What are the best low-cost marketing tactics for authors? Questions Answered at AskALLi Members' Q&A



Questions this month include

* What is the best way to format bibliography/works cited at the end of my book so that it looks good in ebook and paperback?

* What is the best way to build a team of publishing professionals around me?

* Does Alli recommend PublishDrive? (Yes!)

* Is it possible to distribute a 4×6 book on CreateSpace?

* How do I go about getting permission to use a song lyric from a famous artist?

* If you publish books wide, what is the best way to build a readership on smaller platforms that don’t offer advertising services?

* What is the easiest way to build an author website?

About the Hosts



welcome to the ask a librarian' a podcast where we answer the most burning self-publishing questions we're here with another episode and I'm your host Michael Arad and I'm joined with my co-host danblank from weaker media how are you Dan hi and I'm wonderful always awesome and it is June and we're back with another episode and you know what you know we haven't done and the time that we've been together any of these months we have not actually talked about what we're actually working on so what are you currently working on Dan for me it's two things I'm working on my next book so I came out with a book a little over a year ago and now I'm writing actually the prequel to it working on this book for years I'm excited to finally get into shape it's at the point now where I've got a really draw a lot in the sand and put a deadline and then the other thing is my creative shift mastermind group it's really where I work with like a small group of people so I'm setting up the summer session of being with writers and artists and that is what I love to do does your book have a title right now it's called from dabbler to doer okay just like your podcast well dad the podcast is tabloids versus doers I've tried to make it less aggressive but we'll see where it goes very cool well definitely keep us updated on that thank you though so I am working on bringing my YouTube channel back so some people listen to me this may know that I had a youtube channel called author level up I'm bringing that back in July so I've been recording a lot of videos writing advice videos and things like that from my office and so I've edited like my fifth or fifteenth I don't remember how many I've shot so many different videos it's kind of crazy so I'll be watching with like 20 videos so I'm really excited to bring that back so I'll definitely share more about that when I come back probably next month when it launches so alright so let's jump into the first question and we're gonna do some things a little different this month you know normally we start with a rapid-fire questions and we end with the theme of the month so to speak but we thought this month we had such a great question that was submitted by one of our members that we would start with that question have some conversations about that and then end it with the rapid-fire so let us know guys what you think about this new format let us know what you think what you want to hear what you don't want to hear so we we're always open to feedback and we want to make this show engaging and compelling for you guys while we're answering your questions so why don't we jump into the first question which is this month's theme and that is what are some good low cost low time marketing strategies for authors dan do you want to read the original question that inspired this I do and this is from William I love this question because I love the words that he used why can't I find a free fruitful marketing strategy not costing an author a ridiculous amount of money and hours of time on social media ideally spent on my own writing love this question yes and and and it's such a good question to you because there's there's so much behind it I think that almost anyone listening to this podcast I think would relate to write so why can't I find any fruitful and I think that's the key word for his question right so why can't I find any fruitful marketing strategy so marketing strategies are actually gonna not cost me money not suck up my time and actually make me money actually be ROI positive which you know it's funny because I think that there are so many if there's one thing that this industry doesn't have a problem with it's that there are no shortage of marketing opportunities I mean it seems like every week there's something new that pops up you know some new distributor some new service a new publicity company some new publicity service that comes up that finds tries tries to find a way to make authors some money and and they don't always work out right well it's tough because there's often a life cycle for these things there's something that someone discovers and works and then right as everyone's piling into copy it it starts working less sometimes because people are piling it to copy it sometimes because someone plugs a hole and sometimes just because the trend shifts when the first facebook ad appeared and you said whoa look at this great opportunity I'm gonna click that was great and then now there's a billion Facebook ads so it's less effective because people are so tired of them yeah there's there's definitely something to be said about being a first mover you know whenever some of these things jump on but I think there's a danger there too because you can easily jump on to all these different band wagons and and not so much be effective or intentional so what we what we decided to do is we put together a list of some some very cheap and low-cost strategies that some very successful indie authors have used to build their platforms and I thought maybe we'd go over some of these Dan and maybe this will inspire inspire you liam to do some things differently you know it it's my opinion that I think that there are fruitful low cost low time-suck marketing strategies but I do think that if everything you're looking at looks expensive you're probably looking at the wrong things and another thing I would say and I think a lot of successful authors would agree with me is that when you're just starting off you've got problems right everyone