[Guest]

If you have a death wish, or you'd simply like to stick up for writers' pages being about writing or marketing issues, I suggest you criticize or point out exuberance of self-promotion and piles of spam spread about on Facebook pages.

It worked for me a couple of times. And I did it nicely if rather teasingly. 

One thing I truly like about the Writers' Cafe is that book links & thumbnails can be put in the signatures. Imagine if 3/4 of the posts were nothing BUT book links & thumbnails, and there you have what is boorish about nearly every FB writer page I've seen so far.

 

[ReflexiveFire]

I try to post one thing a day on my author page.  Sometimes a picture from my time in the military with some commentary, sometimes a link to a news article that is relevant to my genre, usually when I make a new blog post I will cross link it through my author page.  I try to write some unique commentary about military issues, international affairs, ect...I hate writing about writing, one of my pet peeves.  You've got to add some value to people's interests rather than just bombard them with the aforementioned thumbnails which tell the reader nothing new about what you offer.

 

[balaspa]

I wish my author page had more people visiting on Facebook.  I didn't even create my fan page there, some friends did, which is awesome, but I often just don't post to it as often as I should.  I have had such a great time on Kindleboards, that it seems to leave little time for Facebook or other social media.

 

[ReflexiveFire]

It has definitely taken some time before I saw any sort of momentum or interest at all on my Author page.  For a long time I didn't see any value in it either.  Now I see what people mean by the "viral nature" of Facebook.  Once I linked up with some like minded people they started reposting and "likeing" my posts and all of a sudden my blog is getting twice as many hits.  My sales on Amazon have more than doubled also but I'm not sure if that is related or not...I think that is probably due to a combination of things, probably none of them of my doing.  If you do a search you can find a tutorial post I made a while back about how to make a cool landing site for your author page, that might help.

 

[skyrunner]

Yes i agree Mike, the allowance of books and links in the signature is a very good way to do things, and readers don't mind. It's additional information and forum readers have the choice to investigate further or not, while leaving the content of the post to address other things ( ie ) avoid spamming.

I'm also not a fan of Facebook for some reason, but that may be ignorance on my part. Facebook seems good for catching up with people, but it's basically an organisation whose purpose is to gain information about people for commercial purposes. In contrast, Google at least has a clear mission statement from the beginning, that on the face of it, one can support, which goes something like this " to make the worlds knowledge accessible to everybody " ( everybody on line that is )

A bit of topic, but just saying. However if authors can make facebook work for them. Great

 

[Michael Kingswood]

"Facebook seems good for catching up with people, but it's basically a capitalist organisation whose purpose is to gain information about people for commercial purposes. In contrast, Google at least has a clear mission statement from the beginning, that on the face of it, one can support, which goes something like this " to make the worlds knowledge accessible to everybody " ( everybody on line that is ) "

Skyrunner, I don't see what you're trying to say here.  Facebook is a capitalist organization.  Well.....duh!  It's called business, friend, and it's about making money.  Thing is, you write as though there's something wrong with that.  Considering you're apparently trying to engage in a little capitalism yourself here, it seems like a non sequitor.

 

[Richardcrasta]

I try to post one thing a day on my author page. Sometimes a picture from my time in the military with some commentary, sometimes a link to a news article that is relevant to my genre, usually when I make a new blog post I will cross link it through my author page. I try to write some unique commentary about military issues, international affairs, ect...I hate writing about writing, one of my pet peeves. You've got to add some value to people's interests rather than just bombard them with the aforementioned thumbnails which tell the reader nothing new about what you offer.

Hi, I would like to know your writer page address, if it is okay. Do you find it worth your time, and that it works for you--and how do you feel about having a writer page compared with having a page for each book?

In my case, someone (a friend) made a writer page about me, meaning to do me a favor (I hadn't asked), and I don't even know if I feel I should post on it, or CAN post on it . . . and how to handle it.

Someone else introduces their writing by means of a Facebook Note.

 

[ReflexiveFire]

http://www.facebook.com/JackMurphyAuthor

I think having a page for each book would be way to much to juggle, but than if your books are in wildly different genres than maybe it makes sense for you since your readers have little if anything in common with each other between books. Also, after they buy your book they might not feel any reason to follow your book's page any longer. An author page centralizes your work for readers but I suppose you have to adapt, case by case so to speak.

 

[jnfr]

Google is as capitalist as Facebook, TMOT.

 

[Nicki Lynn Justice]

Hey Everyone!

I have an FB author page, and I really like it. But maybe that's just me. I generally link my blog to my fb, so if I do a new blog post I mention it on FB.

So here's my story about spamming:

I noticed that more and more writers/readers were saying that they didn't like spamming. Then I started thinking about it, and realized that I was doing alot of spamming. It's just so easy to do. And it was like gambling. I would spam for an hour or so, then go check KDP, and guess what? There was always at least one new sale, and generally between 5 and 10. Last month, Black & White, my one and only, broke the 1000 barrier. I posted it in January, and sales have increased each month. That is, up until May (last month).

I decided not to spam anymore. Actually, it was hard and I did so once or twice in May. I only did my favorite pages, being Amazon Kindle, mobilereads, smashwords and bookworms. Guess what? I had my worst month ever. Only 13 sales for all of May.

