you have plenty of other tweets to balance them out. A good ratio I have often heard recommended is to offer one self-promotion tweet for every ten tweets.
Five possible tweets
1. Blog post update. This one is easy and can be done automatically every time you post. Every time you write a new blog post, let your followers know.
2. Inspirational quote. Keep it on topic about writing, books, book marketing or from an author. Create a list and add to it as you read books, news articles, etc. It’s okay to use a quote from places such as Inspirational Quotes or BrainyQuote, but you will have more impact if you can say you just read it or just found it somewhere.
3. Great image or picture. Great or fun pictures from around the web are okay, but including your own content from time to time will result in making a better connection. If you’re tweeting to build your author platform, keep your photos focused on something to do with your book most of the time.
4. A helpful resource. Share what matters to you. If something inspires you, there’s a good chance it will do the same for someone else as well.
5. Share a lighter moment. Something funny, a witty joke, or a comment you just heard.
If you’re an author and feel stuck in your book marketing, get a jump start by learning about the best and latest book marketing strategies in the Authors Academy.
How to build a Pinterest research board for your book
Whether your book is fiction or nonfiction, you can use Pinterest to create a better book by creating research boards.
What is a “research board”?
Basically, it is a board or series of boards that have images that link to anything related to your book. Take a look at these amazing research boards created by Alexa Chipman who writes young adult fantasy and science fiction.
You can create a board that takes place in the area your book focuses on: a state, city, park, or building.
Create separate boards for different categories of your book, such as: book cover ideas, characters, food, clothes, time period, places, spaces, weather, history, events, and anything else that will get you into the creative mood for writing your book.
For instance, let’s say you’re writing a mystery story that takes place in Corvallis, Oregon. Create a new board called “Corvallis, Oregon.” Now you can pin images, articles, videos, anything, and everything that happens in Corvallis.
3 benefits of your research board
1. Use your board to write description passages. If you have pinned images of a restaurant, you can look at those to get into a visual sense of the place. Ask yourself questions as you look at the pictures. What is the weather like? What kind of clothes are people wearing? What’s the atmosphere like?
2. Measure interest in your board. Do you have any traffic to your board? Use a site like Pinpuff to measure the popularity of your board. Knowing if anyone is interested in your book location can be valuable information to marketing your book in that area.
3. Build your book platform while collecting information for your book. What attracts people to go to Corvallis? By targeting those areas, you can fill your board with pins that match interest. People who visit one of your boards will likely visit your other boards. Make sure that they know you are writing a book and that it will highlight areas of their greatest interests.
At Wheatmark, our work with authors does not stop once their books are published. In fact that is just the beginning. That is why we place an emphasis on educating our authors about book marketing.
A quick tip to mentally reprogram your brain to write better in ten minutes
Chapter One:
It was a dark and stormy night…
Stuck in a rut? Can’t figure out how to get started with a bang for your opening chapter?
Try this copy-and-paste method:
Find an opening paragraph of a book that you like.
Copy it.
Then copy it again. One more time.
Now, close your work and write your own opening paragraph. It will have the flow and essence of what you just copied but be in your own words.
This is not plagiarism. The only copying you did was as a writing mental exercise.
For instance, let’s say you copied the opening sentence “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Naturally, you don’t want to use the same words, so you change.
In fact, you change quite a bit:
“It was another dark night with the wind blowing as if it determined to beat the hell out of someone.”
It’s quite different now, actually. It’s definitely a take of the “dark and stormy night” bit, but who would know?
Copying writing as an exercise is a time-tested exercise for learning to write better. Some professional writing courses insist that their students copy pages and pages of text to get them into the flow of mastering a new type of writing.
If you find yourself stuck in writing. Pick up a book by your favorite author and give it a try. You will be surprised how powerfully this works!
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
How to use hashtags to find your first 100 twitter followers
Today we’ll look at how you as an author can use hashtags in your tweets in order to attract followers for your Twitter author profile.
Here’s the basic information to compose your first #hashtag tweet.