has problems and I don't mean that in a bad way but you've got the okay how am I gonna format my book how am I gonna finish my book how am I gonna edit my book so as you start to become more successful and build a platform around you those problems don't go away they they just become magnified but you're more equipped to handle them a little bit better so the issue of marketing and it never goes away and there are honestly are a lot of really expensive marketing services out there that are probably not gonna make you any money so you you have to think about it like that and so I thought it would be a good idea to go over a few low-cost cheap marketing strategies that might might be able to help you out and I just want to add though I when I read between the lines to the question what I also read into it is low risk yes and I think that's the challenging one because you know you can start on the list but I'll say that the things I tend to air towards are things that require social risk require you to put yourself out there and I think that makes people uncomfortable they'd rather click a Facebook button or an Amazon button no social risk whatsoever and know that it's going to work and that's a tough thing to find but start with start with the list no I don't know I love that and I think a lot of the things on this list are low financial risk but medium social risk guess right so that that's a great distinction so one of the is the first thing that I put on here was networking with other authors right so networking with other authors in your genre there's a bit of a social risk there right so if you if you don't know the heavy hitters or they're not gonna respond to your emails that that's gonna be a little bit of an issue but I think if you look at the the stories of a lot of successful people currently it's because they got other authors in their genre to share their book and if you start building those relationships with other authors in your drama so that they can plug your book during the first 30 or 60 days you know via their mailing list or via their social media you know one author is probably not gonna make much of a difference but if you can do that with several authors that has changed the game for a lot of people and so that that doesn't cost you anything at all I would add to that that there's the idea of doing it with what you called heavy hitters or influencers as people say I think there's an entirely different strategy there of ignoring those people or in addition to that just developing relationships with other authors a friend of mine had had taught a course at a school in New York a write writing course and they said you know they're bringing these famous guest speakers everyone is vying to meet that guest speaker and that my friend the teacher was saying look you can meet them but look around you right now these all seem like nobody sitting next to you in five or ten years you were gonna desperately need these colleagues build these relationships now they are going to you know skyrocket you to success when five years from now you're both in this other place and you have five years of history and five years of caring and suddenly they're an editor somewhere they're a best-seller you're gonna want that relationship so I'll also say look around people who are your level or below your level or slightly above your level and don't discount the power of that relationship that's great and everyone starts at zero right so everyone starts with nothing and sometimes it's a good idea to build build those relationships with people who are along for the ride who along for the ride with you because that's how you can start using a stepping stone right maybe one of those people does know an influencer down the road and you know there's all kinds of things that that can happen you never know what relationship leads so so think it makes relationships less transactional you know one of the things I don't like about social media is this idea that we can look at someone and we can see a number and we can say she's important he's not therefore I'm gonna gravitate towards them I like this idea of just learning how to care learning how to start a conversation realizing that you can talk to an author who has no books no followers and still get a wonderful insight and a wonderful fan that will benefit you in a million ways even though on the surface they've got no followers yeah and it's funny because that actually leads me to the next one which is posting content on social media that's relevant and engaging right so there might it might be that person right you may not have any followers or anything like that but they still can share your content and they still can engage with you and if you're creating content that's engaging if you're creating content that is interesting so like if you're a fiction author they want to close your ears a little bit because not everyone's gonna want to read about your books on social media I know it's kind of hard to hear and it's a thing it's a lesson that I've kind of learned the hard way but but I think if you can find a different angle like that that leads some sort of an insight into your books without plugging your books like if you're if you're if you write mystery novels or Cosi Cosi mysteries about someone who loves tea then maybe you're you know writing about tea or things like that I think is interesting I think that's important too because social media now and I think it always has been this way but I think it's really moving in this direction now that everyone is kind of jumped on the bandwagon at Instagram and Facebook and Twitter is that they prioritize content that's engaging so like on Facebook they tell you right then and there if you have a Facebook page how many people your content reached so so Facebook determines the moment you hit post how relevant your your content is going to be and so I think that forces us to be honest and I think it forces us to really focus on creating things that not only matter but that are gonna be engaging to people in irrelevant what I like about that is it's old-fashioned this is not about digital media and new media because if he if you me and forty people are in a room the