FOUR WAYS TO ATTRACT MORE READERS...

FOUR WAYS AUTHORS CAN ATTRACT MORE READERS (AND BUYERS) FASTER
by Bob Baker


Attracting new fans. Admit it, that's what having a book published is all about -- getting more people to read your words, know about you and buy your books. And hopefully, getting a LOT more people to do those things.

Why else do you work so hard to craft chapters, paragraphs, sentences -- even individual word choices? For what other reason do you fight off sleep so you can finish just one more section before you call it a night? I don't believe you go through these things to amuse yourself and hone your grammar skills in obscurity. You work hard because you know you have something of value to offer ... and you want to reach as many people as possible with your ideas.

Marketing is the thing that helps you reach that goal. But marketing is also a subject that confuses a lot of writers. Whether they write fiction or nonfiction, are self-published or traditionally published, writers the world over know they need to promote themselves. But many don't know where to start, much less how to continue marketing effectively.


Does this describe you? If so, consider the following scenario:

Let's say you went to an average U.S. city and rounded up 1,000 people and gathered them in a giant VFW hall. These 1,000 folks would be randomly chosen and made up of people of all ages, genders and backgrounds. Next, you'd distribute information about your book, talk to these people and even let them read sample chapters.

After this direct exposure, what are the chances that one person out of those thousand would be attracted to your ideas and personal identity enough to buy your book? Most writers, regardless of how obscure their subject matter is, should feel pretty confident about being able to win over at least one new fan from this group of 1,000. That's a one-tenth of one percent conversion rate.

Now let's multiply that reasonable formula by the entire U.S. population of 285 million people. One-tenth of one percent would be 285,000 people. That would be enough fans to make you a bonafide bestselling author. Right?

So how do you find and connect with those one-in-a-thousand buyers (without the use of VFW halls across the country)? Most likely, you can't afford the massive advertising budget of major companies. These corporations spray their marketing message over the masses, knowing that it'll only stick to a small percentage of the population.

The solution: You must find creative, low-cost ways to go directly to those fans who make up that one-tenth of one percent. Don't waste your time and money promoting yourself to people who will most likely never embrace your words.


Here are four steps to take to reach those new fans:

1. Define Your Distinct Identity

You must have a firm grasp on what your writing (or latest book) is about. And you must be able to define it clearly and quickly. What sets your book apart from others in its genre? What attitude or social statement do you (or your book) make? Generic self-help, romance or science fiction titles won't cut it. Dig deeper and discover your unique identity. When you do finally reach some of those rare potential fans, don't lose them by not being clear about who you are.


2. Describe Your Ideal Fan

Once you have a handle on who you are as a writer, it's time to paint a clear picture of your ideal fan. Can you articulate how your readers dress, where they work, what TV shows they watch, what they do for fun and who their favorite cultural heroes are? Observe the types of people who come to your public speaking engagements or readings, and note what they have in common? Conduct simple online surveys with people who visit your web site or subscribe to your e-zine. Knowing precisely who your fans are will dictate what avenues you use to reach them and how you communicate your message once you do reach them.


3. Determine How to Get Access to Your Ideal Fans

Once you know exactly what type of fan you're going after, start making a list of the various resources these specific people are attracted to. What magazines and newspapers do they read? Where do they hang out? What radio stations do they listen to? What retail outlets do they frequent? What web sites do they surf to? What e-mail newsletters do they subscribe to? For example, if your fans are mostly Harley riders, go to a search engine like Google and start entering keywords related to motorcycles. Evaluate the search results and compile a list of the many good sources you uncover.


4. Network and Promote Yourself and Your Book

Armed with this targeted list of contacts, get busy! Send e-mail press releases to niche media outlets. Contact the webmasters and editors of appropriate publications. Post messages in specialized forums. Visit and interact via the web sites of similar authors or reading groups. Contact organizations and charities related to your writing niche.

In short, go to where your ideal fans are. And market yourself through these outlets relentlessly. Why spend too much time and money trying to promote to everyone ... when you can save money and be far more effective by going directly to those valuable one-in-a-thousand fans?





Bob Baker is the author of "Unleash the Artist Within," "Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook" and "Branding Yourself Online." Get a FREE subscription to Bob's newsletter, "Quick Tips for Creative People," featuring inspiration and low-cost self-promotion ideas for artists, writers, performers and more. Visit PromoteYourCreativity.com for details.



FREE Reprint Rights - You may publish this article in your e-zine or on your web site or blog -- as long as the author bio/blurb at the end is included.