So tonight I decided to do some spamming. I just checked my KDP... 9 sales tonight!

Moral of the story: I think spamming might work...

Another thing I noticed is that it works best on Thursdays. I'm not sure why.

 

[JodyWallace]

Moral of the story: I think spamming might work...

What do you consider spamming, though? Would your post here be "spam" since it has your thumbnail in it? Is that what you mean?

 

[skyrunner]

Moral of the story: I think spamming might work...

Interesting post Nicki. There's nothing like testing things to see what's going on.

 

[AnnaM]

Hey Everyone!

So tonight I decided to do some spamming. I just checked my KDP... 9 sales tonight!

Moral of the story: I think spamming might work...

Another thing I noticed is that it works best on Thursdays. I'm not sure why.

Too bad your ranking doesn't reflect those 9 sales tonight. 153,000 (I just checked at 11 PM Central time) isn't exactly where you should be after 9 sales in one evening.

 

[Nicki Lynn Justice]

I had 4 here (2 were overseas), and the rest at Smashwords. I suspect it was from the nook and Sony people, because I posted all over the Nook, Sony, and B & N Pages. I don't know about the ranking thing...like I said, May was a bad month. I had no sales in the last part of May at all.

What I mean by spamming is I go on the fb pages of groups like Amazon Kindle, Westjet (cuz I noticed people who fly have ereaders), Starbucks and all the coffee places (same reasoning),Fresh Fiction, Sony e-reader, cheap ereads, 99c ebooks etc etc. There are a whole lot of them, and try to say something cute and funny, and put in my links. My latest one was kind of a poke at all these stupid weightloss pills that I spend money on even though they never ever work.  After 30 years of this, I can say that it seriously looks like I'm just gonna have to stop eating. But you never know! Hopefully people take it as just being funny. I can be kind of sensitive about my weight and in retrospect my post probably wasn't very nice. My post pretty much said that if you buy my book, it will raise your metabolic rate and you will lose weight. And we all know it doesn't work that way - right?

Anyway, it does seem to work, and it's easy to do. So far no one has complained, although I hope people aren't offended. Sometimes the page owner will even comment and say something nice, like "Thanks".

You probably guessed that I am a closet fb junkie on my personal page too.

Nicki Lynn

 

[JodyWallace]

If you are contributing to the conversation or saying something topic-appropriate, it's not really spamming, is it? It's stealth marketing.

 

[Nicki Lynn Justice]

I like the term "stealth marketing"!

I just checked the sales ranking, and I think it said "59,740" for the Amazon Best seller rank. No new sales though.

This is what I posted on the Gold's Gym FB site and all the health related sites:

Here's a healthy eating tip: indulge guilt-free when reading. All you have to do is download Black & White, my romantic suspense novel, on sale for $0.99. The danger and excitement will get your heart pumping and increase your metabolic rate, which is scientifically proven to burn fat!

I posted "Want to lose weight on vacay? ..." on the WEstjet, Southwestern, expedia, etc etc fb sites.

Funny thing, I'm not the only one with whom weight and health issues strike a cord. Same with the price of gas. My posts about the price of gas were quite popular and were reposted. ReflexiveFire made a good point about that. I had 20 sales in one night on that one, and my sales ranking was #33,000 ish or something. That was in April when all the gas nonsense started and I had to start staying home more.

On Amazon Student, I did some posts about taking a break from exams by reading my book, and got a few comments on that (one person said I had no idea about what I was talking about, and that stress levels during exams were nothing to joke about....oopsie on that one..... so I told them to send me their email and I would give them a free book, but they didn't reply).

So maybe if I'm "stealth marketing" I don't need to feel kind of, well, ashamed of my Fb habit. I do have one rule, and that is I don't post on any given page more than once a week.

I love bouncing things off other writers here on kindleboards. As writers, we are sitting at our kitchen tables, working, by ourselves alot. It's kind of hard to know what's okay and what isn't.

Nicki Lynn

 

[dmburnett]

I think you just have to be creative.  It either has to contribute to the conversation or make people laugh, one or the other.

 

[Jon Olson]

If you have a death wish, or you'd simply like to stick up for writers' pages being about writing or marketing issues, I suggest you criticize or point out exuberance of self-promotion and piles of spam spread about on Facebook pages.

It worked for me a couple of times. And I did it nicely if rather teasingly.

One thing I truly like about the Writers' Cafe is that book links & thumbnails can be put in the signatures. Imagine if 3/4 of the posts were nothing BUT book links & thumbnails, and there you have what is boorish about nearly every FB writer page I've seen so far.

I really appreciate that, too. Unlike on the Amazon discussions, where you have create a link every time.

 

[tensen]

I think you just have to be creative. It either has to contribute to the conversation or make people laugh, one or the other.

Not everyone can be creative, not even every writer. Then again I have a habit of making people sit and blink. Even the awkward silence can be a helpful marketing tool now and again if used sparingly.

 

[horse_girl]

Getting back on track...by FB writer pages, Mike, do you mean specific author pages?

If I follow an author's FB page, I expect book-related news, not writing or marketing tips. Imho, author's pages are for promoting that particular author's work/signings/speaking engagements/etc. and discussion by fans/readers with the author. Everything else belongs on the personal page.

If you mean general writing-themed pages, then I would expect something besides book promotion. There is a difference.