man who walks in saying hey everyone my book just came out and that's the person you're gonna avoid the person you're drawn to is the person who tells you like why they love reading and why this story captured them or other books that are similar and they draw you in and I think that's what happens on social media too is that you're engaging with a real person on a human level you're not just marketing and it's it's a very old fashioned thing well in it that brings up the idea that there's a difference between marketing and promotion right so marketing is letting people know or letting people in your target audience know that your book is out there so it's it's creating a lot of those channels or those underground tunnels for people to find your work in the future promotion is you actually taking a megaphone and saying hey hey guys this is my book it's out there go grab it you know that sort of thing and I think people mix up the promotion with the marketing and I think a lot of authors focus on promotion without having done the work the market the marketing work that's required in order to help your book sustain some sales so the interesting example of this I follows Susan Orlean the author on Instagram or in Facebook and everywhere really and there's one post where she said I'm going to book Expo this week something like you know just a woman with a book in her hand and a heart on her sleeve her new book comes out in the fall and then you know the next post is her in the big hall at Javits Center and above her is the biggest banner you've ever seen this thing is like 50 feet by 60 feet of her next book which i think is called the library book and it's just sort of that idea of like her publisher buying a fifty by fifty banner of her book is promotion her sharing how she feels in this moment on social media is more marketing and it's funny how you can have both and how distinct they are yeah and in general it seems like for me marketing is cheaper than promotion it seems like when you're promoting that's when you got a pony up the cash you know and like I said it did sometimes it's low-risk sometimes it's high-risk but I think knowing the difference between those two I think is really important and it's it's foundational so the next thing we want to talk about was email newsletters and autoresponders right so this is for the people that are already in your audience and you may not have a whole lot of people that are in your audience but this is an effective way to market yourself right market and promote so having autoresponders that tell people who you are what you're about what your story is so that when they sign up for your newsletter day one they get your freebie day two maybe they get another autoresponder with you know with your story whatever your sequence is or however long you want to make it I think that that's like a built in marketing machine right because it's it's telling people the story of you and telling them how they can connect with you and your can you're emotionally connecting with them and then on the flip side when you do have a book to launch or product to launch or a video to launch you can use your newsletter as a campaign to send that to them so that they can go and do it and it doesn't to your point Dan feel so transactional at that point yeah and I think you in underlies again another point about old-fashioned as' and basics of communication that you can think about you know oh as Michaels saying I should be on Nell chimp and do this sequence it's like no he's saying yeah maybe I'll use that tool but you've got to think if someone just finds you and they say I'm gonna join your list what do they know about you maybe you should introduce yourself maybe you should send a video maybe you should send them something that tells them about what you're gonna be doing you've got to think about that on a communication level not just a which MailChimp button do I push you know which one is gonna work it really is having empathy with your audience well and that there's another piece to that as well right so when people read your when people buy scissors that there's a process that readers go through in it and for the most part it's gonna be similar for most readers when they buy a book if they've never heard of you before they're most interested in the book so they're buying the book based on the book description they're buying it based on the cover they're buying it based on the sample and they read the book and they're reading it and they're thinking about your characters or thinking about your content if you're writing nonfiction they don't care about you when they're reading the book they but when they finish the book and if they like the book that's when they care about you and that's when you get that little that door opens just a little bit that's when you want to down once they kick it open but you know keep it open and share information about you so that you can start connecting with them as a person right because that's a very limited window when they actually care and when they want to know more about you yeah and I mean I didn't and I don't know if you're leading into with that as well as the idea of at the end of the book what people know like you know join my newsletter list this is what I'm about on Instagram I share about characters I also care all mighty recipes you know like whatever that is we're thinking about that moment when people are interested the exact moment and saying where are they and how can I communicate to them in that moment absolutely so some rapid-fire things that you can do cheap and quick so having a street team and organizing people around your book launches so that they can post reviews for you that is completely free all you have to do is have a mailing list provider to do that posting videos about yourself like Dan mentioned completely free and you can do that on your smartphone you don't have to have a fancy DSLR camera or anything like that just pick up the phone pointed at yourself and hit record and just talk about what's on your mind that is a tried-and-true super easy way you know posting it on YouTube Instagram Facebook wherever you want to post it that's super free and super easy writing