The Savvy Book Marketer

The Ultimate Guide to Finding Images for Book Promotion

When someone lands on your website, book sales page or social post, you may get only a fraction of a second to capture their attention before they decide to move on. Photos and illustrations (along with strong headlines) are key to drawing the eye and breaking up large blocks of text to make it more inviting.

Carefully selected images can also convey a sense of the message contained in the text, but sometimes bloggers choose beautiful or whimsical images to capture the reader's attention. (I ran across this gnome image while working on this article and just couldn't resist!)

Copyright Concerns

Like our writing, the work of photographs and illustrators is protected by copyright. The creators of photos and illustrations can choose to make their work available to others through various types of licenses that govern how and where the images can be used and how they are compensated.

It doesn't make sense to buy an image for every blog post or social post, but it can be a challenge to find images at no charge. Following are some tips for finding and using images in your book promotion.

Creative Commons Licenses

Many images are available free under a "Creative Commons License". Although there is no charge for using the image, there may be restrictions on how it's used and you may be required to give credit to the creator. See the bottom of this page for an explanation of various types of creative commons licenses.

Here are two sources of free creative commons images:

Flickr Creative Commons is especially good for photos of places and nature, but a wide variety of images can be found here. Be sure to check which type of license is being offered for the image you want.

Wikimedia Creative Commons - Enter a search term in the box at the top and then scroll down the page to see images. You're free to copy, use and modify images found here as long as you follow the terms specified by the creator. The license conditions of each media file can be found on its description page.

Royalty-Free Images

Images available for licensing are often called "stock photos," but you'll also see the term "royalty-free." That means that the creator allows the image to be used multiple times according to the terms of the license, without paying a royalty fee for each use or viewing.

Royalty-free images are offered through several online agencies. Typically you pay a one-time fee to license the image and then you can use it as many times as you like within the terms of the license. Some sites offer royalty-free images at no charge, but attribution to the source may be required.

Do Authors Need a Website and Blog?

by Dana Lynn Smith

As an author, do you need a website and/or blog? The short answer is YES! But there’s a lot more that authors need to know to harness the promotional power of author websites. This is the first in a series of articles addressing some of the most common questions authors ask about blogs and websites.

Q: Why do I need an author website?

A website is an online hub – the place where authors can send potential customers, media, reviewers, and anyone else who needs information about the author and his or her books. A website gives authors a platform for promoting themselves and their work that’s entirely under their control, and it’s an essential tool for building a following.

Q: What’s the difference between a website and a blog?

A website is collection of online “pages” containing information and images. A blog (short for “Web log”) is a specific type of website where articles are posted periodically, displayed with the newest entries at the top of the page. These articles (called “posts”) are typically written by the site owner, but “guest posts” can also be included from other people. Blog posts were originally a sort of online diary, and they are often written in an informal, personal style. Most blogs allow readers to post comments on each article.

Blogging is a great way for authors to share news, information and promotions with their target audience and develop an online following. Blogs are also an ideal tool for nonfiction authors to showcase their expertise in their topic. Blog posts are valuable in attracting readers to the site. They even help websites rank higher in search engine results, because search engines value sites that are updated frequently.

So, do you need both a website and a blog? For most authors, I advise creating a combined site that incorporates both traditional information pages and blog posts. This is very easy to do when you set up your site on a blogging platform. (More about that in a future article.)

What questions do you have about author websites and blogs? Just leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to answer.

Legal Issues in Promoting Books to Children and Young Adults

Q:  Hedy M asks whether authors who are promoting books to minors should put an email sign-up form on their website and whether there any legal considerations.

A:  An email sign-up form an important tool in allowing authors to build a mailing list and keep in touch with readers and potential book buyers. Most authors use blog-based websites and place the sign-up form in the sidebar so that it appears on all pages of the website. 

In the United States there are federal regulations regarding collecting personal information about children under the age of 13. Websites designed for children (and websites geared to a general audience that knowingly collect information from people under 13) must comply with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. 

This page on the Federal Trade Commission website has information about compliance. Because these regulations are so complex, it may be best to place a notice on your email sign-up form stating that only people who are 13 years or older may sign up. See paragraph 14 on this page. 

This article is for informational purposes only. Consult an attorney for legal advice.