Use the hashtag # symbol before a word you want to target. This will enter your tweet into a conversation based on that thread. Don’t put a space between the symbol and your keyword or between words in a phrase:
#mickeymouse #donaldduck #baby #author #bookmarketing
For this exercise, we’re going to use a fictional author named Arthur J. Author, who wants to build a Twitter platform to sell his new book, Frugal Retirement.
He has just started his Twitter account and has zero followers. He knows his target audience is over 60 and worried about money.
He has come up with a word list that he thinks will connect with his target audience: retirement, senior, senior living, frugal, budget, retirement savings, retirement budget, retirement blogs, retirement living, and how to save money.
Since he has no followers, anything he tweets has little hope of making a connection unless he uses a hashtag to break into an existing conversation. Using a hashtag will literally drop him into a traffic flow, sort of like getting on a highway full of travelers already. It will take him from walking barefoot down a cow path to speeding on the freeway in a BMW.
He starts his first tweet:
Arthur Wannabe’s new book, #Frugal #Retirement provides hundreds of ways to save money. Free report at
[shortened link].He hits send and his first tweet is out the door. He writes a couple more “selling” tweets but does not send them out all at once. Spacing them will be more effective. A good ratio is to offer one “selling” tweet for every ten tweets.
His next tweet that he will send an hour or two later might explain a budget tip, share a quote, funny story on retirement, a video to watch, an article to read by another author or anything newsworthy, fun, or inspirational that will be of interest to his target audience.
Watch this funny video! Aging woman fights back. [shortened link] I can’t stop laughing. #seniors #frugalliving
In this tweet, he has not mentioned his book, but is targeting the same audience with a relevant subject and uses a hashtag to stay in the conversation.
Several of the people who like the video will want to follow Arthur to see what he will offer next.
Twitter is all about building engagement. When using hashtags, every tweet should add something to the existing conversation. While not everyone who reads your tweet will automatically follow you, the more interesting and relevant your tweets are, the greater your chances will be.
After ten or so tweets, Arthur will send another selling tweet. This one is close to his first message with just a few tweaks to make it different:
Frugal #Retirement by Arthur J. Author provides hundreds of ways to save money. Free report at [shortened link] #seniorliving
There are a few behaviors to avoid in using hashtags. Using them could cause your account to be filtered from search or suspended. Twitter guidelines recommend using only two hashtags per tweet. Do not add a hashtag to an unrelated tweet.
Also, don’t use the same hashtag repeatedly without adding value to the conversation or tweet about a trending topic with a misleading link to something unrelated.
Writing tweets with hashtags is an important part of building a Twitter following. At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
How authors can effectively use Twitter hashtags for writing research
Twitter is about making connections in short, snappy bits of conversation. You have 140 characters for each message, which includes text, hashtags (#), private connections (@), links, and photos.
In this post we’ll discuss how to use hashtags in a search to find new contacts, conversations, and information.
Twitter Search
Type in a word or phrase in the Twitter search bar and you will get a list of tweets matching what you have entered, e.g., candy, finances, weather.
Use that same word or phrase but add a hashtag (#) before the keyword or phrase and you get a greatly expanded list. This is because the actual tweet may not be using the keyword specifically in the text, but the author of the tweet thought it was relevant enough to that topic and inserted that keyword with a hashtag.
For instance if you type #scifi, #money, or #cat into a Twitter search bar you will be given a long list of tweets around those words. Not all the messages shown will have #scifi in the actual message per se, but will have that keyword added usually at the end of the tweet.
You can easily scroll through the list of tweets that are displayed to connect with the latest information on your subject. You can view the real-time conversation that is going on, compare ideas, and join in.
The conversations shown may not be all positive!
Searching for #obama will bring up tweets from all sides of the political spectrum. Accolades, sneers, news items, name calling, etc. It’s a great way to see both sides of a conversation on any given topic.
Expand your target audience
Another benefit for you as an author is to use hashtags in defining your target audience. Is there a real conversation centered around your topic? If not, you might want to think about your topic before investing in its publication and marketing.