a short story or making one of your books free and posting that everywhere so that as many people as possible can find it it's probably not your book it's probably not gonna pour gasoline on your book like it used to you back in 2011 2012 the perma free option but if you've got something that's valuable and and you know you don't want to give everything away right but you've got something that's valuable that you can give away and you can point people to it you can see a steady stream of people coming into your platform over time so I've got a couple other things here putting information about all your books on your website in your email signature and on your social media pages it's amazing how many people don't always do this so you always want to make sure that you just assume that wherever you've got a guide post out there in the wild that someone is coming across it for the first time and they have no idea who you are so when you're looking at your email signature if you put a link to your books and in your email signature you know don't be over-the-top about it you know but your Facebook page assume someone's coming to your Facebook page has never seen you before so what's the quintessential book that you would want them to read right being on Goodreads free publishing your book wide and as many retailers as possible that's free KDP select it's free book promo ads they're super cheap but you can get yourself into trouble so make sure you do your research on which ones are actually effective affiliate links so you know mentioning products and services that you use and recommend that's free and that's a way to start building some income to help you author AMS ads for Amazon those are gonna be super cheap again Amazon doesn't at this time of recording doesn't spend your money as rapidly as Facebook does so you know that's something that I personally have found to be fruitful and if you haven't checked out Brian Meeks his course on AMS ads that's something definitely that I would recommend and check out and then also this applies mostly to nonfiction authors but putting together a media kit or press kit that promotes you to podcast interviewers or to people that want to you know feature you on their blogs or whatever that might be that's also free right so including photos of yourself talking points you know podcast interviews tend to lead to sales and so if your nonfiction author the more of those you can do you know the more people you can can bring into your gravitational field but yeah and that's those those are some kind of the low cost low time intensive things that I put together from a list perspective that I think have if you talk to a lot of successful authors in the indie space I think that these are some things that they have done and they can credit to some of their success you know I would characterize it from my end is just to things cuz I go back to this question this idea of how do you do this without eating up all your time that should be spent writing you know if I think about what an author should be doing the first is they should be writing and quite frankly all I do is talk to writers artists and the interviews and just my work and I find that one thing that separates successful authors from unsuccessful as the successful authors write a lot I just interviewed you I recommend people check out that podcast because you write a lot and I think a lot of people who say they write don't they have a book that they're really promoting and then they're working on something new but if you added up the hours in a week it would not be many it might not even be an hour so the idea of saying I don't want beyond social me I wanna be writing I want people to live up to that figure out are you writing an hour day two hours a day three hours a day what are you writing how can you write more and the other thing I love the list you shared but I've also say it comes down to just talk to readers someone I know owns a bookstore in Brooklyn and David Sedaris just did a book signing there and / what he's famous for he signed books for four hours after his reading because he talks to people he knows them and in doing so it's not getting yourself all bent in and not figuring out Facebook as an author as in this ad he understands his readers better than anyone and that helps him figure out any kind of marketing needs to do what should be in a newsletter should have a Facebook what should I share he gets stories he understands them better than anyone and that's the two things I encourage authors to do is write more create more and understand your reader better than anyone and these are both foundational regardless of whether it's 2000 to 2018 or 2036 yes all right and I think that ends the theme on a great note so let's jump into our rapid-fire questions all right the first is from Isabel what is the best way to build a team of publishing professionals around me all right so Isabel this question the background behind it is that she's planning to publish three online books in the immediate future she's to set up her own multilingual publishing company and she wants some assistance with the whole production process and is looking for a production assistant so sounds like Isabel is is on a pretty advanced path right so being able to start your own company and you're looking for help that's that's that's really awesome so what I would recommend is you you treat this like any other you treat it like an actual job posting right so if this is someone you're gonna be bringing in full-time you're gonna be bringing in a full-time team around you you may want to post it on up work or post it on you know places where you're looking for virtual assistants and actually interview them right actually go through the process of actually interviewing someone and seeing what kind of skills they have what skills they bring to the table and treating it like that and a great book about all of this that I think I would recommend to you as a bail if you haven't read it is virtual freedom by Chris Ducker it's basically the guide to hiring virtual assistants in any industry but how to hire them what to look for some things that you wanted to know working working with them but I think