The Best Way to Build an Author Website

by Dana Lynn Smith

One common question that authors ask is how to build an author website, and some authors wonder if they really need a website at all.

A website is an essential tool for all authors. You need an online hub to send people to (everyone from potential customers and fans, to influencers and the media) and a place to showcase your books and your credentials.

By using a blogging platform to build your site, you can easily create a combination website and blog, all on one site, or just create a traditional website without a blog. For most authors, it’s the easiest and cheapest way to create an author website.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the terminology, a blog is a particular type of website where people post articles periodically. This article is a blog post and you can see a link to the blog section of my website in the navigation menu near the top of my site. Other links in the menu go to other parts of my site.

Here are the platforms that I recommend considering for your author website:

WordPress.org is the most powerful platform, offering the most flexibility and design options, plus lots of “plug-ins” to perform various functions. This is the tool that professional online marketers use. The platform is free, but expect to pay around $10 a month for web hosting services. To learn how to build, use, or improve your WordPress site, I highly recommend Blog Aid’s training programs.

How to Make Your Writer's Website Captivate Your Target Audience

In today's guest post book marketing expert Jan Bear shares some terrific tips about tailoring your author website to attract potential customers who are a good fit for your particular books.

Your writer's website is the hub of your book marketing efforts. All your social media - Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads - link back to your website.

On your site, you craft the design, present your book in its best light and control the message.

But if your reader arrives and thinks, "Oh, this isn't for me," and bounces away, you've lost the game before it begins.

There are three phases to making your writer's website resonate with your target audience: planning, site creation, and site promotion.

1. Planning

Ideally, before you begin your site, you will take the time to think about what it is and what you want to accomplish with it.

The first question is who is your target audience? It may seem obvious, or it may not. Many authors get stuck on that question and hamper their writing as well as their book marketing. You should have a clear idea of who your ideal reader is -- demographics, lifestyle and worldview.

If your book is already written, you probably had someone in mind as you wrote it. If you're just getting started, having your target audience in mind can propel the work forward, by giving the work unity and clarity.

Where to Find Free Images for Your Blog and Website

See an updated version of this article here: 

The Ultimate Guide to Finding Images for Book Promotion

by Dana Lynnn Smith

Photos and illustrations can really enhance your blog and website, but it doesn't make sense to pay several dollars to buy an image for every blog post. And if you search online for something like "free images" you're likely to get links to sites that are selling images.

Today I'm going to share with you three free and easy ways to find images for blogs and websites.

1. Search by category or keyword on Microsoft's free image database. You'll also find an interesting selection of templates for Microsoft Office programs on that site.

2. Find photos in the Creative Commons section of Flickr.  Insert keywords in the search box to look for an appropriate image. When you find a photo you like, check the License section to find out how you may use the photo and what attribution is required. Flickr is especially good for finding photos of places.

3. Use Microsoft Word to find free photos and illustrations. Just follow the steps below to locate and download images from Word.

 

• Open a Word document (the document that you're writing your blog post in or a new document)

• Click Insert from the top menu bar, then click Clip Art.

• A search box will open on the right side of your screen. In the top search box enter a keyword or phrase describing the image you're seeking. You can use the Selected Media File Types drop-down menu to specify whether you're looking for clip art, photographs, movies or sounds. I usually select both clip art and photographs. 

• When you click the Go button, a series of thumbnail images will appear. When you see one that looks interesting, double click on it. The image will be inserted into your Word document wherever your cursor is located. You can open several images to find the one that works best for you.

7 Ways to Turn Your Blog Into a Content Marketing Machine

 Today's guest post is part of the virtual book tour for Nina Amir's new book, How to Blog a Book. Read on for some great tips from Nina about how blogs can be used to both create and promote books.

Most writers realize their blog offers a phenomenal tool for building author’s platform and for promoting a book once it’s been published. However, you may not realize the variety of ways in which you can actually put your blog to use to create a loyal fan base, sell more books and produce more useable content—even book manuscripts—in the process. 

Here are seven ways to accomplish these tasks.

1. Blog a book.

If you map out the content for a book, and then write and publish it from scratch in post-sized bits (250-500 word pieces) on your blog, you will begin to drive your blog up in the search engine results pages and attract more readers as you write the first draft of your book. By posting often and consistently—2-7 days per week, you organically provide search engine optimization for your blog. This increases your blogged book’s discoverability in the search engines, like Google. This means when a potential reader, journalist, agent, or publisher searches for a topic related to you or your book, your blog may come up on that coveted first Google search engine results page. 