In most cases if your keyword is specific and on target, you will find many new people to connect with. You can create a master keyword list and use it daily or a couple of times a week. In a short amount of time, you will soon recognize the authority key figures to follow and the trending conversations to follow.
Use hashtags for research
Twitter can be a goldmine for behind-the-scenes information, facts, and surprising details for your book. Use hashtags to expand topics you’re writing about, places you want to explore, and people you need to know more about.
Examples:
#digitalcamera
#401K
#alzheimers
#methodone
Twitter can be used to research audience information, background, new books, special deals, coupons, tutorials, free offers, and much more.
Next we’ll discuss using hashtags to build your first 100 Twitter followers.
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is is in the beginning or final stages to tell us about your project, tell us about it.
Break through writer’s block with Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art
Resistance.
No one quite cuts to the bone about writer’s block better than Steven Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. Published over ten years ago it still remains a popular, no-nonsense book for getting writers to write.
It’s not about whether you are good enough writer to call yourself a writer. If you write you are a writer. The more you write the better you will write.
It’s not about how good a writer you should be or want to be. It’s simply: Are you writing now?
While dreams of sitting at home and writing a bestselling book is a common American dream, the reality of it is much more painful.
It’s not about “Are we having fun yet?” so much as are we “Still sticking to it.”
Jodi Picoult, the bestselling author of 16 books (and counting) puts in a solid eight-hour day from 7:30 in the morning until 2:30 pm locked away in her office writing and researching. That takes discipline. But before you whine that you don’t have that kind of time let me explain that for her first books she didn’t either. She found the time in five-, ten-, and fifteen-minute blocks she carved out while in traffic, waiting for a kid in front of the school, or stolen minutes while she ate lunch.
The subtitle for the War of Art is Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.
Turns out the real war front is not finding the perfect publisher, marketing secret or publicity stunt, as it is sitting down and writing each and every day. No excuses. No complaints. No pity parties.
Rationalization is one of the biggest tools in the Enemy camp for Writer’s Block. Every author has their own personal excuses but Pressfield zeroes in on them all and debunks them without mercy.
So how does a book that simply debunks author excuses for writing become such a popular book for wannabe authors?
Because it’s true.
And . . . because it’s not all bad.
Pressfield supplies us with a writer’s mirror that reveals not only the blemishes, warts, and wrinkles of our writing fantasy, but gives us the shield and armor to break through and experience victory. To climb the mountain of our deepest desire and experience the exultation of seeing a dream become reality.
At Wheatmark, we believe in helping authors with every step of the writing and publishing process. Whether your book is in the beginning or final stages, we’d love to hear from you.
How to get book reviews for a self-published book
How important are book reviews for new authors?
The best way to sell books is by word of mouth. The primary way to get that word of mouth rolling is to get your book reviewed.
The more important the book reviewer is the greater exposure your book will have. A book reviewed in the New York Times is going to outperform a book review on a small book blog with 200 readers.
Does this mean you should ignore the small ponds and fish for reviews only in the big ones? Not necessarily. If you are a new author, getting your foot in the door of book reviewers of any size might be well worth your while.
Ten reviews from small-sized bloggers will give you exposure to new readers that would otherwise never find your book. Keep adding to the pot and you will slowly build up your readership. Every book review that is posted online will be one more inbound link to your book and website. That’s good for raising your book and website’s search engine ranking.
To increase your chances of getting your book reviewed, it’s important that you match reviewers with books that fit your genre. There are thousands of blog sites that will review books. Each reviewer has their own preference for what type of book they will review. Fiction has numerous categories such as Thrillers, Horror, Historical Fiction, Romances, Westerns, Mysteries, Science Fiction, and Fantasy, for starters. Business books can be separated by type of business, start-ups, business methods, etc.
An easy way to find reviewers is to use a search engine and type in
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Writer’s Digest has an excellent article by Joel Friedlander on How to Get Reviews for Self-Published Books. Joel reviews how to get your book review kit together, how to find reviewers and key tips for getting your book reviewed.
Wheatmark can help you create a book marketing strategy that will help you maximize your impact while minimizing your time.
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