a lot of people listening this are probably not there yet probably not at the point where you would want to hire or even be able financially to hire an assistant but just know that there are places like upwork and places where you can find freelancers that can do some part-time work for you to help take some things off of your plate and that's actually more affordable than you think yeah just one thing I'd add is sometimes you want to do an experiment ahead of time of you know do an experiment for eight weeks with someone to see if that is who you need to hire or the type of role you need to hire because what you think you're gonna get when you hire even the most qualified person and the reality is different you're not hiring a clone of yourself you know someone who gets it he's gonna put that in another resource a friend told me about recently was book jobs calm I've not used them myself but the friend had a very positive experience with them all right next question is from Marguerite and they asked what is the easiest way to build an author website I love this question and this honestly could have been a theme for our show so there are some great tools I think it's never been easier to build an author website and it's amazing how many people I talk to you think that they have to know HTML and they've got a hand code their website and all this stuff you don't have to do that anymore that's like so like 1999 if that's your degree and you're in computer science I need more power to you but I think the average person WordPress is probably gonna be the best most industry standard option just because of the flexibility the apps the third party plugins it's just super easy to set up a self-hosted WordPress and you can do that via blue host or hostess all kinds of different you know GoDaddy there's all kinds of different hosting companies out there if you're not a WordPress person and not everyone is WordPress does have its cons there Squarespace which I've heard a lot of great things about I've got some friends that use Squarespace and they've got some pretty good-looking websites they don't maybe offer isn't as much flexibility as WordPress but I think the pricing you know it's pretty affordable and they do offer some some good perks and if Squarespace is not your thing you could check out Wix as well Wix they do they do a lot of advertising at least here in your space goodness gracious I can't watch hulu with that seen a Wix add these days so you could check out Wix I've heard really good things about them I don't know that they have as much flexibility as Squarespace or WordPress I could be stand stand corrected on that but those are some good low-cost really easy ways one one way that I would not recommend in and you know we say this every episode but we at Alli recommend that authors be the creative directors of their careers right and so being an independent author means being independent in every sense of the word and we would not recommend that you use a site like wordpress.com or blogger because your content is basically stored on someone else's servers you want to be able to own your content you want to be able to own your platform in case anything were it ever happened to one of those platforms you want to be able to continue to have find a way to stay in touch with your readers alright the next question is from Shana or Shana is it possible to distribute a four by six book on create space interesting question so I looked into this and on create space the answer is no but on Ingraham spark they will allow you to distribute a four by seven novel so it's not core book so that's not quite what you were looking for but that's enough and of course we always recommend Ingram spark they're one of our partner members so they do allow you to do that alright next question is from Nick how do I go about getting permission to use a song lyric from a famous artist okay so two parts to this question so Nick emailed us with basically he wanted to use an Eminem song lyric and I believe he had secured actually gone through the channels to secure permission from I ever owns the rights to Eminem song lyrics and and basically they gave him permission and so he just wanted to know if he was okay to proceed and legally I don't know I don't know the whole process of going through that Nick but I think you've done a lot more than most authors would do so hats off to you for that I did you know before you asked this question is kind of blew my mind I I didn't think it was possible to go through record labels and get the actual permission I just thought that they would automatically say no right but I actually looked into this and there is a process for doing it so if you want to secure a song lyric for like an epigraph at the beginning of your novel like if you want to use you know a song lyric there actually is a process for doing this and so you basically just have to go find out who the record label is if it's a mainstream musician like Eminem or you know insert name here for famous singers depending on when you're listening to this ASCAP ASCAP they handle a lot of the licensing and royalties for a lot of the major record labels and so I went to their website and they actually make it really easy to request permission on any songs that might be in their database so and apparently they're pretty responsive so that would be the first place that I would go and looking at some of the pricing and things like that I don't know how much it would be depending on who you're looking for little lyric wise but that's how you would go about getting that permission and that's where I would start if it's an indie label you know I would start with the label themselves and they're probably a little bit more accessible you could probably find the information on their website and if it's an actual artist then you could go to the artist themselves if they're self-published or if they're actually in the artists but I think the the trap you want to avoid falling into you just because you get permission from the artist doesn't necessarily mean that you have permission now we're not we're not lawyers you know is not legal advice but I have seen situations where people say that they've got permission