2. Book your blog.

If you have been blogging for a while, your blog contains content that could fill a book. Create a content plan, but this time go back through your blog and find existing posts to fill out each chapter. You may need to write some additional content and edit the whole manuscript to make it flow and read like a book and not a blog. 

When you are done, you can begin to promote the book on your blog. You could sell the book to readers or try to land a publishing deal. Or you could give your “booked blog” away as a marketing tool to gain more mailing list subscribers so you can market to them directly when your next book is released. 

3. Blog about your book.

This is a more traditional use of an “author’s blog.” Simply find many topics related to your book to blog about. For nonfiction writers, this can seem simple; blog about your topic and everything related to that topic. Also tie into the news as it pertains to your topic. For fiction writers, consider every subject, theme, character, place, etc., in your story, and blog about that. Also tie into the news. This is a great way to drive your blog up in the search engine results pages and to help readers interested in your topics find you and your book.

4. Turn blog posts into ezine articles.

Take your best and most informative blog posts and rewrite them (at least 20-40 percent) into 500-word articles. Then post them on Ezinearticle.com or any other ezine article site. When you do this, you make them available to anyone who needs content on their own blog, website or newsletter. Here’s the reason to give others permission to use your content: Each article contains a small “resource box” with information about you and your blog (or website, book or services) and a link to your blog. Each time the articles is published somewhere, that box also is published. Readers find out about your, and your blog gains a link, which boosts it again in the search engines, and you gain some free publicity. You can use an ezine article distribution service, like SubmitYourArticle.com, which will submit one article to many ezine article directories, but it is not free.

Get Incoming Links to Your Author Website

by Dana Lynn Smith

This post is part of my series on How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website. Today I'm offering ideas for drawing traffic to your site through incoming links from other websites.

How many times have you been reading something on a website and then clicked a link that took you to another site? If you're like me, you probably follow online links virtually every day.

One of the best ways to increase traffic to your own author website is to get as many quality incoming links from other sites as possible. Incoming links draw visitors from other sites, and in many cases they also make your site more attractive in the eyes of the search engines.

To be most valuable for both marketing and search engine optimization, incoming links should come from "relevant" websites – meaning sites that are geared to the target audience of your book and/or related to the theme of your book or website.

Website traffic generated from incoming links is often called "referral traffic" because it's referred from somewhere else.

Here are some ideas for generating incoming links to your author website, along with links to resources where you can learn more about each of these link building tactics.

• Offer guest articles on blogs that cater to your target audience.

• Link to your website from all other sites where you have a profile or presence (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Goodreads, Flickr, discussion forums, etc.)

• Do a virtual book tour. 

• Comment on relevant blogs. 

• Post articles in online newsletters, blog carnivals, article directories, or other websites that accept article submissions.

• Run pay-per-click ads on other websites. Possibilities include Goodreads, Facebook, Google, and websites specifically targeted at your book's audience.

These are just a few of the ways that you can increase traffic to your author website by generating incoming links. Learn more about building website traffic in these articles:

How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website

Author Websites – Getting Search Engine Traffic

 

6 Ways a Book Landing Page Can Increase Your Book’s Revenue

In today's guest post, Kent Weber explains the benefits of a dedicated book landing page on your author website. You will notice references in Kent's article to earning affilate commissions from Amazon. See this page to learn more about the Amazon Associates affilate program.

6 Ways a Book Landing Page Can Increase Your Book’s Revenue

by Kent Weber

Warning: bold claim on approach. I believe this simple (and often overlooked) book marketing technique could increase traffic and sales revenue for the majority of book authors.

Seth Godin talked about these in the early 1990′s.  The Software, SEO, Info-product and other ad-driven industries all utilize variations of this technique to great success. Most book authors do not. But could.

I’m talking about the dedicated landing page.

Book Landing Page: a Definition

A landing page refers to the first page a new visitor sees on your website, usually arriving via an ad or search engine.  Specifically for books, we’re expanding on that definition a bit.  A book landing page is a single permanent page (permalink) on an author website or blog which contains all the relevant information for a given book, including a link to purchase. For example:

http://www.YourAuthorSite.com/your-book-title

Surprisingly, a very large segment of authors do not leverage any sort of book landing page. Instead, most use one of these two popular but less effective alternatives.