Tiffany and Co. - TF2024

Tiffany and Co. - TF2024

English: Its Own Worst Enemy!

(Thanks to Fyndorian)

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, mustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succor, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

(Apparently excerpted from The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité.)
CM/CSA

Am I being courageous or just plain cranky?

"Courage is the human virtue that counts most — courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have." – Robert Frost

About Robert Frost
Robert Frost, the influential American poet known for his rural settings, uncluttered language, and meditative themes, wrote the poems, "A Road Not Taken" and "Mending Walls," among many others. He was born in San Francisco in 1874 and moved to Massachusetts at age 11. He ran a farm for ten years, selling it to move to England and become a full-time poet. After achieving his goal, he moved back to New Hampshire. His ambition was to write "a few poems it will be hard to get rid of." He died in 1963.

Thanks to Daily Inspiration's Quote of the Day for this!
(I'll insert the subscription link as soon as I can figure it out.)

All-righty, then!

I'm in a conundrum today, trying to decipher (and put into action) my best course of action for a number of interesting but highly annoying circumstances that have literally invaded my otherwise pleasant every-day existence. No matter which option I ultimately choose I will need a good deal of courage to carry it out - because every one of them involves entering unknown territory!

Today's categories include:

My Writing:
Articles, feature articles, and essays: I need to refrain from editorializing, just now. See, my attitude is tainted by my mood, rather than by well thought-out opinions. So many things are jumbled up in my personal life - not all in a bad way, mind you, but in ways that require time and attention - causing sleep-deprivation and stress.

The Novel: Things couldn't be better just now I've had a major breakthrough in understanding how to manage a plot point that's been giving me fits for a long time; how to write it effectively and integrate it into the story seamlessly. This is huge for me as it's been a hindrance to the book's completion.

My relationships with several other authors, some of whom I love, adore, and admire; and some of whom I don't even like, need changing and revising. Categorizing, if you will. Ugh! Additionally, one of the writers' websites I frequent seems to be going through something. Not in any of my groups, but the overall site is suddenly developing a sort of undertow... I can't quite put my finger on it, but I can say, most emphatically, I don't like it.

My Family:
Who is this smart-mouthed, teenage, know-it-all? And how long is she planning to stay? I'm just asking.

My own adolescence revisited?
Okay, I admit it. I have a crush on someone. It's been a long time, and I'd forgotten how much fun it is... Do I tell myself I'm acting like a schoolgirl and being ridiculous, or do I enjoy the ride and flirt my middle-aged heart out?


Always end on an up-note, right?

Later,
Carol

» Paul Surprises Ringo for Finale (Video) » The Fest for Beatles Fans

» Paul Surprises Ringo for Finale (Video) » The Fest for Beatles Fans

OH! What a night! Yeehaw!

Pearls of Wisdom from Sir Francis of Hoboken

"Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me" - Frank Sinatra

Morford does it again!

I love this guy! And I love the way he writes! I wanna hang wit him!

Do your self a favor and go read this article, if not for the logic and sense it makes, then for his way of saying all the logic and sense it makes!

Here's a taste:

"Sweet Jesus in minimalist design heaven, the iPad. No mouse, no extra cables, no mandatory hookups, no startup times, installation DVDs, RAM guides, accelerators, system folders, font drivers, extensions, launch daemons, Kerberos plug-ins, jpg helpers or compression schemes, no diphthong upslingers pongo hurling goober kerfuffling flipblasters.

Just a devastatingly simple, utterly gorgeous sheet of glass and aluminum that does almost everything your average computer user needs it to do, with a couple finger taps and a happy sigh, sans roughly 500 of the usual steps, clicks, guides, installations, file extensions and so on. It's understandable at a glance, intuitive as candy, enjoyable as a porn star in summertime. You know, just like the Mac has always been, except not really.

Using the iPad is obvious in that "well now this makes perfect sense" sort of way. Use it for five minutes and you'll have what's known as the Apple Epiphany, that thought that says, "Holy hell, why can't every user experience/consumer product be like this?" -- Mark Morford, SFGate Comumnist.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fg%2Fa%2F2010%2F07%2F07%2Fnotes070710.DTL

Introducing Compatibility View - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Introducing Compatibility View - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

OK, if the other video didn't work, how about this one?

Louis Armstrong - Danny Kaye

How about this to put a smile on the face!




Thanks to "Rockinhillbillies" in YouTube