from the artist but the artist doesn't actually own the rights to the song it's actually the record label so just make sure that whoever you go through actually has the clearance to give you those rights but great question and something that I think a lot of people would like to do with their novels right yeah definitely and I think a lot of people don't realize how much more control it is you can't just put a song lirik out there because you've sang that Led Zeppelin song your whole life it is very controlled it's very different from just kind of quoting someone who said something yes never use anything that you did not create without the owner's permission yes so Ian wrote a memoir of an African country and it's a it's based it's based on his dissertation so basically you know the academic world there's bibliographies that you have to have at the end of your books and they have to have a follow a certain format and you know it's it's complicated sometimes when you get into these so the issue I think he was having is that you know he he formatted his bibliography page but it just looks terrible when you go into print right because when you put a link on a printed page it just looks terrible because you know you can't touch it and you can't go to a website off of a printed book so my recommendation is and I've I have some some bibliography pages and some of my nonfiction what I've done is I've kind of just bucked the trends a little bit and I just I embed the links in the actual text so I've got the you know the citation there and then you put you embed the link in the text so that way on the in the paperback version the link doesn't actually appear and then you could do something like at the top or bottom of your bibliography page put additional links are available at and then link to some page on your website so that way on the eBook version they can simply tap and go to wherever the links that you've put in there they'll show up in the eBook version but they won't show up in the paperback and you don't have to worry about formatting different versions for each format next question is from Karen if you publish books wide what is the best way to build a readership on smaller platforms that don't offer advertising services yes so Karen asked this in our Facebook group and you know Amazon has MS ads Kobo has you know Kobo ads or Kobo promotions and you know Facebook allows you to do custom audiences but outside of that what you know how do you build an audience on some of these smaller platforms and the answer is tough right I it's really tough I don't know that there is an answer right now I I think a lot of these platforms are so are so much smaller and they don't necessarily have the resources to to give you to build a dedicated audience there but just brains storming I think you know if your John was popular on Instagram you know you could consider some influencer marketing on that or you could consider smoke you know smaller you know Instagram people that Marie you're in your niche YouTube book bloggers have a pretty big community that I I don't know that everyone knows about and having one of them review your books could be helpful that could be a potential way to start building up an audience on another retailer but they get a lot of submissions so it's kind of hard to get in with some of those book tubers so my advice Karen which I think you were expecting we kind of had some conversations offline about this is that there I don't I can't think of a better answer at this point but I just think you have to start with your audience and try to understand them a little bit more and see if maybe they can recommend some ideas to help you find some other readers but I'd love to hear your guys's notes in the comments and see if there's anything else that we're missing and one thing to keep in mind too is sometimes you can't be everywhere promoting on every platform especially if it's a smaller platform or a smaller retailer platform you've got to realize that people hop around some of the shops in Amazon could very well go to BNN com could very well go to some indie author what you know indie bookseller you know retailer website as well and you don't want to drive yourself nuts trying to be everywhere advertising everywhere because it won't all be effective and you're you're segmenting your audience a little too much alright final question is from Julie does Al I recommend published Drive and the answer is yes publish drive is one of our partner members they are an aggregator that will publish your book in a lot of different places so I think they go to Apple they go to Amazon but they I think the big the really cool thing about published Drive is that they have access to a lot of international markets that drafted visual and Smashwords can't get to you so they've got a very cool international focus that I like they're kind of the new kid on the block as we speak but I've actually published a few of my books with them and I've been pleased on how the Plateau easy it is to upload the books to that platform is and they seem to treat their authors really well so the answer would be yes I would definitely check out published drive it at least you know in addition to Smashwords and draft2digital and you know they can get you into some places that the others can't that's it that's all we got today all right so thank you guys for listening this wraps up another episode of the ask a line Burk you and a podcast and remember that if you have your question we would love to answer it online if you're an ally member be sure to go into your dashboard and follow a link to the forum where you can fill out your question and you just might hear it on the air answered by myself and Dan and if you've loved this episode and if you like listening to us every month be sure to subscribe we would love to be in your ear buds or you know wherever you are every month when you're listening to this show and don't forget that we've got a lot of other great episodes in content from other allied members on this show or on this channel as well so thanks for listening guys [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] you


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