The Sidebar Listing

You put a link to your book on your site’s sidebar, link to Amazon or a similar site, and rely on them to sell it. With this approach, at least your book is visible on every page in your site. But if this is your only strategy, I think you are missing an opportunity. Optimizing your Amazon listing is also important. But I believe there is important work to be done at each author’s website as well.

A “Books Page” Listing Each Book You’ve Authored

This approach is obviously more standard for multi-book authors. You put your seven books in a nice list available at one URL. I’m a believer in this approach as well, again, as part of the mix.In my opinion, a better approach is a probably a combination of the two, plus the key ingredient here: a single permanent page at your author site, with complete book information, all on the same permalink.

Whatever combo you use, there is a strong case that a permalink book landing page can grow your revenue. Here it is. 

Author Websites – Getting Search Engine Traffic

People reach author websites in several ways, including search engines, referrals from other websites, and going directly to the site. In part two of my series on How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website, we will discuss search engine traffic. 

If someone is searching online for information and they don't know the website address of the site they are looking for, they usually enter keywords into a search engine such as Google. They might enter the name of a person or business, or enter keywords or phrases related to the topic that they are searching for. 

Paid Search Results

After entering their search term, they will see "paid search results" at the very top of the page and in the right column. To get visibility in the paid search results on Google, nonfiction authors might consider running pay-per-click ads through Google AdWords. Other major search engines also sell ads.

In this article, Laura Pepper Wu shares the results of her experiment with online advertising for books and offers some tips.

Organic Search Results

The other listings that show up on the search results page are called "organic search results". Google's proprietary algorithm determines what sites get listed and in what order they are listed. Most people who are doing online searches don't go past the first page or two of search results, and they seldom go through more than five pages, so your author website is not likely to get found if it doesn't show up on the first few pages of results for a particular search term. 

How to Get Traffic to Your Author Website

The author website (or blog) is an essential book marketing tool, and authors often ask how they can get more traffic to their website. To answer that question, let's first take a look at the ways that people land on websites.

In the graph below, you can see the sources of traffic (visitors) to my website last month, according to Google Analytics.

Search Traffic:  About 47% of visitors found my site through a search engine like Google. Most of those people searched for keywords such as book marketing or book promotion, although some searched for my name or brand name. The process of making your site attractive to search engines is called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Referral Traffic: About 18% of visitors landed on my site by clicking a link on another website. Generating incoming links from other sites, including social networks, is a valuable way to get people to your site and it's also helpful in SEO.

Direct Traffic: About 24% of visitors came directly to my site, either by typing my website address into their browser or clicking a link in an email (my newsletter). This also includes people who bookmarked my site in their browser and visited by clicking on the bookmark.

Campaigns: In this category, Google includes people who have subscribed to my RSS feed and clicked a link in the feed.  If I were running any online ads on Google or another site, those visitors would also show up in this category.  

I am writing a series of articles with more details on how to generate more traffic to author websites through search engines, incoming links and direct traffic. Stay tuned for the next installment coming next week. To make sure you don't miss any posts on The Savvy Book Marketer, I invite you to sign up for the blog feed.

Other articles in this series:

Author Websites – Getting Search Engine Traffic

Get Incoming Links to Your Author Website

4 Blog Marketing Check and Correct Actions for Increased Traffic

A blog is one of the best promotional tools available to authors. In today's guest post, Judy Cullins shares four strategies for boosting traffic to your blog.

Just starting a blog? Have one going, but not enough visitors to suit you? We all need  to constantly check and correct our blog marketing to see if it's "the most it can be."

Here are 4 check and correct situations:

1. Remember that both quality and quantity count to increase your credibility as the go-to-person in your niche.

Do you wonder if they will ever come? Don't quit too soon. I did 5 years ago. Then, I created a new blog marketing plan. I replaced my article marketing at ezinearticles.com and other sites with a new business. I wrote to educate and entertain my book writing and business marketing audience so they could make money from their craft. Why? Because of three payoffs.

Payoff One. Blog pages have a higher potential to rank in Google searches, and my already good traffic soared and over doubled the last two years. I check these numbers each month with Google Analytics. You can too.  

Payoff Two. By sharing new blog posts with other professionals in the book and business fields, I reached new audiences who appreciate my how to's and visit my site. Now, I am a guest blogger for 10 leaders in the field. Just this month I posted one blog article on LinkedIn with John Kremer that brought a good amount of new traffic. Over 130 people a month become subscribers to my site. That's important. Because...

Payoff Three. You have a leg up on staying in touch every week or so with your audience, enjoying their blog comments, and continuing to convert sales to much bigger numbers.

Authors, Can Your Readers Find You?

Author websites and blogs are an essential book promotion tool. But far too many websites lack contact information for the author or make the contact information hard to find. This seems to be especially true of author websites that are on the Blogger platform.

What if someone wants to ask a question about you or your book, interview you, request a review copy, invite you to guest post on their blog, tell you how much they enjoyed reading your book, or suggest a joint venture? How will they find you?

While it's important to make it easy for people to contact you, it's a good idea to protect your email address from spammers who harvest email addresses online. One option is to use a contact form on your website. There are various plug-ins that work with WordPress.org sites, or you can use a service such as EmailMeForm.

Another option is to use an encrypted email link. I use the Enkoder form from Hivelogic. If you click the "email me" icon below my photo in the right column, a blank email addressed to me should automatically pop up. Encrypted email links are not entirely foolproof, but they work well.

However, I have found that there are a few email programs that are not compatible with the Enkoder, so I have also added an image just below it that contains my email address. Because this is a JPG image, rather than text, it should not be visible to bots that are harvesting email addresses.

Some people try to disguise their email address by inserting various characters such as myname*at*website.com. According to my research, many bots are sophisticated enough to see through that tactic. Probably the worst thing you can do is to place an actual link to your email address on your site. That would be highly visible to bots that are searching for email addresses to sell to spammers.

Take a look at your website now and see how easy it is for people to find you and whether your email address is secure.

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Update the Copyright Date on Your Website

It's hard to believe that it's already 2012!

As we enter the new year, don't forget to update the copyright date on your blog and website. Having an old copyright makes your site look out of date.

If your site has been in existence for several years, use a range of dates. My copyright notice is listed in the "About This Site" section at the bottom of the right column, and it reads "Copyright 2008-2012 by Texana Publishing Consultants, LLC."

7 Web-Writing Strategies to Help Your Reader Stay Instead of Bouncing Away

Writing effective copy for the web is different from writing books. In today's guest post, Jan Bear shares some important tips about how to keep readers on your website longer.

Writing for the Web

You can encourage your reader to stay on your site if you consider factors that make web reading a challenge. Every kind of writing has its own set of rules, determined by the medium. The "inverted pyramid" structure of the modern news story came about because reporters sending on the American Civil War battlefront had to take turns sending paragraph by paragraph over the only telegraph in town. So they sent the most important information first. Writing for the web has its own set of best practices, just as much determined by the medium as any other kind of writing -- from brochures to books to four-panel comics to billboards. Here are 7 readability factors that make a big difference whether a visitor stays and reads your site or immediately bounces off to somewhere else.

1. Your Readers Are Using a Backlit, Strobing Screen

The computer screen is a tool for creating eye strain. It's like staring into a fluorescent bulb. And it's not just the light. It also goes dark and redraws itself (the refresh rate) at a speed too quick for your conscious mind to see. But your eyes are having to reorient themselves every time it refreshes. Don't make your readers' eyes work any harder than necessary. Keep plenty of white space on your page, and use images as much as possible to carry or at least reinforce information. Keep paragraphs short, 6 lines maximum, 3-4 on average, and a 1-line paragraph every now and then. Shorter sentences help, too. Readers absorb information in sentence-sized bites. Break up long thoughts into shorter sentences, and even an occasional effective sentence fragment. And always put lists of information into bulleted or numbered lists.

2. Your Readers Are on a Mission

Most people go to the web looking for something. They want an answer to a question or a solution to a problem. When they stop to browse and read, it's generally at a place they already know, like Facebook or a favorite site. If they're coming to your site for the first time, they're probably looking for something. For an author, this is your opportunity:

• Tell them about your book
• Make sure they can find it on your site
• Give them a chance to buy it

Usability studies show that people will look around a site for only a few seconds to decide whether they've come to the right place or not. You do yourself and your reader a service to make your offer clear and immediate and right up front. Then deliver.